People at Temedica: Josef, Account Executive

We’re on the lookout for a new Enterprise Account Executive to join our team – so who better to introduce you to than? Josef S. ? In the latest edition of People at Temedica, we explore what he thinks a potential applicant should know before hitting the submit button, plus the reasons he joined – and stayed – with Temedica!

For those who don’t know, what do you do and what does a typical day look like for you?

My typical day mostly involves talking to potential customers – and if I’m not already talking to them, I’m trying to fix meetings so I can talk to them! I try to establish contact in the first place and make them curious, before presenting them with our?solution?– Permea! My role involves a lot of provoking curiosity and suggesting how our customers might be able to use Permea for their specific use cases.

What made you want to join Temedica and – more importantly – what has made you want to stay?

I wanted to do something that combined my interest in innovation and digitalisation topics with something meaningful. I’ve always had an interest in the medical field, which was one of the reasons I started to look out for companies combining these two fields of interest.

I’ve been with Temedica for just over a year, and what made me stay is the constant and exciting pace of change we’ve experienced so far. The speed at which we develop is great – especially the Permea product itself! It’s nice to see that we hit a nerve with this particular product.

What are some of the misconceptions about your role that you think people have?

I think in general it is quite clear what an Account Executive does, and??I’ve never had a situation in a meeting with new potential customers where my role wasn’t clear to the people involved. However, I’ve heard that some people mix up an Account Executive with an Accountant – which is something very different!

For someone who’s looking to get into your line of work, what kind of personality traits do you think they need to have to be successful doing what you do?

First of all, you have to like people! Try not to be too introverted, and also enjoy talking to people. You need to have an interest in (or at least a glimpse of an understanding of) digital topics, because if this is something you’ve never heard of, or you’re simply not interested in, it’s harder for you to really identify with the product and with the company itself. At the end of the day, this is the product you have to sell, so this is important!

Personality wise, definitely be open minded, and be curious concerning the use cases and the challenges your potential customer has. This is actually something that makes this role really fun – when you’re talking to people, you’re always thinking “how could we address this issue with Permea?”. This way of thinking is very important!

If you could go back and give the Josef of ten years ago one piece of professional advice to take forward into his career, what would that be and why?

I wanted to do something that I’m interested in. I personally have the challenge that I have a lot of interests, and they don’t necessarily go hand in hand with each other! In my case, it was a bit bumpy until I ended up at Temedica - not because I didn’t go in the direction of my interests, but it was tricky to really find something where the whole package fits.?

I think the advice would be always know your gut feeling and learn to listen, and do the necessary changes in order to succeed. In my previous role, it was a cool place to work and was very exciting, but it was a huge company and very slow in every sense of the word, so I never had the chance to really accomplish something. I recognised this quickly, and this was the point when my gut feeling told me this might not be the right path to go down. I waited to see if anything would happen and maybe something would get better, but nothing changed, and then COVID-19 happened, so nothing changed – well, things changed, but not in a good way – so I listened to my gut feeling and looked for another job.?

Not being afraid of change is important – sure, on the one hand it might seem unstable or that management doesn’t have a clear vision if the path is too bumpy, but this isn’t necessarily the case! Often there’ll be situations where a number of changes are necessary in a short period of time, and any person who thinks about applying here shouldn’t be uncomfortable with change. Change happens, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I would say the opposite, actually!?

Think you’d be the perfect addition to Josef’s team? Head to our careers page for details of all of our current opportunities:?https://temedica.jobs.personio.de