I have been working in the electromedical equipment world since 1995 and for the last 11 years I’ve been managing DEKA Laser equipment sales around the world: The USA, some of the central/eastern Europe countries, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. As an Area manager I’m not only a salesperson but my responsibilities also include supporting the international dealers and distributors I closely cooperate with, providing sales support, training and education tools, and competition analysis.

I must admit that during the last difficult CoviD year, the international business was affected by the cancellation of major international congresses and exhibitions and on-site customers’ visits and the overall activities for our distributors, as well as final end-users clinical training and assistance, had to be satisfied in a different way.

So, with the different department teams and distributors, some of the operational strategies to cope with the pandemic were revised and new communication tools were adopted in order to stay in contact with our local dealers and distributors worldwide at best. The use of webinars, videocalls and video meetings have become our routine tools to support our activities pretty much consistently. This has allowed me to have more opportunities to “talk” with my distributors and clients, somehow even more than I was used to in the past. This has bound and strengthened our professional relationships and led to greater results, fully in line with company expectations, just like some great success stories that happened in some of the countries I have the pleasure to cooperate with.

Despite this new technology, I do agree with my collaborators when they say that the lack of human contact from meeting customers and distributors, has been quite “painful” in the business .

Even during such hard CoviD times, by introducing new products, consolidating production capacity and providing the final end-users with continuous assistance and support, DEKA has maintained its international reputation on the market as a technological, innovative company that manufactures equipment that is always one step ahead of the others. Thanks to the precious cooperation from the entire international distributors’ network, the great results achieved during the pandemic were sincerely totally unexpected. So, I hope to return traveling and working closely with my distributors and clients at the soonest, to meet them all again and together, spread the DEKA message as much as we can!