Who got that job?

By LIANE VOISEY

Job title: Sales and marketing manager, Norths Bun Company

Glenn Duncan, 35, says that all his customers receive the same respect and service regardless of their influence on business because "you never know where a customer may pop up next".

It was with this attitude that Duncan, without any formal qualifications, embarked on his sales career in 1990. He started as a van salesman for Country Foods New Zealand, now New Zealand Dairy Foods (NZDF), which offered staff training and development.

In the past three years Duncan was national field sales manager at Puhoi Valley Cheese, owned by the NZDF, a fine cheese manufacturer. His role included supervising a national sales team and liaising with key customers in the field.

Norths Bun Company is a contract bakery that supplies product to the fast-food trade throughout the country. Duncan says his new role draws on a lot of his experience and provides the kind of challenge to test his skills.

In his new Glenfield-based role Duncan says he is focusing on ensuring the promotional budget is spent effectively - or getting "bang for our buck" as he puts it.

Duncan says he wants to lift overall distribution of key products, help to build an effective field sales team, develop a robust customer/consumer communication strategy and plan and implement a new product development programme.

"I have taken a little piece of the style, thinking and skill from the ones I admired most in past and have tried to mould myself around these qualities," he says.

Although Duncan has no university qualifications he is aiming to change all that by studying extramurally through the Open Polytechnic. He has just about completed an Institute of Management certificate of management, and intends to follow that with a master of business administration in the next few years.

Duncan hopes to eventually move up the ladder to general management.