Please don’t treat me as a customer
——Director Ding’s speech at the 2016 Supplier Conference
In 2013, our theme was: We are brothers in the same trench. We lie down in a pit, preparing to occupy the enemy's position. You should be able to imagine that scene. In 2014, I got excited and decided on the company's general strategy - run away, because we had just gone public at that time. However, today I want to ask you: brothers in the same trench, run away, are you ready?
The two years of 2015 and 2016 passed quickly. The current situation I see is that we have not taken off. I thought that we could reach 2 billion in 2016, but now we have been hovering at more than one billion for three years and have not taken off. Have you ever thought about the reasons why we have not taken off?
I summed it up and found that I was the only one running in front. Although I said that we were brothers in the trenches and I was not fighting alone, the fact was that I ran very fast alone. When I looked back, I found that there was a big fat man who couldn't run at all. There were also people wearing high heels, she couldn't run, and there were people with families who couldn't run either. There were also those lazy bastards and those in the team who had no fighting spirit. So how could we run?
So the result is that as of today, Absen has been hovering at over a billion for three years. What I want to ask is when are you going to start running? So I plan to re-adjust the strategy this year. We don’t call it running. We have now set a general direction called running at a steady pace. We will run more steadily, faster, and with a stronger rhythm. Please remember that our next strategy is to run at a steady pace.
In 2015, I talked to you about a topic called mutual trust and mutual assistance, and building a win-win business ecosystem. Last year I talked about quality, business game rules and many other things, so I actually don’t know what to say today. After much thought, I still want to say to you very frankly: Please don’t treat me as a customer.
I have said this before. I thought you understood it. I thought you knew that we are brothers in the same trench, a group, and grasshoppers on the same rope. But later I found out that we are not, so I will tell you again, you should not treat me as a customer. One of our business philosophy is called "creating maximum value for customers". Have you ever thought about who are customers? If you treat me as a customer, do you think you sell me the raw materials, your lamps, PC boards, ICs, etc., and I pay you the money, and that's the end of it? Let me tell you, we are brothers in the trenches. The money I give you is not paid by me. The users who finally consume our products are our customers. Therefore, I hope everyone can keep thinking about the concept of creating maximum value for customers.
All of you here are raw material suppliers. Where do you think you are in Absen’s industrial value chain? This morning I unceremoniously invited two of our supplier friends to my office. I talked to them very frankly and criticized them later. What happened? We have a very large customer in the United States. This customer is the largest customer of a very strong competitor of ours in China. It took me 6 years to win over this customer. Last month they placed an order of more than 20 million yuan, and there will be many more orders in the future. As a result, we received a complaint from a customer last week, saying that our pin headers had poor contact. This customer originally intended to place an order of 200 million yuan, which had a great impact on our planning. However, because of our poor pin layout, the customer was very dissatisfied and said that he was considering whether to continue placing the order.
I called these two suppliers to the office and said, it would be a shame if we, the Chinese manufacturing industry, can't even do pin rowing well. Are we Chinese really not good at pin rowing? How difficult is this? But we Chinese just can’t do it well. Many of our connectors must be imported from Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and Japan. This makes me think about whether we really can’t do it well? The boss said that we could actually do it, but I asked why not? He said that the competition in the industry is very fierce now, and each customer's requirements are different. In order to meet the needs of different customers, we continue to make changes, so we have made many kinds of products. I said that in my understanding, the pin header is a standard part. Do we have to design a pin header for every order? Do you know what the final impact will be if we don’t do this well? He says I know the loss is big. I said there is a supplier meeting today. If you are present, I think you should stand up and apologize to all other suppliers. If these 200 million orders are lost because of your bad pin headers, do you know how many fewer lamps Nationstar will sell? Do you know how many control systems Nova will sell for less? Do you know how many ICs Jujushuo sells? Do you know how much less power supply Jinweiyuan will sell? So we can't even do a small thing well, and we don't even know what it means if we don't do it well. Does it mean you sold one less pin?
Business is a beautiful thing. I recently wrote an article called The Beauty of Business. In my concept, business is beautiful, like a beautiful woman wearing a piece of clothing she particularly likes, like a delicacy, very sweet. But after the business came to us, and in the hands of Chinese private enterprises, how was it already ruined? I have an ideal, at least I think Absen should do two things in the history of China's business development. First, we want our employees to feel happy. Second, we want Absen to become a benchmark to influence and change this bad business environment.
So in my understanding, business is beautiful, and the essence of business is also very simple - it is exchange. You are a sheep herder, and he is a rice grower. The sheep herder has no rice to eat, and the rice grower has no mutton to eat. Then the two of them make an exchange. It is such a simple thing, but in the hands of some people, it becomes extremely complicated, more and more complicated. It is so complicated that we have to figure out what our purchasing staff is thinking, how much rebate we should give, and what method we should use to rig the bid. Making such a simple business so complicated is a Chinese characteristic. I have encountered people who have done their own thing well instead of considering the benefits first.
Business has its own laws. Everything in this world has laws, and business also has laws. If you think about it carefully, you will find that these laws are actually very simple. But the problem is that we often don’t know how to respect ourselves and are unwilling to abide by these laws.
So what are the laws of business? In order to express it clearly for everyone, I use popular words to express it. The first is integrity. Integrity means not lying, not cheating, and not paying bribes. Don’t lie - every word that comes out of your mouth is true. I don’t know if you can do it. I think I have done it until today. Every word I say is from the heart and is true. But there are some words that I can reserve the right not to say. I know this is really difficult, and it is indeed very difficult in China. For example, in a large company, what many people say, think in their hearts, and do in their hands must be different. They cannot be the same, so these people are all distorted.
I have summarized three characteristics of China's laws. The first is strict legislation, the second is widespread illegality, and the third is selective law enforcement. A case can be filed for bribery of 5,000 yuan. The law also stipulates that bribery and bribery are the same crime. 10,000 yuan will be sentenced to one year, and 100,000 yuan will be sentenced to 10 years. Now there is a new explanation. Not only are there requirements for government officials, but now companies, especially listed companies, are also subject to particularly strict inspections. This is called no fraud and no bribery. Never give kickbacks to our purchasing staff, and don't think about using crooked ways to run business, because this is very dangerous. Never do business like this. This not only destroys the beauty of business, but also destroys the most basic rules of the game.
In addition, there are also laws of business - don’t be cheated. Who wants to be cheated when doing business? Have you ever thought about how it would feel if there were any little moves between your purchasing staff and suppliers that made you feel cheated? The laws of business include being respected, and everyone wants to buy high-quality and low-priced things. We all want to have a good experience, and we hope that things are as simple as possible. For example, people like me think that many things are best if they are simple enough to be explained in one sentence. How simple can it be?
To sum up my life, I eat a bowl of noodles, sleep in half a bed, have never flown first class, and have never bought any luxury goods. What does eating a bowl of noodles mean? I like to eat noodles the most. Wherever I go on a business trip, I can find a restaurant to eat a bowl of noodles. It may cost five or ten yuan. It doesn’t matter if I’m not hungry. Do I have to go to a big restaurant and spend 20,000 yuan to eat? I don’t think it’s necessary, keep it simple if possible. I slept on half a bed. When I stayed in a hotel for a week, I didn’t need the maid to clean it. Because of that bed, I would lift up that half of the bed and sleep in it. Then I would pull it down the next day, sleep in it on the third day, and pull it down again on the fourth day. It’s always like this. In the past few decades, I have never used hotel towels or toothbrushes when staying in hotels. I also bring my own slippers and pajamas. If there is a shortage of water in some places, in order to save water, I can skip taking a shower and just wash my hands and feet without wasting so much water.
In fact, life is very simple, and simplicity is beautiful. Do you think it complicates many things? Absen people run their businesses with a mission, not simply to make some money. I was very poor when I was young, but I always thought that if I just wanted to support my family and live a small life, it would be too easy and there would be no challenge. I want to influence and change more people's lives, so I started my current career. Although running a business has been very hard and I have suffered a lot of grievances, I have been enjoying this grievance and I find it quite interesting.
So we run the business with a mission. I don’t know if all of you here have this sense of mission, because we are a team, so I hope you are working with a mission, and your working experience will be different.
Today I will refine these 7 consciousnesses for you. I will mention these 7 consciousnesses again and hope that everyone can remember them. The first is cost awareness. Every screw, every drop of water, every kilowatt-hour of electricity, and every minute of every employee's time is your cost, and it is also my cost. For a company, your employees' time is the most precious resource and your biggest cost. I hope everyone can be cost-conscious. The second is efficiency awareness. We believe that speed and efficiency are the keys to victory. If you have to do something that others can do in one hour, but you have to do it in two hours, then your company must not be competitive. Third, competition awareness. Although market competition is fierce, we often say that competitors are also our partners. We advocate fair competition and oppose our employees slandering competitors. Just like four people racing on a track, when the gun goes off, the one who reaches the finish line in the shortest time will be the first. This first place is not obtained by tricking others, tripping others up, etc. If you have a sense of competition, you must first focus on doing your own thing well. The fourth is legal awareness. For a period of time, we required the bosses of our suppliers to sign the contract in person, or have a professionally qualified lawyer sign it, because we found that many bosses have no spirit of contract, no awareness of contract, and no legal awareness. In addition, I want to talk about quality awareness, brand awareness and collaboration awareness. Why do I hope that the two pin header suppliers can apologize to everyone during dinner, because their pin header problems may cause many of us to be unable to sell our products. Don’t forget that we are in the same group.
So don’t think that I am a customer, just sell things to me. In fact, I am your salesperson. Absen admires the little bee culture. The raw material is only pollen, not honey. Our company has 1,300 employees all over the world who are busy making honey. And we not only have to make honey, but we also have to sell it and have people buy it. So please don’t provide us with low-quality pollen, let alone poisoning the pollen. Can such honey be sold?
So, please don’t treat me as a customer, I am actually your salesperson.
ANNA