Rami Younes, general manager and head of sales at Swisslog Middle East: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Rami Younes (LinkedIn), general manager and head of sales at Swisslog Middle East. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I'm Rami Younes, and I am the general manager of Swisslog Middle East. This is my second stint in the region since 2013. Prior to that, I was in the States with assignments with multinationals in multiple locations, supporting in Mexico and in China.

The region is dynamic, and it’s moving faster than other places. Every time I go back to the States, I realize why I made the move.

My key responsibilities are supporting the team and making sure we have happy customers and happy employees. That’s our mantra, and we make sure that they have the tools they need to do the best job they can. At the same time, as head of sales, I’m looking at driving the growth of the company in the region, and positioning ourselves well to represent the brand the way it needs to be represented.

Swisslog has been around for over 120 years. We're part of Kuka, and we are a robotics and innovative automation company. Our focus is making sure we’re a people-focused company. The intent is to partner with people to deliver the right solutions. We’re not product sellers; we want to make sure the customer is happy and they get what they want.

In the world of automation, whether that's facility automation or in warehouses, we're trying to help customers resolve their issues, whether that's capacity or throughput constraints. In some cases, these are harsh and sensitive environments, and we want to minimize the number of people in those types of locations. So, Swisslog is able to offer solutions that can automate the process to achieve better performance in the facility and drive value for the customer.

Let’s say we have an ecommerce or an e-grocery. To get the number of orders out using the least amount of effort is how they can be competitive in this market, and that's what we help them with. We're not fixing a labor cost reduction issue. Labor is cheap here; it's available, it's plentiful. What we're trying to address is how do we get a facility’s performance to match the delivery schedules they have. What we offer is a bulletproof solution where they don't sleep, take breaks, or make mistakes. People get tired, and they make mistakes. And customers now expect two-hour deliveries. It’s very hard to do that with just people.

In this industry, there's no one size fits all. A lot of people look at one product and say, that's the solution of all solutions. Absolutely not. Different customers need different things. Some of our customers are startups, and they need light practical solutions. Some are the biggest multinationals in the world and they need powerhouses to run their operations. So, we don't like to start the conversation with a product discussion. We start by asking what the customer is trying to do, and what they need in order to position themselves for the next 10-15 years.

I start my morning at 4:30am. I have my own time that’s just for me between 5:30am and 7am, and I train every day doing different things. I dragon boat competitively. It’s a paddling sport with 20 people on a boat, and next year I think we’ll be representing the UAE in Germany. I push myself every day to get better at that, and it is very humbling.

The key thing for me is that during that time in the morning, nobody wants anything from me. There's no emails, conference calls. I can spend time on myself. Then, I have my breakfast, catch up on my emails, read, and plan my day.

On the way to the office, I usually try to stop by and see a customer, maybe over a coffee. There’s a lot of value in having these informal meetings, where you don't want something from someone. You just meet them, make sure you're listening to them and that you understand what they're going through. It gives us insight into what's happening in the market and allows us to help them. If I'm in town, I go to the office, and that's punctuated either with meetings with our friends in Europe, because I report to the organization, or customer meetings. That continues to around six or seven o'clock at night.

One constant in my day is training. Whether I go to the gym or I go on a bike ride or I get on the water, I’m going to be doing something for me every day, unless I'm physically ill or not feeling it. I need to do something active in the morning to destress. It also pushes you to get better. It's humbling too, and it resets your mentality every day.

The motto that we live by at our organization from the top down is don't forget about the people. We can't have burnout. We can't have people get too stressed to do their job. It's very easy to lose sight of the people when you have targets and challenges, and you have customers that need things right away. So the most important thing is to always remind ourselves of that.

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