Learning lessons for life at school - the GER "Wirtschaftspreis" taught me how to be a businessman.

 

My participation in the GER Wirtschaftspreis in 2010 was an important influence for me to become active in the business world. . My group developed the fictional enterprise named “EnergyStorm”, which picks-up, filters and distributes used vegetable oil from restaurants to be used for modified diesel engines. This is done through large oil companies such as Shell. As we continued developing the concept of our project, I became more and more and fascinated by the idea. The idea not only captivates me but I also enjoyed working with my classmates and leading such a long and detailed project. After the final presentations in front of the jury of the GER, I had a desire to see our idea in reality. That summer I got a job at Storm Oil, LLC, a local company based in DC, that virtually offers the same service we proposed in our project and coincidentally was founded simultaneously to the development of our project. I was their second employee to be hired so I was able to work together with the owner of the company on a daily basis. to achieve our goal: To collect 1000 gallons of grease and load them into the filtration system. It was very fulfilling to see my passion at the time in practice. Looking back at our project, my experience helped me see many improvement points and also gave me a much better understanding of the waste vegetable oil industry. After the summer ended, I still kept contact with the owner and over time, I started to see a flaw in the company: it lacked sales power. Since I gained reasonable experience working over the summer, I came to an agreement with the owner to work as an independent contractor, signing new clients and coordinating the move over to their new services, for example the delivery of new Storm Oil grease containers. As a contractor, I worked on my own schedule and only earned commission of my sales.. I also had to organize and manage my own materials; I was completely independent. This was a brand new experience for me. Never before had I ever attempted to market and sell a real service to actual clients, nor have I ever managed an operation which dealt with true profit. In the beginning I did endure a few failures, however over time, I managed to refine my skills to target greater success. Since the nature of sales in the waste vegetable oil business are nothing more than door to door sales, I did acknowledge that it would not be that easy to establish a very serious sales environment from the start. I needed to inspect the premise before engaging in sales talks, being a small company Storm Oil did not have the machinery to filter extremely dirty oil with a lot of food waste and garbage in it. I soon learned that the biggest challenge was getting to speak to the right people. At first, when I did manage to get a hold of the responsible manager, I usually just gave a straight-forward detailed summary of the service, without much success. I began experimenting with my sales pitch and slowly created a more successful strategy. I developed my “elevator pitch”, in which i gave a 20 second introduction to Storm Oil and its services, whereupon I merely asked the manager questions pertaining to their service. This evoked more interest in our product and allowed me to sell the product based on the needs and desires of the client. With this approach I largely increased my sales..

This experience was very important to me since it taught me an essential in business: Without the ability to sell, even the best idea can be unsuccessful. My personal success in sales and the overall experience makes me very excited and optimistic about a successful entrepreneurial career in the future.

-Arian G.