Cristian Arroyo Mora is a Business Development Manager, based in Rosco Iberica’s office in Spain.
He wrote this internal memo to his Rosco colleagues around the world shortly after he returned from a whirlwind month. Cristian attended Rosco’s four-day annual meeting in the US, then flew to southern Spain for a holiday with his family and directly from there went to Amsterdam to staff Rosco’s booth at the IBC Conference.
His memo so perfectly expresses Rosco’s core values to inform, educate and inspire our customers about our products and to do it with passion, integrity, commitment and focus, that we felt compelled to share it with you. We think you’ll find it funny, easy to read and provocative.
- Stan Schwartz, Executive Vice President
Dear Rosco Family,
A little time has gone by since we were altogether in Stamford for Rosco annual meetinhg.
After recharging our batteries in our summer holidays, we are fully "back to school" and just felt like sharing with you some anecdotes I had last week in Amsterdam while exhibiting at the IBC show (largest European Broadcast show, European's equivalent to USA's NAB)
If there was a list of five ways of how to start a show like this by not being in your best mood, I am sure I took one of them. I will explain:.
It happened to me that few days before getting to Amsterdam I was wearing my bathing suit, having to make the tough decision of where to have a swim: sea or pool.
All of the sudden, there I was. Schiphol (Amsterdam's airport). My colleagues and I had a pleasant flight and our luggage showed up without trouble. Yeah. Amsterdam, shake!, here we come.
And then, we stepped out. God, I had forgotten that. No more sun shine, sea or pool. Wind and rain instead (first shock). Alright I said to myself. Not a problem. Brought my raincoat. Yeahh! Good planning.
An hour later, I was in my hotel room and wanted to get some work done. Second shock: forgot my laptop. Will not get into details...(I can tell you after at least two beers). After some time trying to fix my own mess (Thank God, or rather Mr.Jobs, for iPhone) I was feeling better as I was going to get my laptop next day. Cool. Now let's warm up with a visit to Amsterdam downtown.
I must confess that I am a little maniac of not forgetting anything at hotel rooms. I learned from experience how dumb I felt when it happened to me so, since years, I triple check my rooms before checking out. With this being explained, I am sure you understand that I could not believe what had happened to me with my laptop. This was constantly going through my mind, but decided to put it aside, blame all the mojitos I had in summer and move on, have a nice and relaxing evening in Amsterdam and get ready for the show, starting next day.
My third shock was Kees' good initiative of starting the first day of IBC with a bit of fitness. (Kees, Rosco’s Vice President for European Operations, is Cristian’s boss.) All we knew was that it was going to be a little sweaty. Alright, I thought all the running I had done over my holidays was going to help me. Wrong!
Spinning was the activity. Makes sense, I thought. It was indoors at 7:30 am, so no risk to have rain or too cold weather. I did enjoy it. But my third shock really happened when I was at the show and my body was discovering many muscles I had not used for months...maybe years! Clearly running exercises very different muscles than cycling. "Funny" to feel my muscles shaking when I was going upstairs to the restaurant, and especially when I was coming downstairs. For a couple of seconds I felt I was going to "fly" my way down.
After these three shocks, do you know what saved me from starting this show a little grumpy? Rosco's Corporate Values.
The minute I got to our booth and saw the excellent spot we were having and also the hard work our colleagues Andreas, Chris A., Frank and Lex had done to set everything up beautifully, I thought, here we go! To Infinity and the End! Commitment
Needless to say we had a lot of dealers' visits as well. Seeing their interaction with us, how much they like to spend time with us, feeling how much they enjoy our company is really rewarding. It is the excellent result of many years of many of our people's efforts to build up relationships with them. Enduring Relationships.
Five long days later, I had gotten my laptop back. I no longer got annoyed by wind and rain as had gotten used to them and my recently discovered muscles were back to their normality. I even kind of lost my voice for a day (due to thermal shock, I guess) so I was sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, But as this mainly happened the day I spent a lot of hours with a new Italian dealer, I guess I was making them feel right at home:)
The Quality of our recommendations to visitors of how to use RoscoView, Litepads, Filters, Textiles, Paints, Floors, etc...was clearly perceived by all of them. When they left our booth, they knew none of us had tried to make a one time off sale. Rosco has been around for 101 years and is planning to stay for much longer. We recommend to our customers what we believe will help them best in their daily work. If that means we cannot sell RoscoView because they have bulletproof glass windows, we openly say that. If that means we cannot sell Litepads because they are thinking of putting them 9 meters away on the ceiling to light up their new TV Studio, we clearly explain why Litepad is not what they need. But don't get me wrong. We like to "hunt". We never elude a potential sale but not at the price of making a customer feel cheated. We sell with Integrity, knowing that making a user feel comfortable talking to us, gaining his trust on Rosco will always lead to more sales.
Yes folks, this is my Rosco. A culture, a family that we all enjoy being part of which helps us overcome obstacles (or shocks) and turns your grey day into a Great Day!!!
Oh, and I did get my laptop back.
- Cristian Arroyo Mora