Milton Cole Globe-Trotting Businessman Gives Whitworth Students His Insights Into Marketing

When Milton Cole began teaching “Issues in International Management” at Whitworth College last fall, the first question from one of his students regarded textbooks.

Not a good start.

“It doesn’t work that way,” said the Telect Inc. director of international marketing and sales. Cole is the first executivein-residence to Whitworth’s graduate program in International Management.

He spends 60 percent of his time out of the country selling Telect’s connectors and patching equipment to the telecommunications industry.

Cole said he was brought into the Whitworth program to add his insights about doing business overseas to the textbook and classroom work students get on campus.

He has tales to tell, particularly of his extensive dealings in China.

On one overnight drive, Cole recalled, he and his traveling companions had to stop repeatedly and reconnect wiring jarred loose by horrendous roads.

“Traveling isn’t just getting on airplanes,” he said.

Whitworth Program Director Dan Sanford said Cole’s background and the regimen he follows to operate globally are the kinds of things students considering international careers need to know.

If you’re out of the country half the time, Sanford said, “How do you put your life together?”

Cole also provides a link to the Spokane business community, Sanford said.

For his part, Cole said he wants to shape graduates who will take a creative, pro-active approach to solving business problems, instead of just reacting.

For example, students were told to select a product, then develop a marketing program targeted at a foreign country. A panel of local businessmen, including Telect Chief Executive Officer Bill Williams, acted as a board of directors hearing the proposal.

Cole said the exercise taught students how to make a presentation and respond to questions the same way an executive with a new idea would.

Also, the Whitworth international management program, which is only two years old, is building an internship program to place students with Spokane businesses that need help reaching foreign markets.

Internships can enhance the student’s education while adding value to a company, Cole said.

“These are the students who can move them forward,” he said.

The more graduates Spokane businesses can assimilate, Cole added, the more jobs that will be generated as sales overseas increase.

Telect is a good example.

When Cole joined the company in 1992, Canada was the only foreign market, with one sales representative calling on customers there.

Now, the company employs five in foreign sales, a force supplemented by 25 overseas distributors. Foreign sales have grown to 15 percent of Telect’s total.

More importantly, Cole said, the mindset within Telect has shifted. Design, for example, is done with international specifications in mind, not just those for U.S. customers.

“It’s a company effort to go forward,” he said. “We’re not just Telect in the states.”

Employment at the company has doubled over the same period, fueled in part by foreign sales.

Telect is the fourth company Cole has helped move into international markets. Before coming to Spokane, the Seattle native had worked for a pair of Chicago companies and a third in Colorado.

A 1972 business graduate of the University of Washington, Cole also served three years in the Peace Corps in Morroco and Niger.

But it was two years of study at the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Arizona that proved to be a seminal experience, he said.

The all post-graduate school was formed as the American Foreign Trade Institute by a former Air Force officer.

The curriculum was a blend of business courses, cultural training, and foreign language instruction, much of that by native speakers.

Cole said the student body included many foreign students and “Peace Corps types” who created a miniature international community.

“I was humbled more to listen to people and to talk to people,” he said. “That’s helped me tremendously in business.

Cole said he would like Whitworth to give its international management program the same feel. Graduates, he said, could be among Spokane’s greatest assets.

“Spokane has the potential to really capitalize on international growth by focusing on and anticipating international activity,” he said.