Meet our team l Alan Delvin
Alan Delvin is one of our UK Senior Key Account Managers and is responsible for setting up a detailed and customer-specific business strategy, as well as anticipating the evolution of supply and demand, and feeding back innovation and insight to the business.
We invite you to discover through his interview his career and his business vision.
How long have you worked for Advance?
I started at Advance in 2001, and in the last 18 years I’ve witnessed a lot of positive changes within the company, which has been a great experience.
How have your responsibilities or day-to-day work changed from when you first started?
When I started with Advance Tapes, we were all employed as Area Sales Reps. Those roles have now developed over time into Key Account Management, which is much more focused on maintaining long-term relationships with our customers.
It’s not just about sales, but making sure our clients are happy with every aspect of what we do for them. As time and technology have moved on, we also have more direct communication with our customers than we used to.
The area I look after has also increased in the UK, plus I’m also now responsible also for some export countries and some major customer head office accounts.
What’s one of your interests that we might not know about?
I play golf regularly, but very badly most of the time.
Who’s the funniest person you work with?
Richard Stephens, Senior Key Account Manager, has a very wicked and dry sense of humour… but parental guidance would be advised.
If you won £10 million, what would you do with it?
I would go on a very long holiday and drink loads of cold beer to celebrate. Some golf lessons would also come in handy.
What are you best known for at work?
Being persistent is how I would describe it… but my work colleagues would probably say something else.
If you could switch to any career you wanted, what would it be?
A golf professional, but as I mentioned, there’s not much chance of me getting close to that.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
To read people’s minds. It would be great to put this into use at Advance!
What’s your idea of success in your job?
Of course it’s my goal to grow sales year on year, but keeping our customers happy is a crucial part of that and very rewarding in itself. I spend a lot of my time working directly with our customers – some of whom have been with us since before I joined the company. Advance is all about putting customers first, so that’s an important measure of success.
What do you like the most in your job?
There always seems to be something different happening at Advance, along with meeting a variety of different customers which always keeps the job interesting.
What do you like the most about working for Advance?
I love the sense of humour my colleagues have, which creates an energy within the company and in turn makes working for Advance a lot more pleasurable.
