Hasan Palandöken: Gigaset’s cross border executive
Hasan Palandöken is Vice President Sales at Gigaset Communications and manages a vast geography across Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific. Understanding these geographies and their sales dynamics is really the most challenging and enriching part of his job role at the same time. The turmoil of global markets adds to the challenge. And meeting people with different cultural backgrounds, who have different perceptions of the same issue, adds to the enrichment.
Palandöken has improved sales by 30% since the time he took over in 2007 and cut costs by 50%. Prior to his sales job role, he worked on the product management side of mobiles, ISDN and narrow band products. Since he spends 40% of his time travelling the most demanding part of his job role is really the stress of jet lag and adjusting to multiple time zones.
Palandöken describes himself to be people oriented, with a high level of ethics and internally driven motivation, not necessarily influenced from outside. He works hard to make he is delivering so his people can also deliver. He believes in listening to partners and learning from them, probably the most. He also keeps abreast by reading books on globalisation and politics.
Palandöken is married with three children and his personal drive is to service the people he loves. His favourite unwinding pastime is hiking, but he also enjoys outdoor sports like cycling and jogging. His favourite devices are iPhone and iPad and social media is not yet an important part of his professional and personal life. He has a profound educational background with an MS degree in Telecommunications Engineering, MS degree in economics and an MBA in International Strategic Marketing with distinction.
