Hello,
My name is Mike Kowalski, I'm a recent Western Michigan University graduate. I chose to begin my career in the hydraulics and pneumatics field with a company called Michigan Fluid Power (Grandville, MI). My degree is sales and business marketing and I am currently training to be in outside sales.

Our company specializes in custom power units, manifold assemblies, and we are also a distributor of multiple product lines including Lincoln, Parker, Ace, etc.

My question is... with minimal experience in this field, where would you recommend gaining the knowlege (aside from the training provided) i need to be successful in this industry?

I have worked for this company off and on for a few years(building/repairing/misc.) so i am familiar with the products and services we deal with, but i'm sure to be successful, i will need a greater understanding of the field.

I am eager to learn, and would appreciate any help you could give me.

Thank you for your time,

Mike Kowalski
616-262-9763
mike_kowalski@hotmail.com

Mike;

You are in the position that 90% of the people in Fluid Power learned the field.

Very quickly you will find that most of your customers have little or no knowledge of how to apply Fluid Power and depend on their Fluid Power Distributor to design circuits, trouble shooy problems and do any training they need.

Find a mentor to tutor you if possible is your best approach, attend all the company schools and ask a lot of questions, read all the books you can find and dig in.

You are not alone as you can see from some other threads on this and the other Fluid
Power forums.

Mike, I am going to make the assumption that you are interested in continuing with sales. Firstly, as a good salesman, you must know your trade, that of sales, better than you know the insides of hydraulics/pnuematics.

The best technician rarely makes the best salesman, the two simply have little relationship, yet in knowing that, the two can utilize each others expertise to make a winning team (company).

What are your company's products and services, who are you prospects. Forget about Bernuoli or Pascal and work toward building your companies image.

Hi,
Have a look at our "How Hydraulics Works"
located in our web site
www.hydrocad.com
Nahum Goldenberg