This time, Abraham Aguilar introduces himself. He is responsible for the American Sales Area at Lufft USA for one year now. In this year, he got to know Lufft and his new colleagues as well as his customers in different countries. In the following blog post, he reports about his experiences with his new profession and shares some impressions…
Work Hard, Play Hard has been my life motto, and this motto is one of my criteria when selecting a company I want to be a part of. Before coming to Lufft I worked for a software company focused on supply chain operations and process flow optimization. It wasn’t until I worked for an industrial distributor, where I learned the value of solution selling as I covered Southern California as a Sales Engineer. If you would have told me a year ago, that I would be managing Lufft USA Inc’s business development operations that include Sales, Marketing, and technical Support for the Canadian, US, Latin American, and South American markets I would have responded with a question: who, me? Given the opportunity to work at Lufft, one can say I was given the opportunity to discover the world.
Lufft’s onboarding experience was that of my alma mater, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where I received my Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering. The school motto is “learn-by-doing”. My first day on the job was in Atlanta, Georgia at the American Metrological Society Conference. I got to learn by doing firsthand all about our Lufft sensor offering with the help of Ann Pattison, VP Sales and Marketing. It was at the conference where I got opportunity to meet for the first time, Klaus Hirzel, CEO of Lufft, and Alexa Schick-Hirzel, VP of Marketing. Upon my return to the Lufft USA office Erik Wright, Collan Marrs, Laura Goodfellow, and Wayne Enderle all made me feel like I was part of the Lufft family. I immediately liked Lufft’s fast paced nature, which is perfect to today’s market. The availability to speak freely and openly to anyone including the higher-level management, makes Lufft’s work environment one to admire. Management expects one to think outside the box, look for solutions, and not conform to “it’s good enough” or “this is how it’s always been”, which make Lufft work culture stand out from today’s corporate environments.
In the past year of working at Lufft, the company has given me the opportunity to travel to places in this world that I never thought I would get a chance to visit in my lifetime. The trip to Head Quarters in Fellbach, Germany expanded my cultural understanding of German people and Lufft’s true passion for precision, high quality products, and dedication to doing the right thing for our customers. In this visit, I got to meet all the great employees that make Lufft such a great company to work for. One perk of my trip was that I landed the day of the World Cup, and got to celebrate with the entire country the jubilation of winning soccer’s most prestigious award. While in the same trip, I got the opportunity to go to Scotland to support a customer that was having a difficult time with a Lufft Ventus sensor – a perfect example of doing right for our customers. Our Chief Engineer, Axel Schmitz-Huebsch, took the time out of the Lufft’s new product development of the MARWIS and flew out with me to Scotland to solve the customer’s grounding issue.
After a long day, working hard on Lufft’s business development efforts, I can always reflect back to the playing hard experiences I have had this past year while working at Lufft. Like flying a two-sider propeller plane with the VP, going to a Jazz Club with the CEO, seeing the Mercedes-Benz museum with the VP of Marketing, or having dinner around town in Santa Barbara, California, (Lufft USA Inc. – HQ) with Thomas Stepke, our new President for Lufft USA and the Lufft USA team. I am looking forward to Working Hard and Playing Hard in the years to come at Lufft!
