Ovation

A year ago, I was working at Sunrise Telecom, a small Test & Measurement vendor based in San Jose, CA. My mission : develop their Fiber Optic Test business in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (well, for me, it's like waking up un the morning and preparing the coffee : an easy-because-usual thing. Like Ethan Hunt and John McLane kill the bad guys, see what I mean ?).
Among other things, I helped the Product Manager to revamp GUIs, I created a real marketing & sales strategy with a real/reliable product roadmap, and I got the sales people excited. That is one my best souvenirs in the business, even if the event I'll talk about below lead to my departure from the company.
First of all, I have to say that I joined Sunrise on the 1st of October last year, at their european subsidiary based in Geneva, Switzerland. For sure, that was a gift from The Gods : my office was in front of the Leman lake, with an amazing view on the Alpes and the Mont Blanc. Anyway...
So, my first objective was the annual Sales Channels meeting, to be held during the Halloween timeframe in California. 60 sales reps, direct and indirect, waiting for some good news about the fiberoptics test product line of the company. Quite a challenging task, provided that there was absolutely no roadmap, no product planning, nothing * concrete *. What a change compared to HP/Agilent ! Anyway...
So, on Monday the 31st of October, 2005, at 1:00PM or something like that in the afternoon, I was on stage, to introduce the product roadmap and the related sales strategy. Before me, those 60+ sales people plus several key execs of Sunrise Telecom. After 30 seconds, I got the first smile. After 2 minutes, the first laugh. After 5 minutes, I was done. And I got my first (and last, unfortunately, with Sunrise) ovation. Every one in the conference room was smiling, saying loud "yes, we will do it". They all were excited with the roadmap, they all agreed with the strategy that I proposed. Not bad, for a new comer, right ? I was just 4 weeks old with the company, and the Sales Force was willing to work with me...
That is why I got fired a couple of weeks later, by the way. My boss seemed to fear for his position. Anyway...