It is necessary to arrive specialized and with concrete solutions – interview with Nándor Barkóczi, Sales Director of INNObyte Zrt.
2021.10.29
It is necessary to arrive specialized and with concrete solutions – interview with Nándor Barkóczi, Sales Director of INNObyte Zrt.
We asked Sales Director Nándor Barkóczi about negotiating techniques used with foreign partners, the international expansion plans of INNObyte and the Farkas Ferenc Scholarship, of which he is a founding member. This series is designed to introduce our colleagues who, day by day, work to ensure that INNObyte is able to serve its clients to such a high level and with such speed. Earlier interviews can be read HERE.
You are chief commercial officer of INNObyte. What exactly does this mean?
I am responsible for the commercial field and in essence this means the coordination of all pre-sales and sales activities, from the identification of a potential sales opportunity all the way to signing the contract with the client. I carry out the management and coordination of this work. The team comprises eight people including senior, medior colleagues and trainees. Basically, a significant part of the job is to maintain high-level contacts with our clients and to designate the principal directions for the sales team, as well as, clearly, to give appropriate freedom of manoeuvre for employees in the course of their work.
You conduct many negotiations with your partners. Do these differ greatly from meetings taking place on the domestic market?
A foreign sales opportunity differs enormously from a Hungarian one. We have to sell ourselves in a totally different way, there has to be a much greater definition of what we want to sell. When contacting a foreign partner, one cannot just turn up with general concepts, it is necessary to arrive for these meetings specialized and with concrete solutions. This is fundamentally because INNObyte is not known in distant markets, for example, the United States, that is, this type of meeting starts from a totally different information level. And I have not even mentioned that marketing can also differ; it happens that there is a need for totally different marketing measures in these more remote markets.
How important is the personal presence in foreign relations?
The face-to-face meeting is absolutely essential in the sales process. For the past 18 months, we have been planning in-person visits to contacts developed in the United States. However, this has not yet transpired due to the COVID-19 situation. Our American contact was here in Hungary in the summer and this certainly influences how we can move forward in this area. Such an in-person meeting has the ability to build trust between the parties. I hope that in the coming year the situation will be resolved and we can make greater progress abroad, too.
In what direction is INNObyte expanding now?
Among the many breakout points, I would like to highlight our Call Center, Contact Center solutions. We offer our clients Call Center, Contact Center solutions built on Avaya technology, which we have already introduced elsewhere, not only in Hungary and Europe but also currently in the Middle East and in a few African projects. We consider this area important in the life of INNObyte and we would like to take it further, to other continents as well, for example, America.
For many years, you have taken part in the adjudicating panel of the Farkas Ferenc Scholarship at Pécs University’s Faculty of Economic Sciences. Why is this important for you?
I’m very pleased to be able to talk about this because fundamentally, this is not only participation in an adjudicating panel but I am also a founding member of the board of trustees. I should mention that Dr. Ferenc Farkas died a few years ago; he was dean of the faculty at the time that I was studying at Pécs University. Through this scholarship we would like to maintain the ethos that Dean Ferenc Farkas represented. Six or seven of us, all former students from that time, founded this award and we all take part in the work voluntarily. Every year, we award the scholarship to a young teacher and a talented student from our own pocket. For me, this is a matter of great personal joy.
What are you proud of in your professional life?
For me, pride always derives from good feedback when I see the actual realization. When I come across a situation in my private life, an IT solution made partly or entirely by INNObyte, that is great feedback, mainly when there is satisfaction with the product. To give a recent example: our participation in one of the bank projects of the instant payment system.
What do you like most in your work?
Since INNObyte fundamentally deals with customized software developments, I like, for example, that projects arrive from many specialized areas: agriculture, healthcare, state administration, telecommunications, call center-contact center etc. These are such multifaceted topics that they keep me on the ball, they are very interesting and it makes my work very varied. Since expectations, criteria must be learnt to some sort of depth, I constantly have to dig deeper and deeper into new areas, and this is inspiring. In addition, I like being in company, I like working in a team, working, talking, negotiating together with other people, attempting to pinpoint what the other person needs, what their motivations are. This is indispensable in sales.
It is no easy thing to balance work and private life as a family man. How do you resolve this in day-to-day life?
It is certainly a huge pleasure that, together, we have managed to shape the INNObyte community into one where children, family are an important compass in life. From this aspect, I feel it really unusual on the Hungarian market that specific in-house supports and programmes are linked to this objective, which back the establishment of an equilibrium between leisure, family and work. (For example, funding for summer camps, providing company babysitters for colleagues.) What is perhaps most important is that in the case when, due to some family situation, an employee cannot concentrate 100% on work, he/she will always find a sympathetic ear in the INNObyte community. I am delighted that such a community and executive came together here, people who consider these matters to be important.
