I first went to Brazil two years after I was in charge of Brazil.
It happened that in April of that year, a person who moved from the trading company GOUSHOU to Toshiba came into our department as a senior manager.
It is said that many excellent GOUSHOU (trading company) people came to Toshiba when KANEMATU (trading company) merged with GOUSHOU.
At Toshiba, more than 90% of the employees who joined the company were science-related people.
That’s why Toshiba needed people with experience in trade practice.
One day, on the way back from a person’s funeral, the new senior manager called out to us young people. And he said, “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee?”
We agreed.
The senior manager thought he had to manage to increase sales, but he had no experience in the field of medical device sales.
He asked similar questions to senior staff, but he didn’t seem to get the answer from them he expected.
So he would have wanted to hear our opinion.
“How can we double or triple our current sales?”
Everyone who was asked straightforwardly couldn’t answer.
At that time, I said:
“That’s impossible.”
The senior manager turned to me, and asked me.
“Why is it impossible? Mr. Sato”
I returned immediately.
“We haven’t traveled abroad yet. If we can understand the overseas situation and hear the voice of the agency, we will propose to double or triple the sales.”
The senior manager said:
“Yeah, I see. I’ll give you the opportunity to travel abroad right away, so please tell me a plan to seriously increase sales.”