My work and role in the cooperative

The pain and pleasure of trying new things

I am from Iwate Prefecture and joined Kyodo at the age of 18. I don't have any peers or subordinates from that time, but I think I was blessed with a very good environment with my seniors. I have been in the sales field for a long time, but now I am involved in planning and proposing new businesses.
Finding new business is not an easy task, but I have learned through my work so far that there is a lot of pain and fun in taking on new challenges.
It is relatively easy to make appointments in industries that we have business with, but I have experienced that it takes a considerable amount of time to open an account in a completely new industry because it is regarded as "different industry and no track record" before we can enter a new industry.

Proccess to the achievement

When jumping into a new industry, I would first ask for an appointment over the phone, and the first thing I realized was how difficult it was to make an appointment. I was turned down five times by the same company, but I wanted to make it to a visit first, so I still remember the sixth time I was told by the other party to "try coming to the office. I was very happy when I was able to visit for the first time, and I will never forget the joy.
But the joy was short-lived, and it took quite a long time to see results from that point on.
I went back and forth to the office many times, and although I received inquiries, I was never able to get a formal order, and the time just kept on passing.

It must have been a year and a half since my first visit. I was beginning to feel that spending any more time visiting the customer was a waste of time, and that there was no way to win the order. The customer had been mostly procuring domestically, but in accordance with company policy, they wanted to procure parts from overseas for the purpose of cost reduction. Since that time, we received many inquiries and after opening the account, we were able to receive orders for a variety of projects.
Of course, if we had given up halfway through the process, we would have never known of this hardship and would not have been able to experience this joy. In addition, I sometimes see the products we received orders for at this time, and every time I see the products, I still recall the hard work and the joy of accomplishment at that time.

Develop products that contribute to the world

Our goal is to develop products that contribute to the world by meeting face-to-face with domestic customers. We believe that in the future, as a Kyodo company, we will need to develop original Kyodo products.
I think it will be important to link BtoB and BtoC to sales. In the current online age, face-to-face meetings are becoming rare, but I would like to take this as an opportunity to give online demonstrations of what we are doing to solve customers' problems. We believe that we can become stronger if we can create a system that makes people we meet online feel closer to us. We would like to contribute to a significant increase in sales by planning products for different industries and different fields.