安石行動商務中心簡介

Taiwanese Businesses Looking to the Future

Despite (or perhaps because) the threat of a global recession, Taiwanese business people set thoughts about SARS aside for a few hours to attend the Selling to the West seminar on Saturday. Sponsored by the Taipei County Computer Association and Enspyre, the business process outsourcing firm, the seminar gave the attendants insights regarding relatively easy and budget-friendly tips for how to increase sales in the West.

Enspyre President Elias Ek greeted everybody welcome with the statistics that while Taiwanese companies still outnunber them 5-1, mainland Chinese companies attending the tradeshow CeBIT are increasing with 200% years year. "This is your challenge," he said. "Many of you have started factories in China to lower your production costs, the next step is to get closer to the markets by improving image, service, sales, marketing and financial control."

To take care of the image part, James Skidmore, President of design firm E-r3, spoke about common pitfalls that Taiwanese companies fall in as they build their Corporate Image Systems. "The most impoartant thing is to be consistent. Too many companies play 'The Random Logo Game'," explained Mr. Skidmore. "Every person you meet at the company has a different style of business card and if you look at their website and marketing materials you are liable to see a few more. This means that customers and the public get confused about what the company really is about. Maybe one can say that people in the West are picky but the truth is that we care about these things so Taiwans suppliers has no choice but to care as well."

The second speaker was Jane Wei, Director Business Development at Enspyre, who spoke about customer service, sales and marketing. "Catering to foreign customers goes from the small to the large," said Ms. Wei. "Even how you answer the phone is important. If you have a phone system that gives people a choice like 'For English press 2' make sure to answer with English! Make it as easy as possible for your customers to communicate with your company."

Ms. Wei continued to talk about the many active sales and marketing techniques that are available but seldom used by Taiwanese companies like Internet marketing and Pay-For-Click advertising. "It's extremely hard to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional advertising which makes it a game that only companies with large marketing budgets can afford. The rest of should be using Pay-For-Click advertising where we only have to pay if a person actually clicks on the ad and comes to our site. We usually recommends 2 main media, the search engine Google and Trademama, the largest on-line suppliers directory."

Rounding out the seminar was Dr. Maa and Kenny Wang from Global Financial Services. They talked about their "Flowing Water" platform for a outsourced financial services.

After the formal seminar there were consultants on hand to offer individual advice on issues regarding sales and marketing strategies, customer service and image. Some people also brought in their marketing materials for a free session of copy editing by Alex Cummins, an Enspyre consultant and member of the Technical Writing Guild.

The seminar also offered plenty of time for mingling, giving people the opportunity to build new business relationships.

Only time will tell what will happen with the Taiwanese economy in these troubled times. But at least these companies walked out of the seminar better equipped for the daily fight for customers and orders.