When Patricia Neumann returned to WU on November 12 now as a guest speaker, some years after graduating from an MBA program, she was surprised about the atmosphere and the significant number of students present at the campus’ new premises. It turned out that the atmosphere eventually triggered a highly interactive exchange with our Bachelor students enrolled in the Personal Selling and Sales Management class. Patricia shared thought-provoking insights from one of the most significant worldwide technology giants, IBM. With over 100 years of contributing to world-changing progress, IBM focuses its continuous search on values in customers’ success, innovation, trust, and responsibility. The students were shortly aware of Patricia’s sales gut feeling she starts every day with. However, a sales leader’s job is not easy, often on the boundary among various functions, and engaged with complex sales cycles and “user-friendly” visualizations within a CRM system. It is not always simple to address the points of difference that put you ahead of the competition, helping you secure a unique selling proposition. According to Patricia, that recognizable selling mindset has an increasingly important role and should always be supported by endurance, resilience, and communication.

Patricia has led the Sales for Data, AI, and Automation in EMEA at IBM since October 2021. Before this role, she was the Managing Director of IBM Austria during 2017-2021. After an international corporate career spanning more than ten years, which took her to London, Milan, and Germany, among other places, Patricia, who grew up in Vienna, returned to her home market of Austria as General Manager to further advance the topic of digitalization in the cognitive age. Before that, she was Vice President for IBM Systems Hardware Sales and Sales for General Business in DACH. Patricia gained broad international experience as Sales Director for Financial Services at IBM CEMA (Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa).

We are extremely grateful to Patricia for having her with us. Local industry leaders have left a notable impact in planning the prospective careers of our students.