Juggling and balancing his time to work and assist on the different marketing strategies between all the Triple J Saipan’s businesses which includes Triple J Motors, Hertz Rent-a-Car, Triple J Five Star Whole Sale Foods, Triple J Super Fresh Market, and Tony Roma’s and Cappricciosa Restaurants is no small task for one person, but with the support of his team.
Santos said he gives credit to his team of employees whom he considers as his co-workers who contribute a lot to the success of the day-to-day operations
“I am happy and proud to be tasked with such a huge responsibility. Managing all these divisions is not easy especially in these tough economic times,” Santos said.
He has been working for Triple J for the past five years, starting out as the general manager for Hertz Rent-a-Car. He moved to Five Star Wholesale Foods as general sales manager, becoming its human resources manager in 2009, and landed on his recent position in October last year.
Meeting challenges
Increasing sales in a decreased market is the biggest challenge that Santos and his team face every day.
“A huge percentage of our clients are the tourists, so we rely a lot on them. When tourist arrivals are down, the hotel occupancies go down. The car rental business goes down because a lot of our clients come from off island. In short, when lesser tourists come, all our businesses are affected and this is where we in the marketing have to pull our efforts to increase sales,” Santos said.
He added that they have had good times but with the hard economic condition, they have to resort to cost-cutting measures like all other businesses in the island.
“We have to monitor our expenses and reduce costs, and urge our employees to resort to multi-tasking so we don’t have to replace employees that have resigned or left us to keep expenses down, and motivate our staff to find new innovative ways to improve their performance,” Santos said.
He said that they are lucky because most of their products are highly in demand in the market such as the Certified Angus Beef, Dryers ice cream, preserved products like tocino and longganisa, Del Monte bananas, chicken, and other products.
Showing a positive attitude toward work and his co-workers is part of his early morning routine.
“When my co-workers commit mistakes or when the work they do is not satisfactory, I do my job of pointing it out to them but I’m a very approachable person. My door is always open for my employees whom I consider as my co-workers,” Santos said.
Mountain biking is Santos’ stress reliever. He bikes with a group of friends at least three to four times a week after work, exploring new places and exercising.
“All of my bike buddies are hard-working people, and our bonding helps a lot in easing all the pressures from work,” he said.
“When I get home from work or from biking, it is family time. We always have dinner together and we talk about the day’s events,” Santos said.
The family is very important for me, Santos said, speaking fondly about his four kids aged 14, 11, 4 years old and the youngest who is 20 months old.
Santos said that with proper time management, you can juggle time for work and family.
“My message for everybody in the community is to hang on and stay positive.
“Don’t give up hope on the CNMI. Let’s all continue to work hard together and we will pull through all of these harsh times,” Santos said.{jcomments off}
