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Daniel Griffin
Profile
Dan Griffin
IMSE Undergraduate Class of 2013
Eaton
What does Eaton do? Eaton is a world leader in power management solutions. I work for the North America sales team in our electrical division.
Current Role: Project Support Sales Engineer
How I got to my current role:
In school I thought I wanted a career in operations. I started out in the operations leadership development program. During this 3 year program, I had a demanding job that involved working with customers. I learned a lot about the business and realized I wanted to have a permanent job in sales.
Today I started working at 8am.
I got in the office and helped customers solve the day-to-day problems that come up in the electrical industry. These included answering technical questions about the products, providing updates on projects, and sending quotes to customers.
I had a meeting at 9am at a contractor’s office about a new project that was awarded to us. The project is for a new high rise building in ALT. My company will be providing all the electrical equipment for this project. Before I left the office, I reviewed the electrical drawings/Bill of Materials to prepare for the meeting. I spent an hour with the project manager for the contractor going over all of the specifications of the equipment
After the meeting, I visited one of the other project managers at the same contractor. This project manager was re-engineering the job I had with him and wanted to talk to me about my company’s product capability. My knowledge of the products helped me inform them of product capabilities that they were not aware of. This allowed us to redesign the electrical system in the building. After this discussion it was around 11am.
Next I went to the preconstruction department to follow up with one of the contractors and make sure he had all the information he needed to finish the electrical room layouts for another one of my projects. I showed him where to find product information and provided him product dimensions to aid his design process.
Once I was finished, it was about 12pm. I sat in my car for 15 minutes answering emails and making phone calls. Once I was finished with all the urgent issue, I grabbed lunch then drove back to the office. I answered emails for 20mins. Then I had an hour meeting with a new project manager that I was asked to train.
After the meeting I spent about 1 hour answering emails. Next I had to call the manufacturing plant to talk through some technical issue on a project I was quoting. Once I had all the information I needed, I spent a couple hours putting the quote together and sending it to the contractor.
After that I spent more time addressing warranty issues, aftermarket quote requests, and releasing orders.
I finished working at around 9pm.
- Suggestions you would give students who might be interested in a career like yours.
Sales is a great field, but it can be demanding. There are some days I have the freedom to leave the office a little early, but there are other days you have to work late. But if you are competitive, driven, can interface with customers, and have the ability to be technical it is a fun job with a lot of freedom.
