PAUL GARCIA
COMPANY: 360Connect
TITLE: Director of Supplier Marketing
YEARS ON THE JOB: 14
My official title at 360Connect is Director of Supplier Marketing. What does a director of supplier marketing do? Well, that can be explained through my main responsibilities.
My main three responsibilities are to spread 360Connect’s mission of focusing on our client’s success, help the sales team identify business leaders that are struggling to market and sell within their company and obsessively think of ways to improve our revenue growth program.
It’s been my pleasure to help support and grow with 360Connect for the past 14 years.
A typical day might consist of talking to business leaders of other companies and helping them think of new ways to bring in sales, thinking of relevant topics and content that can help our business community or encouraging and helping others in our business achieve their goals.
I first joined 360Connect when it was still considered a start-up company. During that time, I fell into a “do it all” type of role. Whatever the business needed at the time, I was there to help. From marketing to billing, I lent a helping hand. After a while, I gravitated toward sales because I genuinely loved it, and ended up doing that for about eight years.
After selling for a while, I moved into a management position. In that management position, I was fortunate to lead a great group. It was also a position that allowed me to help our clients convert more sales from our lead program. Next, I transitioned to consulting for a year. And finally, I moved to the position I am in today.
We got into the material handling business when we learned that our business model of helping connect buyers with suppliers works well in many industries. We found forklift companies needed and wanted our services because they could easily connect with new buyers in their area. We determined there was a need for higher-quality lead sources in this industry.
It takes time to learn about a new industry. It is my goal to understand the challenges of an equipment business leader and figure out ways our company can help them.
Some of the tools I could not do my job without are: Pardot, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Zoho, Canva, Powerpoint and Seamless AI.
The skills I rely most on to be successful are: Mindset – I am here to help. Growing with others – Teams always beat out individual talent. Always. And persistence – Never quit because failure is part of the journey to success. Communicating is probably the most crucial skill of a leader.
What makes somebody in my position a success is getting results (without the results, there is no success); Ethically achieving goals. If you take shortcuts or put your values aside, I question whether the endeavor was a success; and helping others get better.
Learning is a trait that makes me good at my job. I love to learn, and it increases your capability to produce. In addition to learning, I am also persistent. I learned most of the skills listed from watching others that I admire. You have to do continuous training to keep current with the changing industry.
I believe dedicating one hour every day to learning something new, or refining a skill, is vital for success. I think ideas can come from anywhere. I recently read a real estate investment book and found things applied to our marketing firm. We are now in the process of applying that idea to bring services to our business.
I think people are a companies’ best asset. If you can help others achieve their goals, oftentimes you, in turn, achieve yours. Those relationships can also create new opportunities that you didn’t even know existed.
