Practical training

My name is Felix Spranger and I went for practical training to the Finnish Company Management Events. The company is one of the biggest organizers of business events in Europe. The events are either industry specific, aiming to leaders within similar positions or dealing the certain topics of general relevance. I had the free choice between the locations Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Helsinki and I decided for Stockholm to be my base.

From the beginning, I experienced a very welcoming and nice work atmosphere with open office style, meaning that you could leave your place at any time and consult others for advice if needed.

The work itself was very challenging since from the second week on we had to be in direct contact with C-level delegates, who are mostly hard to reach and short in time. My responsibility was the German market, and it was fascinating to see immediately some cultural differences especially compared to the Finnish or Swedish market. Over the first 4 weeks we got intensive coaching but at the same time the work was always very self-responsible. Multiple times per week we met up via Video conference and got all four offices connected to exchange experiences and get further advice how the work is working and which strategies to use.

Big part of the learning is clearly to master the skills how to approach important people on the phone who don’t know your company and services yet and gain a good relation even under time pressure. Many times, we had test pitches with either our main trainer or our country specific team manager in the own office. Another part of learning was just listening to the colleges and asking them about their own strategies to adapt them into the own practices.

Within the later process, more and more coordination tasks came into the schedule. The cooperation with the sales team became more important, since we as project coordinators had to the responsibility to set up a business event in a nice way, so that the sales force had an easier job to negotiate with the paying customers.

Especially the communicative part and the extremely high amount of self-management that was required from the first day on was a great challenge to learn from, overall a very teaching experience.

Author: Felix Spranger