Interview with Mr. Arthur Cheung, Sales Director of Arkia
Background
Arkia Advance Limited is established in Sep 2001. Our business mainly focus on distribution of electronic components for wireless & telecom products, including single chip telephone ICs such as AMS & UTC and Bluetooth modules. Among these common components, there are ICs suitable for telephone, so we could provide solutions & components applicable from basic to feature phones. With years of experience in the telecom market, we are sensitive to market trend & mature in skills & technology. We also built up good reputation & exposure in the market.
Q: Facing keen competition, how to stand out & maintain Arkia's market position?
A: I've been in this industry for about 20 years, competition exists at anytime and the only difference is the type of competition. To me, competition comes from two sides: 1) Change of customer – in the past, we face competition from local market but now it also come from suppliers in mainland China. 2) Change of communication technology – customer can now find supplier information easily through internet. In view of present competition, I set high demand on management of our company structure, and there are knowledgeable persons to handle each strategic product line. For other product lines, we have salesman to promote the products and enlarge our customer base. Meanwhile, we strive to enhance our professionalism by cooperation with other solutions provider to add value to our products & services.
Communication is well-developed nowadays and customers can get information easily through many channels. How can Arkia satisfy her customers & win their loyalty?
In communication & information aspect, Arkia will provide company & product information through different channels to customers for reference. As we know many companies will take the same action, this will be rather passive. Therefore, in order to impress our customers, we implement specialized product lines management. The purpose is to let customers immediately think of Arkia & our salesman when they look for components for telecom products. We strive to establish our company image & reputation among customers and let them remember our background & speciality.
Staff is company's important asset, how does Arkia manage manpower & distribution of works?
We have various types of products and need to serve both local & mainland markets. Good communication network can help in our company management. As the ability of an individual is limited, we implement management in layers. We put staff with over 10 years experience at the mid-level management to lead the salesman with less experience in their specialized product lines. Meanwhile, I will recruit new sales staff under my own supervision in order to train up a new generation of Arkia. Once they acquired certain product knowledge & established confidence, I will give them more chance to utilize their knowledge & skills to make contribution to the company.
What are the requirements for a sales engineer?
As a sales engineer, basically he should possess knowledge of products, market & customers as well as the work flow. All these basic knowledge & skills can be acquired & trained on-the-job. However, a very important quality is the mentality or attitude which is quite difficult to teach. As a sales engineer, he should not neglect any information, no matter from the market, his boss or customers because each piece of information can turn into an opportunity. Besides, don’t be unspecific since there are too many products in the market and customers meet so many salesmen everyday, how can they remember you? One can hardly make a business when they meet the customer only for the first time. As a newcomer, do not haggle over the success and failure but try first to make the customers remember you. Initially, you should focus on the products you have better knowledge. After you are familiar with the product characteristics, you could start the others. Customers can be impressed by your knowledge & familiarity on the products.
Can you share the future plan for Arkia?
Besides strengthening our existing products, I also plan to increase our company's product lines, for example, semi-conductor, audio, power supply, passive components, etc. In last year, I notice there is potential in the passive components market. Therefore, we have already recruited staff with good knowledge & experience in passive components to help to develop this market segment.
As a subsidiary of Mobicon Group, in which aspect can Mobicon assist the business development of Arkia?
Mobicon has high transparency & reputation in the market which attracted lots of customer enquiries. With the Group’s strong network & multi-channel to collect market information, we are able to share the information internally. Meanwhile, Mobicon has numbers of subsidiaries under her satellite strategic scheme, of course there will be competition among us, but it is positive and serves as a motivation for Arkia to do better.
Bluetooth application is very common & the competition is keen. Does Arkia has any countermeasure?
The competition in Bluetooth market is getting bigger & bigger. With broader application of Bluetooth technology, the market keeps growing continuously. Our partner, Avantwave, is the first Hong Kong company awarded membership from the Bluetooth Special interest Group (SIG) and there is no doubt in our development of Bluetooth technology. In view of market competition, other than product quality, our pricing also need to be close to the market demand. Moreover, we observe that many customers not only require Bluetooth module but total solution in design & application such as car audio, GPS, etc.
