The cutting edgeof automation tech

By Harry Keaney

Mention automation technology to Joe Whyte and, very soon, it’s obvious he’s relishing the opportunity to explain its intricacies and complexities. Change the topic to sales and marketing and Whyte will immediately give you a common-sense lecture on human psychology. As a sales and marketing manager, Whyte has used this potent mixture of enthusiasm and insight to virtually transform the company he works for, Axis Inc., an industrial automation technology center in Somerville, N.J.

Axis is a high-tech distributor of an array of products and services used in industry, from machine tools, packaging and materials-handling to processing.

“There are two distinct industries within the industrial environment,” Whyte explained. “There’s machinery, which is the equipment which moves or handles products, and then there is process, where things are changed from one thing to another. When it comes to process, we deal with everything from air-separation to beer manufacturing.”

Axis also provides design, prototyping and testing laboratories to test drive solutions before entrepreneurs invest. Axis, in which Whyte is a one-third partner, has a client list ranging from AT&T’s research and development facility to a mom-and-pop machine shop wishing to upgrade a single piece of machinery. “We have even made our own robots,” Whyte said.

When he joined Axis in December 1989, the company consisted of just its owner, Jim McTiernan, and a secretary. It now has a 25,000-square-foot facility in Somerville employing 20 people and catering to clients in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. About a dozen people work for a sister company in Woburn, Mass., which caters to New England clients.

Professionally, Whyte grew up with the company. “I was able to wear many hats,” he said. “I sold the product, engineered the solutions and, if customers needed support, I would have done programming, wired the system, debugged it and got it operating. Now we have departments for those areas: customer service, sales, engineering and shipping.”

It’s his past experience, plus his ability to translate engineering jargon into understandable English, that sets Whyte apart as a salesman. “When you are selling in the field I am selling in, the ability to adapt to individual personalities, their needs and goals, is what makes you successful. It’s psychology,” he said. “Most sales people are comfortable in one or two environments, so that’s where they spend their time. They may also be comfortable with only one or two personality types and it’s human nature to remain in the environment in which you are comfortable.

“To me, sales are all about caring. If you care about the customer and genuinely care about helping him or her out, about getting them out of their bind, you will never have to ask for a purchase order. The best salesman is not the person who charges you the least but the one who genuinely has your interest at heart.”

Whyte was born 32 years ago in the Bronx and moved to Ireland with his family when he was 5. By 1986, when he graduated from Dublin’s Kevin Street College of Technology with a technician’s diploma in telecommunications and electronics, Whyte knew he was heading back to the Big Apple.

“When I was 18, myself and a few friends came here for a bit of adventure,” Whyte said. “We had such a blast that first summer that I felt I was always going to come back. The charge of the place, the excitement, the freedom, it all just made me as a young person fall in love with everything that New York had to offer.”

In time, Whyte also fell in love with a Irish American New Yorker, Tara Murphy, who is now his wife. In January 1987 he began studying electrical engineering at Manhattan College while working at night as a bellman in the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan. He graduated from Manhattan in December 1989 and soon began working for Axis.

“I love the work, I work nights and weekends, but it doesn’t feel like I am working, it’s such a diverse job” he said.