Student Stories – Sam Noble
I am currently in between my 2nd and 3rd year at the University of Lincoln, where I am studying Business studies with professional practice. I am currently completing a 4 month placement over the summer at a company in London called FP Mailing.
Who is FP Mailing?
FP Mailing is a subsidiary of a German company called Francotyp-Postalia. The B2B organisation manufactures and provides a range of franking machines and other office supplies to over 22,000 customers in the UK as well as operating in 10 countries globally.
Recently, FP Mailing have launched a new product called FP Sign. FP Sign is a digital signature software, which has been launched in all 10 countries. My placement would be to work on FP Sign and to help launch it within the UK.
What is my role?
After completing my 2nd year of university in April this year I started at FP Mailing on the 7th of May and joined the marketing department. My role is digital sales representative and I am part of the team involved in the launch of FP Sign within the UK as well as helping to support its launch in the other 9 countries worldwide.
The first four to six weeks were mostly focussed on developing and testing FP Sign. As it’s a new product we had to make sure it was working correctly and any bugs or issues were fixed straight away. Some of my responsibilities within this period were product testing, competitor analysis, road mapping updates, communicating weekly with the other countries launching the product, plus much more. I also attended a competitors event to see their ways of working and to get a further insight into the market that we were entering. This also gave me a chance to network in the industry.
I really enjoyed this part of the role as it was very dynamic and no day was ever the same. It also really opened my eyes to what goes into launching a new product internationally. As I was new to the company and the role, the team I was working with helped me massively with any issues I had as well teaching me as I was working.
As the product developed and improved, we started to launch it to potential customers. This was the strategy we took as we believed that speaking to businesses that we already had a relationship with would mean although it was a brand new product, there was already a level of trust built. It also meant that we could focus on using the product to get as much feedback as possible, which is key to the products development. Our initial marketing strategy was to send email campaigns to existing customers explaining what FP Sign was and giving them a promotional offer of 3 months free. These emails were then followed up with a telephone call to the customer.
Over the past 4 weeks I have been doing sales calls to existing FP Mailing customers to get them registered for FP Sign. Once customers have registered, I arrange demonstrations and webinars for FP Sign to show the customers how it works. At the start of the month I was set targets for registrations with other KPI’s such as call times and call numbers. It has gone well, I am into my second month of this and I am hitting the targets. I am motivated by the products success and the commission structure that is in place. This part of the role has taught me how to sell a product, telesales skills and customer service skills for helping customers when they have queries around their existing products.
How I got the role?
I had been looking for a placement since around August 2018 and had applied for around 30. I had some success getting interviews and attending assessment centres. It got to around March 2019 and even though I had been offered 3 placements, I hadn’t accepted any due to them either being unpaid or not the right role. However, I saw this role advertised and decided to apply due to it being down in London which was a preference of mine. It was also a role that really interested me and that I thought I could learn a lot from. I had a telephone interview with the marketing manager and then I travelled down to London for a face to face interview. I was then offered the role and was asked to start of the 7th of May. The whole process from applying to accepting the offer was really quick. This was great for me as it gave myself time to prepare and organise for moving down to London in May.
How am I finding it?
Overall, I am loving my time on placement. I have learnt so many things and have been able to apply all the theory that I have learnt at university, as well as learning more and gaining new skills. The main benefit to this placement is that it has given me clarity on what I want to focus on for my final year at university as well as what career path I want after university.
Key things I’ve learnt
• Working with colleagues from all departments and countries; everyone has the same customer service objective so everyone is working towards the same common goal.
• New product development; competitor analysis, customer feedback, road mapping, mobile application testing etc.
• B2B strategies; targeting existing customers, industry specific marketing, job role specific marketing, as well as coming up with new marketing and sales strategies.
• Objectives on an international level; working towards the same goals, sharing ideas and learnings, releasing a product internationally and the challenges this brings.
• Systems; CRM system, Road Mapping, Screen recording software.
• Sales skills; Starting an initial relationship with a customer, asking questions to find pain points, closing a sale, after sale care and support as well as general customer support.
To find out more about what they do and the opportunities at FP Mailing please see: https://www.fpmailing.co.uk/franking-machine/
