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[[♪upbeat music♪] [Commercial Leadership Program (CLP)]]
[[Michael Lofgren - GE Commercial Finance Fleet Services] ]
[[C. Russell] You're listening to Jobs in Pods.]
[Welcome to Jobs in Pods, the only podcasts where you can hear real employers]
[talk about their jobs and tell you what it's like to work there.]
[I'm your host, Chris Russell.]
[This jobcast will feature GE Commercial Finance Fleet Services']
[Commercial Leadership Program, CLP.]
[It is a 12-month program designed to develop sales talent within GE Fleet.]
[Qualified candidates can expect a great deal of exposure within GE Fleet's ]
[You will support a particular region and spend your entire rotation within that region.]
[You will work with your sales team as well as other departments within GE Fleet]
[to learn the ins and outs of the Fleet industry.]
[The goal of the program is to build a confident and ready to hit the ground running]
[account manager once you come off the program.]
[Joining us today to discuss the role is Fleet CLP program member Mike Lofgren.]
[Hey, Mike. Welcome to Jobs in Pods.]
[[Lofgren] Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me today.]
[[Russell] All right. So Mike, tell us why you chose GE.]
[[Lofgren] For me personally, it was coming out of college I worked for a small company]
[for a couple years, and it just kind of got to the point where I wanted to challenge myself,]
[see how corporate America worked, and just knew that the bigger the company I'm in]
[the more opportunities I'm going to have, not only within my career]
[but also traveling around and seeing other parts of the country.]
[[Russell] Right. Can you describe a typical day as a CLP? What is that like?]
[[Lofgren] For me, my program is going to be different than a lot of other industry's programs.]
[I know GE Real Estate has a similar program,]
[where my program is more or less attached to my position.]
[My role is an associate sales rep, so an ASR,]
[and basically I am getting CLP credit on top of that.]
[So for me, my typical day is I'm completely working with the sales force.]
[I have my team of, I believe, seven account managers that I work with on a daily basis,]
[my RSM, regional sales manager, and just working with building their pipelines,]
[assisting them with their day-to-day needs, learning a lot of the financial things]
[and obviously with this market, what's all going on, why things are going on,]
[and just basically it's used as a ramp-up process.]
[When I would be ready to come off program and move into an account manager role,]
[[Russell] Okay. Mike, talk about the training you receive. What is that like?]
[[Lofgren] The way our training works this year is it's a lot of infield training]
[to where you're going to be working with all of your different AMs.]
[You'll be internal, work with all the departments, learn contracts, risk.]
[We have a project called FMS, which is Fleet Management Systems,]
[so it's kind of a management tool for companies.]
[So it's kind of a lot of department to department, ]
[learning every aspect of the company, where they fit in to the process and going from there.]
[[Russell] Okay. What are the things you like about your job?]
[[Lofgren] I like the sales aspect of it, I like getting out there, ]
[seeing all the different types of companies that are around in the US and my region,]
[and having to look at the balance sheets and see how their business is doing]
[and whether or not it's a good fit for GE for funding and whatnot.]
[[Russell] How would you describe the people that you work with?]
[[Lofgren] I enjoy everybody.]
[Being in sales you're going to get obviously a very driven group of people.]
[One thing I really like about the program also with the salespeople]
[is that being in a region, you're working with all your different AMs,]
[and everybody has their own style.]
[So part of this role that I really enjoy is I kind of grab things from different AMs.]
[I might like something that one person does, but I don't like another thing he does.]
[So I try to pick one or two things from all of my AMs ]
[and kind of try to mold my own how I want to be personally as a sales rep.]
["Do I think this would work for me? Would it not work for me?"]
[So that's one thing I love about being around all the people.]
[[Russell] How would you say the CLP challenges you?]
[[Lofgren] The CLP, even though my role is more ASR and I'm attached to CLP,]
[I am still involved in a lot of the CLP activities.]
[For instance, I just got done doing a project with other CLPs ]
[where we went through and worked with all the other GE businesses]
[and learned about their CLP programs]
[and trying to make it kind of a best practice.]
["What are some things that work for other businesses that we could carry over?"]
[So the challenging thing is it gets me off of my job]
[and it gets me having to do other projects within GE as a company,]
[not just necessarily as GE Fleet.]
[[Russell] As far as career development goes, ]
[how would you say the CLP is going to help in that?]
[[Lofgren] The exposure to the other businesses and other CLP members.]
[I know we have the CLP Convention, which I believe is coming up in May of '09.]
[So it gets everybody together, and we're looked at as talent within the company,]
[and so it's great networking, learning other businesses, learning other CLP programs,]
[and how they differ from the program I'm in.]
[For me personally in career development, obviously my main goal is]
[to move into an account manager role]
[and then kind of build my career from there.]
[So it's been huge, and there's a lot more intensive training and classes offered.]
[Not necessarily just within my program, but within the CLP program ]
[there are special sales training classes and things of that nature.]
[[Russell] Okay. Well, that's going to do it for this edition of Jobs in Pods.]
[Mike, thank you very much for your time today. >>[Lofgren] Thank you, Chris.]
[[Russell] For more information on careers with GE, visit gecareers.com]
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