February part 2

For the dutch readers: Paul Witjes, my brother in law joined my blog. Paul is sitemanager of a Mikro Electro Store in Middelburg (Zeeland) I recall a discussion I had with Paul. I asked him "what is selling about to your opinion" He was at that moment 27 years old and he was managing his first shop. I just followed a training with Kenneth Smit and I was curious how he would answer "what makes a good salesperson" I felt from my chair, without training, limited experience, he told me what he does in his work and how he approaches people by asking the right question and filter what is important. And more important (for him and Mikro Elektro anyway) when and how to close the deal.

Well if you want to meet him and you are in the neighbourhood of his shop. This is Paul. Mentioning you know me might help :-)





It is freezing cold. We had some Petpower on Ice moments

(from left to right Jim, Louis and Andre) The people in the north are getting ready for maybe a new edition of the "elfstedentocht" The last tour (200 km on skates) was in 1997.

On a friday afternoon it started snowing big time. At that moment we were in a meeting organized by Sonja (HR manager) At the end she closed by saying something like "and next is ..." I responded with "a snowball fight" Marcel went out on the roof took some snow, threw it at me "catch". Next time Marcel will think before acting. A few moments later I burried his car with a lot of snow. It took him 20 minutes to dig out his car. Sweet revenge. And Marcel if you want to take revenge I drive a black Toyota :-)

The elfstedentocht is not going to happen, Not in february anyway.
After a good salesmonth in January, we are on schedule for February. At the beginning of February Dennis left after 2 weeks walking around at our site. He wrote an advice how to solve some bottlenecks in our process. Another step forward in achieving higher goals.When I asked him, the day of saying goodbey, what stroke him most he answered "You dutch guys speak so fluently English" After thanking for the compliment, I returned the compliment "So do you" Always funny to return a compliment like this to someone coming from the States......

February 14, valentines day. The team, Babette, Bart,Anton and Vincent, contributing in building bridges between people and creating teamspirit - do great things with little money. They challenged us to write tickets "loveletters" to a colleague. On the PV website I saw some very creative notes out of which you can tell that there are a lot of people having fun being part of the PET power team. Remarkable was the number of cards that were posted for Babette. For good reasons. Do great things with little money, an idea we can all use in our daily work.

Mid of february, Carnaval is making people restless. Everyone wants a day off. On Customer Service Tom, Babette and Marloes drew straws, Marloes is the big loser. She is working the other 2 are somewhere in Breda/ Eindhoven having fun. Friday Feb 17 I had the afternoon of to join my kids at school. The youtube gives an impression how, in a positive way, how our youngsters are brainwashed to believe that Carnaval is the most important event in the year in the south of Holland (Of course this remark is made by someone born in Amsterdam and does not have carnaval in his genes)