Bringing the best in sales through coaching insights

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Paul Weaver
Paul Weaver

‘Coaching’ and ‘Training’ are as distinct from each other as Mr. Paul Weaver himself is from run-of-the-mill sales leaders. The élan, with which he draws the line between these two often interchangeable concepts, compels anyone to remain all ears to his thought-provoking ideas as he speaks. No wonder, he brings the best out of the sales teams at Renishaw, instilling the right approach and confidence to excel.

Mr. Paul Weaver, Vice President – Sales & Marketing, Renishaw India, is undoubtedly the go-to-person for Renishaw as much for his years of extensive knowledge and domain expertise as much as it is for his out-of-the-box thinking.

The unorthodox approach was visible from his life as well when after attending Dover Grammar School UK for his schooling, he opted for a National Higher Diploma in Electricals and Electronics Engineering at East Kent College coalesced with apprenticeship in one of the major electrical manufacturers, instead of pursuing coveted fancy higher degrees, that offer little help in real industrial life according to him. In his own words, “I think practical education helped me better excel myself skill set than bragging a degree devoid of practical know-how”, a case he cites as prevalent among today’s unnumbered engineering pass outs in India.

“I believe you should never go to university just for the sake of university. Do what is right for and in my case what I opted was perfect for me.”

To rightly suit his choice of study route, he took up his first job at an electrical test equipment manufacturing company of global scale as regional export manager in the mid-’80s. This was followed by his stint with a global electronics major where he made his way up to lead the $100million revenue generating sales team of the company across the globe and at a young age.

His journey with Renishaw “is relatively young” in own words and started in December 2014. He joined Renishaw as Sales Development Manager in the Group Sales Development department.

He helped to support and train the management team by building and running a Leadership Development Programme throughout Europe and Asia, utilising past management experience. Meanwhile, he became a key coach and mentor to many of the sales and business managers across these regions and is passionate about supporting their continued professional development. 

His extensive market and industry expertise coupled with his outstanding achievements with the sales teams in Asia and Europe provided Renishaw with confidence as in him Renishaw found an excellent leader who could adroitly guide the sales development in the tricky Indian market. Soon, he was inducted as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Renishaw India.

Mr. Paul’s tryst with India started way back in 1990s with his business trips and his memory is replete with memories and experiences galore. Along with his business expansion and development trips to India for various organisations prior to Renishaw, he has also been witnessing the rapid urbanization and industrialization in many parts of the country including Bangalore where he is currently based in.

For Renishaw, he sees India as the third largest growth areas for the company in three to five years and looks forward to see continued investment in the team build up. At the end of the fiscal there will be 80 people in the sales and marketing team and at the time is leveraging the resources. Renishaw has the record of investing in the potential market areas and the right skills set to work more efficiently and effectively in the market to achieve goals, he feels.  

India as a market has shown double-digit growth in the last four-five years but he is hopeful of transforming that into high double-digit growth with the strong team he has. The bottom line is that we know the potential here and also our strength. He feels the automotive sector is a major growth sector for future growth of Renishaw.

Mr. Paul’s take on India-China comparison in industrial competence is another area that certainly calls for change in the stereotype conviction. “China is the perfect example of a beautiful combination of communism and capitalism but the model they follow may not work in India.”

He feels that the comparison is itself incompetent as the two are different as a market. Acknowledging China’s dominance in a number of industries including manufacturing, he proclaims India too has its own leadership in many sectors as well as potential in many sectors where China cannot compete with.

On being asked about the areas to streamline at Renishaw he says though Renishaw has efficient partners from Indian manufacturers, the key challenge for the sales team lies within its potential area which is huge geographic location. So, along with expanding its sales team, Renishaw is also looking for expanding through different sales channels.

He feels Indian government is doing good jobs for ease of doing business and in this regard one of the brilliant steps that Renishaw is looking at is to make the products available locally for Indian manufacturers to save them from the process and cost factor of importing.

He does not attach any revolutionary tag to his own role and sees his role as primarily to break the barrier in the sales to help his team perform and achieve better.

He says one key challenge of the Indian business scenario is its top-down hierarchical system where decisions and expectations are pushed down the chain. He clearly distances himself from this practice. He feels empowering his team with confidence and resources to take their own decision, is what he believes in and follows.

“At my core, I always look to build strong independent and empowered team.”

Coaching pushes the decision process to the team members rather than to the management and for healthy growth of the business, the management cannot take all the decisions.

Talking about the difference between training and coaching he says one of the major problems in India is passing training as coaching. He explains, “In training, the trainer needs to be a subject expert to impart the knowledge and skills in the trainee whereas in coaching the coach need not necessarily be a subject expert, and at best not be so. His job is to help the team members use the knowledge they already possess in the best possible way through a number of interactive ways. So, a coach’s job is to let one face one’s own potential. And the prerequisite for the success of a coach is with the willingness of the person to be to be empowered. 

He feels that conforming to his own ideal he does exactly the same. He feels the team members in India are extremely knowledgeable of the Indian market. He brings in his insights to help them break the barriers they sometimes face in implementing their own potential.

As for his achievements he feels moving up within the organisation in the electrical segment which is fast moving and volatile sector that too in challenging time was one of the biggest achievements of his career.

“When we recruit people we look for competence and skills set.” We have been focusing on providing solutions rather than just pushing products. So our sales team also comprises of people with technical know how to help the customers get a resolution to the issues.

He believes one’s domain expertise is only as much important as one’s ability to adapt to a new domain or to learn new skills set. Citing his own example he mentions how coming from an electrical engineering background he has successfully helped sales development at various organisations.

A passionate sports enthusiast, Mr. Paul Weaver manages his professional life and family life with equal ease. He is a doting father to his four years old adorable daughter Ellie who has just started schooling and a loving husband to his wife Nazrin.

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