Peter Weedfald joined Sharp Electronics Marketing Co. of America (SEMCA) in May 2015 and is responsible for overseeing the sales, brand, and digital marketing organizations for both Sharp’s U.S. Home and Commercial Appliance businesses under the Simply Better Living brand directive. He is a former senior vice president of sales and marketing for Samsung Electronics in the USA, an avid keynote presenter, and author on sales, marketing, technology, digital advertising, and business leadership.
For over 30 years, Peter’s experience includes working with very successful companies like Samsung Electronics, GE Licensing (General Electric), Viewsonic Corporation, Ziff Davis Publishing, Circuit City Stores and Lanier Business Systems. As the Author of “Green Reign Leadership: Business Lessons To Ensure Leadership Dominance”, Peter reveals and articulates many important aspects and philosophies of refulgent and caring leadership, the brave durable as steel pinning’s that allowed him to hire and lead great teams against granite wall odds and win.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with CXO Outlook Magazine, Peter shared his career trajectory, insights on the role of technology in fostering growth and innovation in the consumer electronics sector, the secret sauce behind his success, key takeaways from his book, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Peter. Could you tell us about the path that brought you to your current position?
I began my career inside the IT and CE product technology sectors, always enveloped, schooled, and matured through both sales and marketing disciplines. This early experience has led me to personally believe, practice and articulate for decades that sales and marketing (sales, brand, products, communications) together best congener, engine, and fuel the ability to make and take earned market share, when tightly coupled and fungible. I also enjoyed and benefitted from ten years of service in the content publishing industry with the Ziff Davis Publishing Company. We proudly and effectively sold and marketed growth engine editorial content brands as exampled through PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, PC Week, Windows Sources and PC Computing magazines and web sites. I happily and passionately spent the rest of my career inside high tech companies determined to foster better, more efficient, and highly productive lifestyles for businesses and homes. These companies include Samsung Electronics, ViewSonic, GE and today, SHARP Electronics Home Products.
Through my evolving career journey, I am honored for my extended role as SVP of Sales and Marketing for the past nine years within SHARP’s Home Appliances and TV division. I proudly and humbly serve my SHARP company and brand, our customers, consumers, distributors, dealers, retailers, partners and most importantly, I serve our immediate team members, as I also serve and care for my family.
What is the role of technology in fostering growth and innovation in the consumer electronics sector?
The global consumer electronics market is predicted to reach $1.1 trillion by 2030 with the entire industry expected to grow at a CAGR of around 5%, from 2023 to 2032. The growth of the consumer electronics market is primarily driven by hyper-changing technological advancements which of course motors change, profitable growth, and opportunities to enhance and steer consumer and business preferences, expectations, and productivity. Of course, as we already know and realize through our post digital economy, the next several years will usher and marshal in the rapid rise of AI-powered things, all with sensors throughout everything, coupled and in congress with the speed and accuracy of true 5G integration. Artificial intelligence will advance human productivity and deliverables absent of the need for human capital itself through the process. AI will best aggregate and accelerate, for both businesses and consumers, hyper-speed, precision communications, fastidious-intelligent collaborations, promulgated social commerce, and the magical art of imagination through augmented and repurposed content and provisions. AI will also enhance customer service and support through data lakes designed to auto-analyze purchase history, preferences, creative triggers, promotional sales activity, and past transactions to best serve opportunity and demand. The battle for consumers attention and pocketbooks will live, articulate and exercise through nanoseconds of smart AI customization and optimization, which will also enhance consumer loyalty and demand. AI is the new growth engine to foster opportunity across and within every market opportunity.
How do you prioritize work-life balance in your daily routine? What strategies have proven most effective in maintaining this balance for yourself and your team?
First and foremost, I have been happily married for decades, which in-itself renders, and affords my affable personal work-life balance through mutual respect, care and share for our needs and wants at home; to best ensure our happiest, most productive life together. Second, I have always believed in creativity as the best, most valued meditation for a happy, productive life. As a concert pianist since early childhood, I am blessed to have my very own music and video recording studio with 12 advanced midi-keyboards and hefty, state of the art recording and playback gear. This affords me the opportunity to create, orchestrate and meditate through relaxing, private engagements of musical solace. For my team, I encourage creativity with an advanced approach of uniting sales and marketing as one creative and effective market practice. The best work life balance at home and or at work for me personally is the mindful, purposeful, and effective actions and promulgations of creativity to advance opportunity, to advance personal happiness, productivity, and prosperity.
What have been some of the lessons that you had to learn the hard way along your career path?
I have lived, worked, toiled, learned, and earned for decades through emasculating, rough and tumble sales, and business rejection. I realized, through assiduous trial and error, thru earned successes and unearned losses, that only when we study and recalibrate our kinetic sales and marketing barriers successfully turn our most difficult struggles into our most profitable opportunities. In essence, “risk never sleeps, especially with an ineffective strategy towards mollifying and taming rejection. My lessons learned are:
- An objection is simply a hungry request for more information. That it is I who failed in the engagement, it is I that did not earn the right to ask for the order, to achieve the opportunity presented. Hence, rejection was served and unanswered. And rejection was served because I caused it, absent of earning the right to succeed in engagement. Absent of my ability to proactively palliate the objection, professionally and timely.
- That when creativity and imagination congener, it they catalysts relevancy and collaboration to unite, to formulate earned opportunity.
- That the formula I created and utilize daily, is the best proactive mathematics to steer around calm and tame rejection: CREATIVITY + RELEVANCY = WON. If you are highly creative yet not relevant you will surely lose to rejection. If you are highly relevant but not creative, you will surely lose to rejection. When creativity and relevancy are united and seamless in sales, marketing, negotiations, communications, etc, victory will be yours.
- That in sales, our best protection is the onslaught rejection as it is the core trigger to remind us of the need to learn how to earn the right to ask for an order, for a yes, for agreement to proceed not just ask for an order… earn the right for anything you wish to achieve.
- That our business lives revolve and envelope around “change, focus and speed.” That in-order to build and succeed with your team we must constantly ensure growth thru change, then focus on the change for maturity followed by speeding up opportunity based upon that change and keen focus.
How sales and marketing leaders can be better mentors and true leaders of their teams?
I personally believe “the answers are out there”. With respect to this question, I suggest the very best way to mentor sales and marketing team members is to first understand their pain points, barriers, and their opportunities, perspectives, rationale: their desires and dreams with a deep dive into their responsibilities. In essence, you cannot be a mentor or docent absent of being a subject matter expert on the roles, responsibilities, and actuating triggers for your team members. More importantly, it is to listen to their thoughts, their problems, and solutions to accelerate the success of their function, of the team, of united market opportunities. Finally, I believe and practice in this business formula: SALES + MARKETING = WON. In essence, you can best mentor both sales and marketing, once you the leader have the dignity of knowledge, by uniting the teams together towards generating attention, interest, conviction, desire, and sales close. In addition, I always declare that my role is to lead from behind. That the team member has the given responsibility reach, stretch, and achieve their stated business goals. That my role is to help, support, nourish and enhance their ability to achieve through our stated and united company vision and mission.
Over the years, you have been a recipient of prestigious awards and accolades such as one of the Top 100 Marketers among others. Our readers would love to know the secret sauce behind your success.
Thank you however, the “secret sauce” is not my personal success rather, our team’s united success towards achieving an agreed upon goal and KPI. There is no single award I can imagine in Business America, that is awarded based upon the one. That it always takes a highly focused, determined, energized and reliant team to gain purpose, to afford recognition, to accredit success. I will always and forever appreciate all the caring, sharing, and giving team members I have been blessed to run with and lead.
What skills will sales and marketing leaders need in the future? How do you stay sharp?
Sales and marketing team members both have different skill sets to address for their enhanced future, however, in many cases there are similarities. For example, from a leadership perspective for both groups, customer services, selling capabilities, negotiating, and influencing others along with decision-making, and leadership skills are quin essential. Beyond this, although both groups have a process and methodology in varying tool kits to perform and succeed within their roles it is best to cross train the sales organization with the marketing organization to enlist a greater understanding of the triggers, insights, methodologies, and expectations towards mutually achieved sales and marketing success. I always smile when I hear that a sales and marketing organization not only does not intersect, share or reflect with each other but have little cross knowledge regarding the roles, tool kits, mission and responsibilities to ensure the success of their department… of “our departments”, together. Such an organization affords a competitive advantage to their competitors.
What drives you? How do you measure personal success?
The fire in the belly is what drives me. The fire in the belly cannot be rented, leased, faked, or afforded to another. For me, the fire in the belly is an internal, passionate desire to persist until I (until we) succeed. To energize opportunity and prevent the largest museum of failed products, failed intentions. Creativity and relevancy fuel’s the fire… having a customer, a consumer, a partner, a team member, a family member smile with gleeful happiness or success stokes and lights my fire (our fire) as one team to much more, together.
What are your plans for the future?
My business plans are to continue changing, creating, learning, earning and giving with SHARP team members and our customers towards over achieving our stated mission and goals. My personal plans mirror my business plans however, with an inner focus on and for my loving family members success and happiness.
Looking ahead, what future innovations or improvements do you anticipate for the consumer electronics sector?
There are several improvements I believe ahead including: 1. the implementation of AI to accelerate profitable market share opportunities. 2. An acceleration of direct business (D2C) by all products and services through businesses and consumer brands. 3. An aggressive acceleration of automation and digital transformation through advanced tools, consumer centric plugins, and data lake mining designed for more relevant and creative human interaction. 4. The viceroy advancement of one-to-one marketing, offers and engagements to best stimulate, make and take competitive advantage.
What advice will you give to mid-level managers to move on to leadership roles?
“If you want to be the leader, act like the leader” is the core construct of my advice. And of course to treat all peers, team members, superiors, customers, consumers and our brand, products and services with enhanced respect, trust and appreciation for their contributions, their inclusion and support. And importantly, find ways to give back to the communities we do business in. Finally care for your family values so you can care for your business values to ensure mutual success and happiness.
Why do you focus so much on giving back, specifically to children focused organizations?
I believe we should all have a stated and acted upon heart for the innocent, a sharing spirit of generosity in purpose and deliverables. Some of the cause giving and caring charities I have been blessed to incept, create, and mature are: Viewsonic Corporation – “The Journey of Hope” focused on Children Hospitals and child well-being across America, Samsung Electronics “The Four Seasons of Hope” focused on specific children charities, Circuit City – “Firedog across America” focused on financial support for the children of fallen firefighters. In addition, SHARP Home Appliances and I are honored to lend our support to Attitudes In Reverse (“AIR”), focused on educating on mental health, to ensure safety and suicide prevention for our children and youth.
As a leadership book Author, please describe your book Green Reign Leadership.
I am proud of my book Green Reign Leadership, available for sale in 9 countries translated and available additionally in Mandarin. GRL offers business executives lessons, principles, and rules to muscle up their personal and team leadership foundation. The book portrays leadership as the dominant force to competitive success, team inclusion and valued mission focused success. Each chapter provides insights and advice on how to develop and apply the leadership skills discussed. The book also includes case studies and examples from my own personal and business experience as a learning and team-earning business leader.