ZENITEL NV Our Zenitel global team is made up of engineers, sales leaders, product managers, technical experts, designers, cybersecurity professionals, marketing professionals and more, spread across 15 countries. Today we introduce you to Michal Riha, area sales manager, safety and security for Central and Eastern Europe. Michal is based on Prague, Czech Republic.
What is your background?
I have been with Zenitel for 1 year and 1 month, but I have 25 years of sales experience with other companies, selling B2B and technical solutions. I began my career as a sales representative for 3M, then sales manager for Ameri-Sil, followed by a sales and marketing position for Mapa Spontex. Then, for the next 10 ½ years I worked for ASSA ABLOY, as a business development director and then export director for Eastern Europe. With all my positions I have enjoyed establishing new relationships in new markets and looking how to make more sales. At ASSA ABLOY, I saw the same customers and was in the same market but with a different product, so now, it's nice to see those same customers and show them the outstanding intelligent communications solutions that Zenitel offers.
How have you increasingly seen integrators and partners embracing audio as a security solution?
We have an advantage in that Zenitel products are a premium product with sound and quality. It's good to see integrators increasingly understanding the investment in quality that we make. I see them now seeing the value of a security solution versus just a product.
What do you enjoy about your role?
It gives you the opportunity at the end of the day to see your product in an application or being used, and it makes me proud to see people using it. Also, my Eastern European territory consists of 27 countries, and each one speaks a different language and has different habits. I enjoy learning about all of them. I have visited almost all of them with my previous roles, but now I get to develop those relationships further with a new strategy and with high-quality products. I don't get to travel as much these days, and virtual calls are nice to do, but it's easier to show the quality of our solutions when you see someone in person.
What career advice can you offer?
To never stop learning. It sounds easy, but it's once you stop learning that it's harder to be successful. You have to be motivated to always learn.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I have two hobbies: first is riding my motorbike, and when the weather is nice to like to take it out as much as possible. Second is that our family got a puppy the day before I started with Zenitel. He's a Bernese Mountain Dog, and he weighs 50 kilos (110 pounds) and some should still be added. I spend a lot of my free time walking with him and my family in the woods near our home. We named him Galli, which was one of the most popular names in 17th century Switzerland.
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Zenitel NV published this content on 05 July 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 06 July 2021 13:45:02 UTC.
