1. To:Mrs. Quin<br />From:Michael Ganues<br />Date:15-March-11<br />Re:Pinnacle Technology Group Inc.<br />Message<br />I interviewed two people at Pinnacle Technology Group Inc. I contacted Nick Wasserman there email which lead to a visit to the company. Nick also set up a interview with the President of the company Rick Wasserman. I learned a lot from this project the first thing I learned was how to interview people. The second thing I learned was information about my majors.<br />Nick Wasserman is the Head salesman for Pinnacle Technology Group Inc. Nick went to the University of Toledo and double majored in Marketing and Professional sales. He graduated 2 years ago and is now working on his MBA to enhance his resume to gain more credibility in the work place. He has been in the company for over 11 years. He started out as a janitor then moved his way up the ladder to where he is now he will be taking over the company that has been in his family for over thirty years. His dad is the President of the company, but he didn’t give Nick any special treatment since he made him start at the bottom of the ladder to get the employees respect. In order for him to get a raise his dad made him do a PowerPoint that consisted of thirty slides and present it at the company’s picnic and employees voted on if he got a raise. Nick has a lot of responsibility that he is entitled to as head of sales for a company of this size. He does all the hiring for his department because the more money his workers bring to the company the more money Nick brings in also. The President of Pinnacle leaves this decision up to him because he knows that Nick will get the best salesman for the job since it benefits him directly. Nick’s job is salary based and commission based at the same time. Being the head of sales he also makes a percent on all sales in the company as a whole. His main job is contacting people and other companies to buy their products because they need to have jobs lined up for them to do. He says he does a lot of business to business sales meaning that he would contact another company and ask if they want circuit bored or any product for their business. They also do a lot of business to consumer sales meaning that he would sell medical training gear to consumers. They mainly do Business to Business sales and the main way they get the sales is by going to medical conventions and putting up a stand and trying to sell their product to company owners that walk by. Nick said his favorite part of his job is when he has a big sale that can go either way and he has to perform at a high level.<br />Rick Wasserman is the President of Pinnacle Technology Group Inc. He graduated from the University of Toledo in 1979 with a degree in business management he also played football for Toledo and started for two years. Growing up he was a part of a family with 12 brothers and only one sister in a small 4 bedroom house. They didn’t have a lot of money but Rick said that is was what gave him the drive in life to make his own company and do good for his family so they never have to worry about money. All he wanted them to worry about was school and being the best person they can be. He started Pinnacle up as a company thirty years ago and never thought it would get this big. He has spent countless hours at work being the first person in and the last person to leave because he says he needs to be there longer than everyone because everyone counts on him. He had too many job responsibilities that he couldn’t name them off on top of his head so he just gave me a couple. His biggest job is making sure that the company is always in the black, making a profit, and not in the red and the company losing money. Mr. Wasserman said the hardest thing to do as a company owner is to lay off someone because they didn’t do a good enough job for them to stay on the work force. Another job is to over look everyone and make sure they are doing the job that he hired them to do. He said he trusts everyone and the last thing that he wants to do is stand over their shoulder and annoy them and make them perform badly. The way to get them to do their job without the President standing over their shoulder is by giving them incentives. He does this by giving them extra money, Fridays off, or a gift from the company if the company hits the numbers that he expects them to get. They do it on a monthly basis and last year they got it nine out of twelve months which is a very good ratio.<br />Pinnacle Technology Group, Inc was started thirty years ago by Rick Wasserman with a vision of bringing medical training tools to their medical market. His vision changed a lot throughout the years because of the advantage in technology and the desire and need for equipment that they produce. The company has two major sectors one being medical training equipment. They have approximately 12 different products that they sell to hospitals and colleges to help train nurses, doctors, and any other medical professionals. The technology that they use for the training simulators takes the person that is being trained in to a situation that is as real as possible so they know what to do when the real situation comes in to play. Pinnacle’s competitors do not put the students in a realistic situation and an example is how their heart rate simulator is recording on the computer, but Pinnacle takes a real live person with the disorder so they truly know what it sounds like and what to expect. This is where the company got its start, but with Pinnacle producing they’re product ahead of time. They have a lot of free time so they started to manufacture electronics. Another company would come to Pinnacle with a product that they want and they would give it to their engineers to figure out a way to make it and produce it in the cheapest and fastest way possible still maintaining the Pinnacle quality that they are known for. There are 63 Pinnacle employees that are employed at the time of the interviews, but they said they are moving their location to a building that is about twice the size of the building that they are in now. Over the last four years they have had a 53% increase in business and plan on hiring another 30 employees by the fall of next year. With the economy being in a recession Pinnacle has taken this to their advantage by investing better in stock since price haas dropped so much it was a perfect time to buy. Another advantage they have is that there is always going to be a need for medical equipment and people that lost their jobs are going back to college increasing the amount of people that need to use the medical equipment. Pinnacle is in the private sector since they do not have a board of directors or offer any stock options for employees or for anyone who would like to invest in the company, The reason why they do not want to go public is Rick Wasserman feels that the board of directors would worry about making money instead of the quality and how he pays and treats his employees. Rick Wasserman has the final say on anything that goes on in the company that he started from ground up. If he went public he would only have majority of stock so he would have a big say what goes on, but there are ways that the board can over take him and buy him out. He doesn’t plan on ever going public unless the company takes a negative turn and he needs help financially.<br />Talking to both Rick and Nick I learned a lot because they are exactly what I want to be and what I’m going to be after I get out of college. With Rick Wasserman I learned that in order to make it in business you have to be fearless and take a chance even when people think that you will fail or not make it. I really didn’t think that it would be that hard to run a company of that size, I thought it was just going to be sitting there looking good and signing papers while everyone else does the work for him. I was really wrong when I came to that he was the hardest worker there because everyone looked up to him and this is his dream. The one thing that I learned from Nick is that you have to be determined to make a sale. There is always someone competing against you for the same sale and wanting the same thing you want but whoever is better and offers the better deal will get the sale. Being in the business field you can’t be afraid of getting a no in your face. They had many similarities like wanting to work and make a different in the company because every person in the company is affected by them and they have a lot on their shoulders. They both treated everyone as equal and not talking down on the people that are below them because they knew that they were just as important as they are to the company. They didn’t have very many things that were different about them other than a couple of things like Nick specialized in on field and Rick has a broad aspect of everything. Another difference that I noticed is that Nick is very hungry to move up the ladder and Rick is happy with the company and where he is at with his life. When I first walked in the Pinnacle I was over taken by how nice people were and how nice they kept everything. Nick took me on a tour of the building that took a half hour because it was so big and so many items to talk about. When walking around I got a really good vibe from all the employees they where listing to music with a smile on their face. All the work employees that were not in a office had jeans and a pinnacle shirt on that was like a light under armor cloth that breathed and helped them from not sweating. Everyone in the office had a suit and a tie on and looked very business professional. After the tour I talked to Nick which took about forty five minutes and then I went to talk to the President and he talked to me for about an hour which I thought was going to be a lot shorter. Rick talked to me about many things from the history of the company, where the company is going, and about what I plan on doing with my life. This interview was a good idea because they helped me understand what to expect in the field and showed me what skills I need to have.<br />