Interview: Philippe Pichot, Tektronix
»We are engineering the future together«
On April 1st this year, Philippe Pichot started as Vice President of Sales for EMEA & India at Tektronix. What are the plans of the new head of sales? What are currently the most challenging things to overcome? And where does he see the future of the company? The answers are given in the interview.
Markt&Technik: As of April 1st, 2023, you have taken over the position of VP of Sales for EMEAI at Tektronix. Please introduce yourself briefly to our readers.
Philippe Pichot: More than happy to: My name is Philippe Pichot, I’m an electrical engineer and have 20 years of experience in sales in the electronics market. I’ve been with Tektronix about four years now and have held several positions in sales and operations. I have led the region’s distribution channel initiatives, the operations teams, as well as the regional sales teams. Since April 2023, I’m the Vice President of Europe Middle East & Africa as well as India Sales. I’m based in Paris, France.
What was your first action in your new position?
Right after I started my new position, I had the honor to lead one of our yearly big initiatives: a Kaizen, meaning ‘continuous improvement’, which is one of our core values. In this spirit, a cross-functional EMEA team came together face-to-face for four days to get deeply engaged and focused on customer satisfaction, talent, growth, and productivity. Ultimately, we were looking at ways to enable customer success even better and to deliver the best value to them, i.e. so they can test faster and more reliably. One example of such an enablement, is our latest enhanced Keithley KickStart Battery Simulator Application with the ability to generate and simulate battery models to seamlessly perform cycle tests for wireless, automotive and industrial applications. Continuous improvement is part of our DNA, centered around our customers.
What do you currently see as your most urgent tasks? And what impulses have you already been able to set in your first months in your new position?
I’ve been part of the leadership team for four years, so it’s about continuing and accelerating what we have done over the past years. Our strategy, set-up and go-to-market model are successful and solid. We are driving a continuation of that success. Tektronix is all about enabling the innovations of our engineering customers with our solutions. This is our mission. We are involved in all market segments across the electronics industry, such as automotive, semiconductor, aerospace and defence, to name a few, and we offer complete solutions to enable the success of our customers in order to drive a safer and more sustainable world.
Before joining Tektronix in 2019, you held leadership positions at Future Electronics and Texas Instruments, among others. How do you experience the test and measurement world compared to the distribution and semiconductor areas?
At the end of the day, it’s all about the customer, in particular the electrical engineers, and their success. When you compare the test and measurement world to the distribution and semiconductor world, they are all targeting the same end customer. In reality, it’s the same customer using the semiconductors and testing the semiconductors on the board. So, it’s a very similar market, that needs addressing in a slightly different way, with the end goal of driving customer satisfaction. We live by a motto called ‘We’re for the engineer’, which summarises it nicely.
To what extent can you benefit from your experience from previous positions? Which processes from your previous jobs could also be interesting for Tektronix?
Well, I’m an engineer, and our customers are as well, and regardless in which sector of electronic engineering you work, we need to enable future advances of electronic engineering. In my current position, I will leverage my EMEAI market expertise to enable my very diverse and regionally spread team, consisting among others of technical sales and application engineers, account managers, sales operations and distribution partners etc. to ensure the right solutions to for customer satisfaction.
- »We are engineering the future together«
- Outlook - on the sales strategy, the challenges and the future
