Proserv Profile: We spend time with Senior Sales Manager Luke Wassell and learn more about his current role and background.

Luke, you were promoted to Senior Sales Manager earlier this year, but in 2019 you made the move across from operations to sales, what prompted that decision?

I really felt my background and regular client interfacing in project management, as well as my time before that in the workshop and services, gave me an ideal profile to move into sales and business development. I had established a good, close understanding, not only of how our products and solutions are built and function, but of the voice of the customer too.

I am now 18 months into the role. I am thoroughly enjoying it and building relationships with our clients has been great. Within Proserv, the support I have been given has been extremely helpful, not simply in terms of training, but also being able to come together as a group and give opinions on things, suggest changes and openly share with colleagues that key voice of our customers.

Towards the end of last year, I took on the senior sales role and my responsibilities and accounts have increased. I now have a new additional challenge, beyond my role in the European market, of looking to grow our presence in East and South East Asia.

Do you see good opportunities for Proserv in East and South East Asia?

Yes, I certainly do and the discussions I’m having with new and existing clients are encouraging for both greenfield and brownfield opportunities. We are extremely close to formalising a second representative agreement in the region, with one already successfully secured, which I think will be highly beneficial, not only for subsea controls but across all our offerings, including topside. Building such partnerships makes it much easier for us to bid for future projects in the region.

Recently, several of our teams, including our IWOCS and subsea offerings, have also seen significant wins in South East Asia and we are determined to build on that success. Our goal, and the challenge, is to steer some customers in the region away from what they know, and towards our own market-leading technologies.

But you also have a key role in the UK market too, where are you seeing most interest and potential business development?

In the North Sea, my clients are typically independent operators who require fast, efficient service which we can provide. We have developed relationships with these key customers so that they trust us to deliver high-quality products, on time, and they can already see the long-term benefits of using Proserv for our service support, excellent reliability and, critically, our capabilities in resolving issues around obsolete subsea electronics equipment.

There are a number of opportunities on the horizon with independents that we are very excited about right now, and through building these relationships, we want to keep driving our footprint in the North Sea forwards. These customers don’t just see us as service suppliers but as partners, and through harnessing and growing this trust, we can continue to extend our installed base.

In the current climate, our affordable and rapid subsea solutions, integrating our coexistence and backwards compatibility capabilities, connect strongly with market sentiment.

Our expertise and technology benefit any operator, of any scale, and as we build our reach in the North Sea, and across other regions, we are actively looking to engage more and more with majors and independents who are less aware of the strength of our value proposition.

You mentioned your previous experience within the company and understanding the voice of the customer – how does that give you and other members of the Proserv sales team an edge?

I have been fortunate to have worked in several roles at Proserv and the skills I learned daily – especially in my early days as an apprentice and test technician, where I would try to discover as much about our products as I possibly could – can be called upon now.

Those skills and knowing our products, and how they work, enable me to relate to and understand the voice of a particular customer. I might have been that individual, either on site, in the workshop or offshore, and so know the specific issues and challenges. I can now bring several different hats to a situation from project management through to manufacturing and business development.

This means I can often propose potential options to clients, right there and then, while I can also go back to our team and talk with clarity and accuracy about what I think they need.

But this is the real strength of the Proserv sales team. We all have varied backgrounds: some colleagues have design backgrounds, others will have built products or tested them. Pooling that know-how can only help our customers achieve the right solution.

Finally, in your role, you need to keep an eye on industry trends, where is 2021 heading?

Currently, as we emerge from the pandemic, being cost-effective will remain key. At Proserv we have a strong reputation for subsea tiebacks, and I think these will continue to increase, including longer tiebacks. It makes more economic sense to tie back to an existing platform than build an entirely new hub when operators are being cautious. Such strategies fit our template perfectly and so the coming months look promising.

When the market is being careful as it recovers from such a tough 15 months, our ability to provide proven reliability at competitive prices, avoiding expensive and time-consuming interventions, will be a powerful offering.

Recently, we have also seen enquiries from customers around remote monitoring of systems on potentially unmanned platforms. This could provide another rewarding challenge for us to employ our proven and existing technologies to deliver on this growing need.

Overall, these are exciting times for the industry, with opportunities to engage technologies in the right area to supply maximum customer benefits.