Last year for International Women’s Day we interviewed our only female sales representative, Carole Nicholls.
This year we are pleased to interview three ladies who have joined the team this past year, which shows like many other businesses, we are attracting more women into our industry.
Norma Gartland
Norma is part of our Scottish sales team and represents the eastern counties. She has worked within B2B sales for 15 years and couldn’t imagine doing any other type of job, “I love the challenge and ongoing learning that being in sales presents and the variety on a day to day basis.” Says Norma.
Her previous roles have included business development selling accredited health and safety training within the material handling sector and a service sales manager for a forklift distributor. Norma was particularly attracted to
Marubeni-Komatsu to expand her current selling skills and develop her construction industry knowledge.
“Being in sales is always going to come with its challenges regardless of your gender. Therefore, I would encourage other women to consider a career within the construction industry if they are looking for a challenging role with good benefits.”
Lydia Osborne-Davies
Lydia covers the North West for our product support & sales team. Prior to joining Marubeni-Komatsu, she worked in a number of impressive operational management roles for a variety of industries. This includes a role with one of our customers, Stokey Plant Hire, where she managed their workshop and field based engineers. She also worked for Babcock’s military contract in Donnington where she managed 7 workshops and had over 100 staff reporting to her.
“I very much enjoyed this role however found myself missing the people and machines from my previous experience with heavy plant. The role also required me to work very long hours and having a young family I chose to take the step into sales for a bit more flexibility.” Says Lydia. “Having always worked for the customer side of heavy plant, this role has been a big change for me, but has so far been an enjoyable one. Marubeni-Komatsu have been very considerate of me taking a step into a new role and I have really enjoyed travelling around and meeting customers.”
In her past roles there have been a few occurrences when people have doubted her ability to carry out some tasks for being a woman, but she quickly learnt how to deal with this politely. At Marubeni-Komatsu she hasn’t experienced anything like this which could be a mix of all her previous experience or the fact that people in the industry are more accepting of women in these roles.
Vikki Grieves-Martin
Vikki joined Marubeni-Komatsu in November 2019, making her the most recent addition to our sales team. She first started her career in the construction industry at the age of 23 where she worked her way through the ranks to become Sales Manager at a plant sales company. Unfortunately, after 14 years, the business needs changed and positioned Vikki back into an office based role which prompted her to look for a role elsewhere. “After being field based for a number of years, I knew that I couldn’t go back to a desk job. I
love being out on the road meeting different people – each day is so different from the next.” Says Vikki.
This resulted in her moving to a sales role for an industrial distributor but after a couple of years she realised she missed plant sales so made the decision to move to Marubeni-Komatsu. “In my previous role I’d built up so much knowledge and had become passionate about construction equipment, so when the opportunity at Marubeni-Komatsu arose I knew I had to go for it.” Vikki continues.
“I haven’t found there to be any challenges from being a female sales rep in a predominantly male environment. I actually think there a certain positives to it. For example, I think some customers are less likely to get irritated with me compared to a male colleague.”
At Marubeni-Komatsu, we are proud to be attracting women into roles which are usually perceived by people as male dominant. We are even more pleased to hear that our team of ladies haven’t had to overcome any major obstacles in their line of work, and we hope that by reading this, other women may feel more confident in applying for similar roles within our industry.
Finally, we wouldn’t be celebrating International Women’s Day without a mention of all the amazing women who work hard every day at Marubeni-Komatsu Ltd. and contribute to the success of the company.
