Thomas Disney

Since graduating, I have been working as a Field Sales Engineer with the Midlands Sales Team of Whitecroft Lighting. I have spent 7 months at the Manchester Head Office with placements in marketing, lead generation, lighting design, customer service, and quotations. My role within the sales team has principally been to plan and carry out lighting designs and site surveys. I have not been as involved with developing relationships with existing clients and generating new work as I anticipated, as the role is very engineering biased.

I have decided that now is the right time to look for new opportunities as I would like to move into a business development and sales role with more customer contact, relationship building and gain marketing experience. I am a people person. I love talking to people, building relationships with clients, internal and external stakeholders. I have extensive customer facing experience in my work experience prior to my role with Whitecroft. 

My current work arrangements are 100% remote working with contact with colleagues all virtual other than bi-monthly sales meetings. I find 100% remote working very isolating. I am more than happy to embrace hybrid working, but do want an office base, as I am a people person and value the atmosphere, camaraderie and support that office based working offers, especially at this early stage of my career.

I am very organised and task focussed. I enjoy coming up with solutions to problems and taking responsibility for project delivery. I believe that my customer facing experience and skills will equip me well for a move into business development and sales within the financial and insurance services sector. I am keen to learn and eager to succeed.

Graduate Sales Engineer, Whitecroft Lighting (October 2022- October 2023) 

I am part of the Whitecroft Lighting Midlands sales team having completed 7 months of technical training at Head Office in Manchester. This training included placements in marketing, lead generation, lighting design, customer service and quotations. My role within the sales team has principally been to plan and carry out lighting designs and site surveys. I have also been involved in managing and developing relationships with new and existing clients, promoting the purchase of Whitecroft products, and advising clients on their lighting requirements. The aspect of my work at Whitecroft that I have most enjoyed is building rapport with clients and managing internal and external stakeholder relationships. 

Skills gained: 

Being proactive: I researched and developed an NTAG215 NFC tag marketing solution on my own initiative, to enable clients with NFT enabled mobiles, to access web-based information from tags attached to products and literature. 

Time management: I am very good at managing my time, staying focussed and delivering projects on time having been involved in over 30 surveying and design projects for multiple colleagues, across different sales regions.

Organisational skills: I designed my own Excel based, customer account database to track and manage clients. This includes data tracking my interactions with clients, contact information, assessment of commercial potential of clients. I have also planned and delivered a conference for the UK wide sales teams, including accommodation, entertainment, venue, and programme delivery. 

Commercial: I understand the sales cycle within the construction industry: the lead generation, tendering, quotation, ordering, installation and after care process. This has given me firsthand experience of the relationships and interactions between departments, clients, and other internal and external stakeholders. 

Communication: I enjoy talking to, developing relationships with clients, and delivering positive customer experiences I have written blogs for the company website, marketing literature, spoken at director level sales meetings and presented projects at board level. 

Project management: I have developed my skills working within teams but gain a lot of satisfaction taking personal responsibility for delivering projects – an area that I would like to build upon moving forward

Education: BA International Tourism Management School of Business, University of Lincoln, 2019-2022, 2:1 Honours Lincoln Award Global 

University Experience and Highlights: 

BA key modules: Enterprise and Strategic Analysis; Social and Political Perspectives; Destination Management; Disaster Management; Crisis Management; Managing the Environment; Principles of Marketing; Organisational Behaviour; Space, Mobilities and the Experience Economy. 

BA Dissertation: Sustainability of the cruise industry - a qualitative insight into the perception of Generation Z