[HCMC] How to make bold decision in tough times, thriving stories from GS25 and VAS.
As the world has shifted to a new state post-pandemic, there is an escalating demand for business leaders to make decisive decisions and drive their organizations through challenging times. With awareness of this issue, on June 21st, the RMIT Alumni Relations team and the Leadership Frontier Institute collaborated to host an exclusive event for prominent RMIT graduates entitled “How to make bold decisions in tough and challenging times.“
This event helps business leaders share and discuss case studies regarding financial management, and market domination strategies from big corporations in the retail and automobile industry, i.e., GS25 Vietnam and Vietnam Star Automobile (VSA).
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At the event, Mr. Nhan Mai, the current CEO of GS 25, shared how a small business can grow despite the challenging time, and the key to success is to always focus on people first. |
An example in cash flow management is when a business struggles with the pandemic, some leaders may think of cutting staff salaries, but to Mr. Nhan, this is the time for the leadership team to step in and be the first ones to cut their salaries because they are the role model of the whole organization. It is painful, but it helps strengthen employees’ trust.
Mr. Nhan also shared an experience of his observation at IT companies. Because everyone talks a lot about tech and data, many businesses try hard to invest in it to survive no matter how much they cost. However, small businesses don’t often have enough data and resources to do the data analysis and make decisions. Therefore, they have to make decisions based on their own experience. He identified those decisions as courageous and had a strong belief in people.
| Another guest speaker, Ms. Huong Nguyen, ex-Deputy CEO of VSA, shared her story of how she and the leadership body at VSA decided to make Mercedes become a monopoly in the Vietnam car market. |  |
By embracing the “Think consumer first” mindset as their core value, VSA has applied various customer-centric strategies to make their customers feel proud and be a part of Mercedes. For example, there is a leap in car owner age as in the past, only people above 40 can purchase their own cars. However, today fresh graduates can own a C-class car, so VSA has to change their segment to keep up with this social trend.
In retrospect, people only knew two terms in sales: B2B and B2C, but VSA adopted a new approach called H2H, meaning Human-to-human. Instead of selling a product, VSA put potential customers in a community to share feelings and stories to make them feel a part of Mercedes rather than a regular customer. As a result, Mercedes successfully dominated the Vietnam car market within two years since they entered Vietnam.
In the unprecedented time of the pandemic, not only big corporates have to cope with challenges, but also small and medium businesses have been seriously damaged and made tough decisions, which leads to super proactive debates and discussions during the events with numerous questions about how to build trust with other stakeholders, market segmentation, and share their business stories.
View the event photos here: A2A Circle in June 2023 photo album