Introduction continued - the merger with Exel and DHL Global Forwarding

OK, I think we're almost done on my career journey. Things continued to go well for me at DGF both personally and for my team however it wasn't until 2007 that DGF appointed a new sales director. This meant that Geoff Corpe, our CEO for the UK had managed the sales team for about a year and I'd say he did a very good job and even though he was from the Exel side, he was totally fair and neutral with all the sales team, regardless of their heritage.

Our new sales director joined in 2007 and his role was to lead the UK sales team and deliver on the UK's country sales and trade lane budgets. We saw some reorganisation, such as the restructuring of regional sales and creation of sales hunter (new business) and sales farmer (account maintenance) roles however in truth I think what we needed (which we had at the old Danzas Northern regional sales team) was people who could both win new business and develop/maintain existing customers. These people are out there but they are highly sought after and well paid and I think they wanted to keep a tight control of costs. For me I'd rather have 2-3 top class sales people than a hunter / farmer structure because often the farmers aren't that motivated, just managing existing and being passed recent wins by the hunters. The hunters are also under lots of pressure as it can often take 9 months to win a new customer from day 1 contact and they're also not very productive, having to only focus on new business so travelling across the farmer's areas so 2-3 calls a day would be a good average.

In 2008, we saw a big drop in business as the recession began to really bite and customer activity overall reduced as the UK and world economies contracted rapidly. This led to a reorganisation at DHL Global Forwarding and sadly, my role as General Manager, Trade Lane Development was selected for redundancy, the thinking being that my team of 13 would report directly to the sales director.

You can imagine that this was a shock, not so much the prospect of redundancy, but the fact that we as a team were doing well against our KPIs and the concern that the direct report to the sales director would not be that effective (it is generally accepted that a manager shouldnt have more than 7 direct reports to a structure / team be effective). I did of course apppeal/challenge the redundancy however this was a business decision and my appeal wasn't successful.

I then had a problem - one, I was redundant and two, I had to try and find a new job right in the middle of one of the worst recessions since the 1930s.

More tomorrow...