Delyan Kapitanov: Кeep the trust in the long run

Why Intelligent Systems? What motivates you to develop your career in the company?

– Intelligent Systems is unique in a way. It is a fairly large company for its segment, but it still does business based on subject matter understanding and sound reasoning beyond the narrow-sighted routines and odd formalism typically imposed by large corporate organizations.

The customers of Intelligent Systems are another reason. The company works with a whole bunch of interesting companies which are leaders in their sectors. You can’t imagine how enriching it is to interact with such companies.

What are some good practices for building and maintaining relationships with customers?

Building trust by demonstrating subject matter competence and insights into the needs and challenges of your customers is the best way to verify your added value before them and, most important – to keep the trust in the long run. No sweet talking alone can hold a relationship for long enough without being anchored in the solid ground of real and tangible added value: competence, responsiveness and provision of valuable and sincere advice as opposed to acting as a pushy merchant.

Are there any specific industries or sectors that you see as having significant growth potential for sales opportunities?

If I have to name a few, automotive import and dealership would be one of these industries. The reasons behind this have more to do with IT than the industry growth itself. It is just that there are few solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 which are comparable to Intelligent Systems’ DealerBox for automotive import and dealership. This turns DealerBox into a top-of-the-list if not the only reasonable choice.

Another industry would be the food industry. It appears that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people still kept on eating and drinking, and the industry was not as heavily impacted as other industries were. Luckily, Intelligent Systems is prepared to meet the specific requirements of the industry, having a tool kit for Dynamics 365 which deals with the highest standards for traceability, manages disassembly of raw material (for instance, in meat processing), and much more, better than ever before.

Last but not least, the professional services. Apart from the continuing development of the professional services industry in general, you might be surprised that the quite well-growing segment of IT companies, even those developing software, also need and buy software from others to manage their own operations.

What role does technology play in your sales strategy, and how do you leverage it to drive results?

This question could mean two different things and can be given two different answers:

• Using technology always brings in some structure. Relying on different kinds of systems to manage the sales process within Intelligent Systems, we optimize the process, increase transparency, contribute to better compliance, collect important data and benefit from this data when taking decisions. No one remembers details for long enough. Systems do.
• Else, when it comes to interaction with customers, I believe that the tech talk should play a secondary role in our sales strategy. The primary role belongs to understanding the real-life issues of your customer’s business (and translating them accurately into the language of technology on the back end) rather than talking too much about what is in fact your narrow field of technical expertise.

How would you describe your management style?

My management style is one of a teacher and mentor. There is no better way to make someone do something than telling and showing him how to. And there is no easier way to know what is going on in the team than turning yourself into advisor of your colleagues on any specific case which might arise and requires careful consideration and/or resolution.

Who is Delyan in his personal life?

Although I am into tangible and numeric stuff at work, I am keen on fine arts, architecture, philosophy and music in my personal life. And I admire the beauty and enigmatic phenomena of nature quite a lot.