Susan Petralla Interview

Susan Petrella, one of our prospective clients came into our class for an interview today. She is an artist that designs chairs to be used only as a piece of art and not to sit on. She will like us to design a logo, stationary, postcard templates and a website to advertise and sell her pieces. She brought in one of her chairs for us to be able to get a better idea of the kind of work she does.

ThomasNet - Norma D'Antonio
Client Solutions Manager

Q: Could you tell us who you are, who do you work for and what does your company specializes on?
A: My name is Norma D’ Antonio and I’m a Client Solutions Manager for Thomas Net. ThomasNet is the internet search engine for the industrial companies. We are the Google for the industrial companies, we are the online version of newspaper to get your name out there, brand your services and company and drive traffic to your website.

Q: What’s your career path, how hard was it to get to where you are now?
A: I started in the Philippines with and Advertisement Degree. When I came to the US, coming from a different country I had to start working on whatever was available, but now I’m doing is something that I’m really enjoying and have a lot of passion for it because is related to what I studied for. I intend to stay in this industry especially because of the opportunities in the internet, pretty soon all companies are going to have to have presence in the internet to be able to move forward in their business.

Q: How is your company organized?
A: Well, basically the headquarters is in New York, which is where all the packaging comes from. Our office here in Orange County is a franchise; this is just a sells office, so our task is basically to generate new business. We have ten sales representatives and we can go pursue any account that we’ll like without having to worry about territories. So the office here is just a sales office with an office manager, my manager and our task is basically just to like I said to generate new business. If I sign a client what happens is that I have to take care of all the contracts and everything is submitted overnight to New York. At that point everything is done via conference call with our account partners in New York.


Q: What do you need to know about a client before you meet with him?
A: That is the interesting part of the job and is also the part that I like. Each company in the industrial market is different when it comes to the type of service and products that they sell. The interesting part is and in order to be successful you have to be naturally curious, you have to ask a lot of questions. We do what we call a discovery meeting where we discover what the company is all about, what their services are, how things run, how the orders come in, what type of questions does their clients ask them when they go into their website, and stuff like that will help me understand what’s going on in that company. We do not have obviously a 100% understanding of the company, but if I can get a tour of the facility that also helps me connect with that company that I’m trying to sell.


Q: How hard is it to work directly with customer and sell somebody else’s work and how challenging is it to communicate your customer needs to your design group?
A: It could be hard if they are not sharing information, but for the most part the New York office is pretty good at including me and copying me in everything that is going on. When I get the proofs is when I see if we are in the same page, when we share and see if that is what we think the customer wants based on the meetings we had and what has been submitted. For me is interesting and can also be challenging because I have the relationship with the client and they don’t, they are pretty much depending on the information I have provided to them. That could be struggling at times, but you learn each time and that’s when you know that asking questions could get you to what you want. There will always be misunderstanding about something, an unhappy client, but is just a matter of me being there because I am the link between the client and my people in New York and if there is anything that needs to be clarified I need to make sure that gets taken care of.

Q: Are you involved in the hiring process at your company? What kind of tools does your company looks for in a sales person when hiring?

A: I don’t really have the say of hiring a certain person, but I’m one of the two people that my boss wants a new person to ride with to kind of get a feel of whether that person is going to make it or not make it. Because of my work ethics he wants us to make sure that the new person will do what I have being doing. The types of people that would work out for ThomasNet is someone who is not afraid to call and ask for the business, someone who would pursue to become sales people here are the ones who are aggressive and who are wanting to generate new business at whatever cost there is.

Adobe Connect Pro Conference & Goal HR Solutions Interview

Today we had a prospective client postpone his interview for next week, but that does not mean we didn’t have any interviews. Dr. Brown stepped out of the class for a moment and while she was walking to her office she ran into Kathleen MacNeil the Principal Advisor of Goal HR Solutions. Kathleen works for True Games a company working in the DMC Job Incubator. She is a HR Consultant whom will like to develop her business brand identity. While she tried to explain us what her business is all about she discovered that she doesn’t really know how to describe her business. She had problems explaining what she does and what she wants to advertise. It seems that she needs to develop her company business plan before she can jump into the brand identity design.

Today we had our first Adobe Connect Pro meeting a program that will give us the opportunity to communicate virtually with our customers or team mates if needed. It was a great experience, I’m sure we will make a good use of this new program.