Former Tio student Jinjili van den Berg holds the position of sales executive business to business at Nespresso. She brings in new clients, maintains contact with existing clients and represents Nespresso at fair and events. Jinjili as she talks about creativity, career and coffee of course.
Jinjili: "Nespresso is an international company with its main office in Switzerland. The company has grown tremendously in the past few years, partly because of advertising campaigns such as the one with George Clooney. I work for the business line of the company and focus on office and retail sales."
Freedom and creativity
"My work and the customers are very diverse. For instance, I can be visiting a hairdresser’s one day and a multinational the next. As I visit the customers, I let them taste our coffee . After this the sales pitch starts: how many coffee drinkers are there in the company, what kind of coffee do they drink etcetera. I like the freedom this job offers me. I can manage my own schedule and I can go to my clients without checking in at the office most of the time, which is great since I travel a lot. I get the chance to give a lot of creative input into my marketing strategies."
Louis Vuitton and Cartier
"I have always wanted the very best. Even when I went to school at Tio, I wanted to work in five star hotels. Nespresso is the very best in the coffee business. It is not just coffee, Nespresso’s style and quality is to coffee as Louis Vuitton and Cartier are to fashion. People expect high quality of our coffees and Nespresso coffee meets those high expectations."
Hospitality versus Nespresso
"I used to work in the hotel business, at Westin and Hilton Hotels - both five star hotel chains. I was working night shifts which was very demanding and I wanted something different. During my work placement I worked in the Hilton sales department, a job I enjoyed very much. Even though I knew nothing about the coffee industry, I knew I wanted to do something extraordinary and so I applied for a job at Nespresso. That worked out very well! Working at Nespresso is very different from working in the hotel business. It is like two different worlds. Sometimes I do miss working in a team. However my current position more then makes up for that, the freedom, the contact with my clients, my own vision and creativity in my work... All that and a lot of that delicious coffee of course, definitely one of the perks!"
Follow Jinjili on LinkedIn.