As anyone who has ever worked in sales will know, all the perks and commission come with high expectations - so when the pressure is piling on, a little extra incentive can go a long way...
I was lucky enough to win a place on our latest sales incentive - and enjoyed a fantastic weekend trip to Iceland, courtesy of HPE!
Being part of the Ultima sales team means having a strong proposition to take to market and access to some of the UK’s best technical consultants. As a top HPE partner, we work closely with both their teams around latest product offerings, and in the case of our incentive, it was their latest generation of infrastructure products (dubbed the ‘sunrise’ products) that we focused on.
HPE Synergy, SimpliVity and Gen 10
Our techies undertake a lot of due diligence around new products to understand the exact use cases and how they best deliver value for our customers.
In the case of HPE, their range covers infrastructure from the latest iteration of traditional servers (Gen 10), through enterprise grade hyper-converged solutions (SimpliVity), all the way to Synergy, the world’s first composable infrastructure solution (a category which we expect to see much more of in the months and years to come).
Iceland Incentive, January 2018
Shortly after landing we were whisked through Keflavík airport, straight to the arrivals lounge where we found our guide, Simone, proudly holding up an Ultima logo on her plaque. As she led us to the tour bus for the 40 minute drive to Reykjavik, she explained (thankfully) that the recent storms involving flying hot tubs had mostly subsided! With zero consistency to the weather in Iceland, it turned out our agenda for the weekend would be more of a guideline than the hard and fast schedule we expected... so it was at this point we learnt the country's unofficial motto: 'þetta reddast', which we parroted on multiple occasions throughout the trip (which is the Icelandic equivalent of hakuna matata and loosely means “it will all work out ok").
Despite only having around 330,000 full time residents, Iceland hosts nearly two million foreign visitors per year. This surprised me when I first heard it – sure, it had been on my bucket list for years, but like many people I could never bring myself to use precious holiday somewhere that meant putting on more layers than taking off. That said, my winter wardrobe was looking a little bare, so in many ways it was a good excuse to shop!
Exploring Reykjavik & the Surrounds
Over the course of the weekend we were lucky enough to explore ice caves, natural geysers, the Blue Lagoon (along with it’s less famous cousin, the Secret Lagoon), lava tunnels and Icelandic mountains - by racing buggies - as well as indulging in our fair share of food and drink that Reykjavik had to offer!
Photo opportunities were plentiful amongst the amazing scenery; yet time and time again I found myself marvelling at how truly untarnished it all felt by human development (120,000 of the population live in Reykjavik so once you get out of the city, settlements were scarce and comparatively tiny by British standards).
As we sat down for our final meal at the famous Lava Restaurant next to the Blue Lagoon, we reflected on the trip and how it had compared to our expectations. From my perspective, I was thrilled; the weather had given us an authentic view of Iceland and I was privileged to be able to experience the country in it’s true form.
By the time we touched down in the UK, we were well overdue a good night's sleep! I couldn’t wait to tell everyone about the trip and as I drifted off to sleep, I reminded myself how lucky I was to have won this experience. I made a mental note to review my customer base on my return so that I could hit the ground running for the next one... where next Ultima? Snowboarding or Slovenia get my vote!
- By Christina Poole (Internal Account Manager)
