In today’s global and highly competitive business world companies require excellence in all aspects. Just like in a hundred meter run, champions are determined today by miliseconds and not by just seconds, as in the past. Today, if one wants to be among the best, one needs to strive for perfection. In the past several tens of years, this philosophy was very well known, but priority was given to operational excellence.

When we visited Yugoslavia, we were picked up by our representative and good friend Petar. On one of those trips Bulent and I had the conversation with him.

If a person spends enough time in a company, especially if that person works in Sales, naturally there are a lot of stories to share.  So, when I was drafted to share some stories that I remembered, my problem was not the lack of stories, but to decide where to start.  Hence, what story do I start with, 'The Story with the Fish' or 'Doing Yoga in a Hotel room full of Cigarette Smoke' or 'The Duty Free Shop in Hotel Nais / Yugoslavia'?

Even minor mistakes in the sales process can cause the customer a great deal of annoyance. Well, these were annoying at the time but a funny story years later...

For salespeople, traveling is a big part of the job. Allthough we like traveling, one problem we have is tackling work at the office in paralel to our trips. Today this is not too difficult with all the electronics we carry with us, but in earlier days we did not have the chance to work remotely.

We sales people have outstanding stamina. We run from one meeting to the other, go on long trips, wait hours at airports, have a long dinner in the evening and breakfast with another customer the next day. But sometimes we feel tired...

In Eastern Europe, they had highway hotels built for travelers. These were huge facilities quite far away from cities, with a limited number of rooms but with big restaurants to serve travelers who wanted to rest a few hours. 

It was a warm day and we were going around with my two guests from Serbia in the Bazaar area of Istanbul. We had finished a meeting and had several hours in the afternoon until their time to fly back home in early evening.

It is our custom at Kordsa to arrange a car pick-up for our clients arriving in Istanbul. Traffic is always a problem and the quality of taxis quite poor, so customers usually appreciate our gesture. It is preferable for us too, as we can be sure that our customers are being transported reliably and safely.