By Egon Jungheim
The annual sales meeting is a staple event at many companies worldwide, and throughout my career, I’ve always looked forward to it. It’s a time to reconnect with colleagues, celebrate our wins, and get excited for the year ahead. This year was no different, despite the virtual format for CSM (Cerence Sales Meeting) 2021.
Nearly 150 of our sales, sales engineering, and support team members from around the world came together virtually last week to hear from leadership, project management, and their sales colleagues and get set for the road ahead. Over the course of our time together, a few key themes stood out:
- Driving Toward a Vision – we’re proud to have all the world’s top automakers as our customers. With this honor comes great responsibility as we collectively work to advance the future of mobility. There’s no question that in the last several years we have been building toward some incredible shifts, whether it’s unprecedented levels of connectivity or the march toward autonomous vehicles. With this comes a shift in how we collaborate with our customers. It’s no longer about voice recognition or text-to-speech as standalone products, but rather a conversational AI-powered platform that delivers on driver needs, both today and in the future.
- Considering What’s Next – Covid-19 has forced all of us to take a step back and examine our businesses, no matter what industry we’re in. Cerence is no different. As we continue to learn about the impact of the pandemic on our day-to-day lives, we’re thinking big and seeing new ways that our solutions can make life safer and easier, both inside and outside the car.
- Prioritizing Teamwork – we’re a global team, with sales, sales engineering and support team members logging on to the virtual sales meeting from San Francisco all the way to Tokyo. When we wrapped our sessions each day, it was 9 a.m. for some and after midnight for others. I walked away from the meeting proud and inspired by the team’s dedication and commitment to a shared goal: Cerence’s growth and success. This team is an incredible reflection of one of my favorite personal mottos: it doesn’t matter what’s in front of you, but who’s behind you.
This year’s Cerence Sales Meeting proved that it’s our time to be bold and put the pedal to the floor. It only makes sense that the theme of the week was “Dare to Drive!” I can’t wait to see what our team does next.