I’m not keen on the standard CV’s, like you’re supposed to write them according the standards. A CV should present your personality, your inspiration, your passion on why you apply for a job…

Hilde De Bisschop

THE INTERVIEW

Hilde De Bisschop: I’m a sales & marketing professional active in Auto ID & IT business since the start of my professional life. Marketing is my passion. It’s an important expertise in a company. It helps to drive the business in a company.

I’m wife and mother of 3 children, owner of 2 dogs and 2 cats.

My origins lay in Belgium and I’m actually living with my family since a few years in Luxemburg. Seen my professional career I always wanted to communicate with people as much as possible in their local language hence why I speak Dutch, French, English, German and Italian.

Hilde De Bisschop: I’m responsible worldwide for strategic development, monitoring of all our companies channel programs, tools, promotions; all that is needed to make our channel partners successful and drive the yearly annual sales plan. I’m reporting directly to our Chief Marketing Officer.

I lead worldwide strategic alliances development with potential manufacturer’s that don’t carry competitive products, building relations together with them to make our brand stronger. Identifying potential business opportunities, cultivating these relationships and finalizing common terms and conditions that benefit the organization while managing/leveraging those relationships for immediate impact and long-term growth of Datalogic’s business.

I’m ensuring our Datalogic brand is honored in all marketing activities we do with our channel partners and support our partners to drive common marketing activities to grow their business with us and maximize ROI while controlling a balanced global channel marketing budget.

Hilde De Bisschop: I truly believe we’re still in a growing curve with the technology, barcoding, mobility and other. So many solutions can still be developed; so many applications will change our lives.  

Datalogic is always looking into to new technologies and investing heavily in R&D. Working closely with the end customer, knowing the needs of those, new technology will keep on being developed. I obviously can’t disclose the new technologies our company is working on but for sure technology is and will be very important for the future generations.

Hilde De Bisschop: Channel Marketing is highly important for a company with an indirect go to market model, it involves strategic insides to drive the company’s annual sales plan.

An indirect channel means selling your products through distribution and partners. Channel Marketing defines channel program with benefit packages for the distributors and partners, channel marketing defines as well different tools for ease of business with Datalogic, creates motivational programs for our channel to choice to work with Datalogic and not the competition. Furthermore it’s a keystone to drive more business growth with the different channels by supporting partners & distributors with effective marketing activities in the different regions. By co-funding marketing activities through our channel Datalogic can reach much more end users, in all regions, worldwide, respecting the regional market behaviors and supporting the regional business needs. It’s a key element to drive business revenues.

Hilde De Bisschop: That’s a difficult and at the same time easy question to answer. As an entrepreneur, I enjoyed very much the different activities my company achieved and together with my employees we were a great team. Each of them carried responsibilities for a given client. I ended up after a while consulting for one corporation whom high jacked almost 95% of my time which made it hard for me to run efficiently my company and my family. The pregnancy of my 3rd child changed my professional landscape. Being very busy with one customer, having a busy partner as well and running a company and 2 other small children was though.  My skills were highly requested in the corporate market and I felt like I could contribute to another success. One of my employees wanted already to have shares in my company, be part of it so I finally decided to sell the company to him and go corporate.

I never regretted my decision!

The company I owned is still successful and my former employee is still very thankful I gave him the chance to become an entrepreneur. Passing on of a success to another individual makes me feel very satisfied, being able to participate to one’s other success is a grateful feeling.

Hilde De Bisschop: Channel marketing is truly a customer and human relation. Between the different regions, cultures, you need to understand, the people you work with. That’s fascinating. A true learning curve. You need an open mind and understand the regional business behaviors. It’s challenging and interesting. You need to be very customer minded, a social animal to be successful and you’ll see it’s a very satisfying job. After a few years you end up having some customers becoming personal friends.

Hilde De Bisschop:

-Climbing to the top of the Kilimanjaro is comparable to climbing to the top within a corporation.

-Climbing the Kilimanjaro is a tough task although physically it’s pretty OK if you persist and hang in, it goes for the business as well when the travel gets tough, the deadlines get closer and you physically are tiered, in difficult moments you need to persist, hang in and stay alert.

-I believe that the mental portion of climbing the Kilimanjaro is very under estimated; it’s much tougher than the physical part. Once you go above 4000 KM, and you’re walking already 6 to 7 hours a day, it becomes mentally hard; you wonder why did I ever start this adventure. Same goes in the business, you have moments when you get to face lots of difficulties, solve issues and when the mountain of issues gets to high you think the same, why did I ever started this job. At those moments you need to be mentally strong and take a step back, look at the whole picture, keep on believing in what you do is the right thing and move forward. You need a lot of motivation and mental strength. I truly believe that whenever you’re convinced in achieving something, you believe in it, you will achieve it, whether its on business or personal level.

Hilde De Bisschop: Working across EMEA is challenging and at the same time very interesting. Cultures are different and the business needs to grow the same. I often noticed on my visits in the Middle East that I was asked, how do you achieve this in Europe or the same goes for Africa.

Although the business approaches are different in those regions you can tweak some best practices around to fit the actual region. For sure you have to adapt some marketing actions to fit in the region however the end results can be the same. Only the way to take the action is different based on different ways of doing business. Most of the times regions can learn from successes whether it’s Europe from Middle East or from Africa or vice versa.

In my today’s job, I’m responsible worldwide and even there I can say that the US can learn from Europe or Middle East or vice versa. It’s very challenging and interesting and keeping the big picture is needed; at least all regions can benefit from each other challenges and wins.

Hilde De Bisschop: The first thing that grabs my attentions is the creativity, the personality of the applicant.

I’m not keen on the standard CV’s, like you’re supposed to write them according the standards.

A CV should present your personality, your inspiration, your passion on why you apply for a job. If it’s not clear from the CV I probably would not consider it; especially not for a marketing job. Passion is the 1st thing you need to do a great job.

Hilde De Bisschop:

-Why did he/she decide to apply for the job in our company? What were the drivers?

-What does he/she think they can bring as an advantage, extra to the company?

-Why does he/she think I should hire them based on their personality? What could they bring personally to a team, the company.

Hilde De Bisschop: I believe any individual is different in terms of experience and knowledge. Obviously a junior person you measure on growth in the job, achieving some specific KPI’s. A more senior role you challenge them in growing personally and going beyond what they’ve proven already. Both junior and senior you need to try to bring them t the next level. Based on this believe you set KPI to grow your people.

KPI’s could be development of a given skill, learning a new skill, developing a behavior,… For sure in Channel marketing ROI of campaigns is a standard KPI.

Hilde De Bisschop: There is no unique answer to this question, while you need to define points of measure depending on the campaign activity. There is no generic answer. Of course ROI is the most important aspect but ROI for an event can be totally different than ROI of a telemarketing campaign. I believe you need to set goals for each activity and measure the achievement of the goals. Goals can be different based on the marketing activity type.

F.E with a telemarketing campaign you want to drive qualified leads that bring your sales teams in front of the customer and the ultimate goal is the detection of a project, with ultimately the value revenue for the business. 

F.E with a sales incentive you measure the final growth in revenue versus a target.

As said, a unique measurement for a marketing campaign doesn’t exist. It’s all related to the activity type. In the end the unique measurement is to drive the revenue up in short/long terms and support the sales teams in achieving the companies target.

Hilde De Bisschop: Work life balance should be the most debated topic seen the speed of life, the pressure in business and personal life and it’s very difficult to keep that balance; especially when you have a high responsibility role. I’m a perfectionist in my business life and it’s for me even harder to keep the balance in my personal life. I’m lucky to have a very supportive husband that keeps my feed on the grounds and says stop when the balance is gone. Seen the fact I’m travelling across the globe I need to set myself rules to keep the balance between work life and private life. Sticking to these rules is hard and altogether the most important to be able to perform. Home office for professionals that travel a lot for their job is favorable for the work life balance. I truly believe that home office for professional travellers brings more business productivity and balance in their private life.

Hilde De Bisschop: My passion is reading books, due to the many hours I spend in the plane’s I can keep my passion and read books. I decided years ago that I don’t work in a plane anymore. When I’m not travelling I spend all my time dedicated to my family, with limited time for myself. This is the only way to keep balance in my work & life. The only sport I practice is walking our 2 dogs every morning very early in the woods and it does not affect my professional life while I’m in my home office at start of the business day. The dog walk however is a good refreshing start of the day, which gives me energy and is ME-time.

Hilde De Bisschop: I don’t have a favorite quote there’re too many good quotes so I cannot choice. My personal quote is “Follow your dreams, follow your passion! The day you loose passion it’s time to move forwards regardless whatever obstacle. As long as we’re happy, truly happy with what we’re doing in life, whether in business or private, it’s good. If you get up one day and think, oh no; I can’t do this anymore, whether it’s business or private, then change your live. Only then you’ll be happy in everything you do, achieve.

Hilde De Bisschop: Live, live, live, explore, explore, explore, be passionate and not superficial in what you do. Grab the moment, grab the passion, dream wild and achieve whatever you want by just using the power of your will. Never say I can’t make it, always believe in what you want and you’ll get there. Never give up. Limit use of social media, stuck the phone away and live. Make your dreams happen.

Hilde De Bisschop: Be yourself and believe in yourself! Regardless the religion, culture, studies! If you want to become someone, and you truly have a passion then follow it and go for it. Obstacles will be on your path but the achievement will be all yours.

Mrs. Hilde it’s been indeed quite the pleasure in having you with us as part of this interview!