August 19, 2020
Wolfgang Weinkum is used to new experiences. Even while working at Pall in Austria for his entire 17-year career, his work has been marked by a range of new challenges, new positions, new direct reports, and even new methods for training and development after Danaher acquired Pall in 2015. Below, Wolfgang reflects on Pall’s fast pace; the emphasis on mentorship, training, and continual growth that have shaped him as a professional and a person; managing with trust, and collaboration across Pall teams and with Danaher OpCos around the world.
I’m the global director of sales and marketing operations for Pall, one of the operating companies, or OpCos, in Danaher’s life sciences division. Part of my job is to strengthen our sales automation processes—working with the team to make sure our customer relationship management (CRM) system is a one-stop shop for tracking all of our contacts, opportunities, and accounts. I’m also responsible for Pall’s lead management program; I head up a team of qualification specialists who curate the leads that come from our digital channels, to make sure our partners in Sales are able to focus on what matters.
The lead qualification specialist role is a relatively new one for us. We initially launched it as a pilot program in early 2019, a few years after Pall joined Danaher. It was just a couple of people in the U.S. at first, but it was very successful—conversion rates more than doubled. So we expanded it to more business units, and now we’re working to bring it to Europe and Asia, as well.
I started at Pall more than 17 years ago, so I’ve had a lot of different roles. I started out in technical inside sales and then moved into marketing. After we joined Danaher, I focused on marketing campaigns as well as automation and lead management, and then started my current position about a year ago. One thing I really appreciate about this company is that when someone raises their hand for an opportunity, we recognize it. It might start out as just one project. But every time you take on something new, you gain experience—and the trust of your colleagues.
Change is part of life, and that’s certainly true at Danaher. We move quickly, but the great thing about that is that you have constant opportunities to advance your career. In every role I’ve had here, I’ve never once felt like anyone was trying to keep me there or hold me back in any way. It’s always about supporting you and helping you get to the next level.
We have so many resources and tools available—not only on the technical side, but to help you be a better manager and even just a person. I think I’ve had more training in the five years since we joined Danaher than I did in 20 years before that. And mentorship is a big part of our culture, too. I’ve had several mentors over the years—and now that I’m a manager, I try to pay that forward. To me, mentoring someone is all about trust. Without that, why should someone listen to your advice? And part of building trust is setting an example. I’m a hands-on person, but I resist the urge and try to delegate, so my team knows I trust them. It’s also critical that they know it’s okay to make mistakes—in fact, it’s important! If you make a mistake and learn from it, I’ll be the last one to complain about that. We need people thinking outside of the box, because that’s how we discover new ideas or better ways to do things.
Within Pall, we’re collaborating not only within our team but across several departments. We work especially closely with our partners in Sales; keeping our teams aligned is a big part of my job. Working together as effectively as possible and getting things done right always requires good communication. Nothing is a one-person show.
The nice thing about being part of Danaher is we also have counterparts in other OpCos. If I have a question about lead management or lead qualification, I can go to someone who’s in a similar role at a different company and ask, “Hey, what does this process look like for you?” There’s a constant exchange of information, which is brilliant. We don’t have to start from scratch.
One challenge is that we’re working in a global environment, across different cultures, and serving a variety of business units. Sometimes processes have to be streamlined, and you can’t make everyone happy. But those situations are also an opportunity to listen, and hopefully, explaining our thinking will make people more comfortable with the decision.
And of course, COVID-19 has had a big impact—we shifted away from traditional marketing efforts like conferences and trade shows and made everything digital, which means our team has a lot more leads to handle. But the systems we’ve been building, including our work on marketing automation and the lead qualification specialist role, are actually a great fit for this moment. We also just launched a live chat function on our website, so prospects and customers can talk with us right away in real time.
In general, I’ve been really impressed with how Danaher has responded to COVID-19. Flexibility and agility are so important right now—things that might have changed annually before are changing every couple of weeks these days—and a lot of companies have struggled. Even something like shifting sales from in-person meetings to video calls can be tough. But here, we’d been increasingly open to working from home even before the virus, so we knew the processes and already trusted people to put in the same effort they would in the office. And the overall communication and direction from leadership has been great. They really exceeded my expectations.
Meeting the new members of our team in person! We’ve added a couple of people since COVID-19, and virtual onboarding went incredibly smoothly, but it will still be nice to be face-to-face when we can.
And for them and everyone else on the team, I’m excited to see them grow. Thinking back just a couple of years ago, it’s fun to realize how much people have accomplished. We have team members proactively driving new efforts, leading projects, even leading their own small teams. All of that helps Danaher, but it also helps them, which is very rewarding. Whatever your job is, the most important thing is that you can wake up every day and be happy to go to work.
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