Diogo Charneca joined our Perrigo Portugal location in 2013 and he is now our Sales Director responsible for leading the department in Perrigo France! Check out what Diogo has to say about the Sales Function and how he found his move to France!
Can you tell me a little bit about the Sales function at Perrigo? I joined Perrigo in 2013 and I have held various commercial roles based in 4 different locations. The main factors that motivated me to join were the company’s will to challenge the industry’s status quo and its culture of empowering employees to drive change. Since November 2020, I have been leading the Sales Department of Perrigo France, comprised of 140 people, between Field Sales Force, Key Account Managers & Business Analysts. The synergy among these teams is paramount to the development of our business in French Pharma: a rapidly evolving market that mixes challenges from both the door-to-door and the key account management environments.
Does Perrigo France differ from your previous experience? It does! One of the best things about working at Perrigo is the founders’ mentality and the culture of empowerment, which enables employees to constantly search for new bold ideas to impact significantly on the business. I consider Perrigo to be a best practice global organization. On the one hand, there is a solid support from the corporate structure as well as an extremely cohesive international Sales community. On the other hand, there is a strong autonomy to adapt strategy and execution to the local markets.
What is a typical workday like as part of the Sales Team? There aren’t two days alike in the Sales Team in Perrigo France. Every day we strive to bring the best and most innovative Self-care products and breakthrough propositions to our customers. Consequently, there is an extremely varied set of tasks and actions performed with multiple stakeholders, which makes collaboration, open communication and obsession about execution part of our daily lives.
How would you describe the Perrigo France Sales Team culture? Our Sales Team in Perrigo France is possibly one of the most passionate teams I have worked with in my life. The team worships several Perrigo’s brands and strives to keep building a Perrigo legacy we can all feel proud of. We are all extremely hungry for winning and to achieve great results together and there is an underlying obsession with serving excellently our customers.
How would you describe the management style within the Sales function? In Perrigo, managers thrive to create the right support environment and put in place the right tools so teams can be agile and succeed in their endeavours. There is also a reliance on trust as a crucial factor to foster open communication and innovative thinking, enabling our unique culture of empowerment. And last but not least, our Founders’ Mentality: every single employee must act always as if he was the founder of the company, and Perrigo leaders are the first and strongest ambassadors of this mentality.
What has been your biggest work-related highlight? Clearly, the first months of 2020, as I moved to France right before the first lockdown. Even though everything was new to me - the language, the culture, the market, the teams - I was delighted about how quickly we created new ways of working and adapted several aspects of our business to the new context. It was a true agility and adaptability test. Furthermore, the way that Perrigo took great care of our employees throughout this whole crisis, made me even prouder to be part of this company!
What can a prospective employee expect when joining the Sales Team in France? Newcomers can expect to join a customer-centric company that empowers and challenges employees to drive change, whilst providing great personal development tools and career progression opportunities. But of course, it all starts with an intensive and detailed on-boarding process where the most relevant stakeholders interact with new employees to share a vision on the company and on their own departments. This is normally followed by a great exposure and a hands-on involvement on key business topics from an early stage.
What does someone need, to be successful within the Sales Team in France? Above all, a hunger to win and the courage to be bold enough to challenge the status quo - what we call being a hungry wolf. We look for proactive, collaborative, passionate individuals with the drive to keep transforming and upgrading our customer-centric business.
We are always looking for passionate, dedicated people to join our teams at Perrigo. Take your next career step today and check out our live vacancies!