A different perspective – does a managing director have a daily routine?
How does it feel to be a managing director of a company that has been on the market for almost exactly two years and keeps on growing? Which tasks take up the most time each day and which have become routine? And above all: to what extent is the view from her brand new office a source of inspiration? We met Bettina Klatte, managing director of MedtecBerater, in her office at home, near Osnabrück.
“Everything falls into place – and if doesn’t, then it’s simply not the right time”, says Bettina at the start of our interview. This reassuring mindset seems to be more and more relevant each month, she adds. Bettina’s experience has confirmed this once again, particularly during the last few weeks. Looking for a partner to implement a customized software solution needed for a new project, she was put in touch with a friend of a friend of a friend – who turned out to be worth their weight in gold. Not only did they hit it off from the outset, her new business partner has the right expertise and – never a given – can start work right away.
Day in, day out, Bettina feels a great weight of responsibility for herself and her whole team. With no such thing as downtime, resting on her laurels is never an option. She spends a great deal of time on market research and customer acquisition. Her strategy is paying dividends: her lawyer is currently negotiating a contract with a new customer. Every little detail counts in establishing a sound basis for cooperation and ensuring its long-term success. “Our legal expert Vasiliki Christoforidou has considerable international expertise in the medical product industry and I trust her implicitly. She knows what matters to me as an entrepreneur and to my team in their day-to-day work.” Being able to delegate will be more crucial than ever for Bettina in the future. This is the only way to free up time to work on the strategic expansion of her company, respond to the latest developments with suitable concepts and increase the reach of MedtecBerater.
Bettina has long stopped counting how often the phone rings and how many emails she receives each day. She is constantly on the go. “It’s the only way to stay on top of things,” Bettina says. Naturally, in the afternoons, her focus is on her children. She therefore tries her hardest to set this time aside, arranging video calls in the mornings or early evenings. Nonetheless, if her staff need advice during the afternoon, a customer wants to pass on important news or inform her of changes at short notice, some things cannot wait.
And so Bettina only carries out assignments two days a week herself. On the other days, she is in the office, taking care of the paperwork and administrative matters for her company, which currently employs nine staff. Her to-do list covers a huge range of topics: new regulations have to be checked, applications submitted, meetings scheduled with the tax advisor, contractual matters fine-tuned and put in place. On top of which is the classic job of planning deployments: who has to be where and when, how can journeys best be combined, who needs a hotel room, are all the receipts included with the claims for travel expenses? Have we got enough manpower to handle all the requests? The search for properly qualified staff is a never-ending story. MedtecBerater sets great store by personal recommendations and social media. “I’m so grateful that we found Sarah Koller from golden key assistance and that our corporate communications are in her capable hands. She invariably strikes the right note, visualizing our campaigns in Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and delivering professional results in a straightforward way,” Bettina says. She and Sarah take part in regular calls to plan their next activities. Due to the pandemic and because it was more convenient, given everybody’s busy schedule, all liaison meetings so far have been online. Bettina was thus all the more delighted to meet Sarah in person in June. There was cause for celebration, after all: the opening of her new office.
Soon after founding MedtecBerater, Bettina realized that she would need her own dedicated workspace. A place where both staff and customers could meet for consultations and planning at any time, somewhere flexible, away from her family routine. No rooms were available at home, let alone at her sole disposal. And since you can’t simply turn off your computer and call it a day at 3 p.m. if you’re self-employed, a solution had to be found. Just after Easter, the wait was finally over: her new office in the garden was ready for business. “I now love working even more with a view of the cherry tree and my dog Lotte at my feet. It’s just perfect! At moments like these, I feel a certain pride in what I’ve achieved and am hugely grateful for the last two years,” Bettina sums up.