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It’s always easy to approach Mr. Liew Sip Chon as his friendly demeanor makes you feel right at home. He was kind enough to spare me some of his time as he described how he became the first non-Japanese to become CEO and President of Canon (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd since it was formed in 1986.
He already knew where his interests were while still in school. He was smitten with the subject of Law. But fate took him down a different road in that his father enrolled him in Tunku Abdul Rahman College for an external accounting course. It was a course that held no appeal to him and 6 months later, he had failed all the papers except, of course, Business Law! That shocked him, and because he did not want to let his parents down, he struggled through and managed to complete his course.
With that qualification Mr. Liew obtained his first job at a local bank’s accounts department. Unfortunately, he left after 10 days as the work that he did held no interest for him. He then thought long and hard as to what profession appealed to him. He liked law but did not have the qualifications, so he decided that he should enter the sales line. He reasoned that in a way, sales is a bit like law in that several parties argue that points in front of a judge. In the case of sales, the judge was the client/customer and the opposing teams were the other competitors!
Happy with his decision, he signed up with Olivetti to sell their typewriters in mid 1981. While there, he became so good at his job that he pulled in six-figure sales every month! This was in the early eighties and easily worth three times the amount now! He told me cheekily that he did not consider it a job as he had the opportunity to meet beautiful ladies everyday in his course of dealing with secretaries! His success there was because he took extra steps on his own like learning how to type, dressing well, even to the extent of having pedicure so that his fingers would look neat while he typed! To this day he still retains links with the secretaries by supporting their organization.
In 1983, he joined Canon while it was still under Mulpha trading. By 1987 when Canon Marketing Malaysia (CMM) was formed, he was promoted to Sales Manager. During that time, many people perceive typewriter as a sunset industry. As such recruiting sales people for typewriter dept was really tough. Candidates that came for interview were only interested to handle products such as Camera, Fax or Copier. In his desperation, he started to shortlist candidates rejected by the other departments. With little option, he started to recruit sales people what he called “the leftover” (those found not suitable by the other depts.). After less than 2 years of training, he had the best sales force in the industry. He called them the “Magnificent 7” and all of them had become successes in their own right after that. One of them has become Country Manager of an IT media company while another is the CEO of an MNC, he said proudly.
Other problem he faced was that when he became CEO in Jan 2005, the company still has a huge accumulated loss after the financial crisis in 1987. Using his accounting background and his sales savvy, he managed to clear all the accumulated loss 18 months later and the company since then have been increasing their retained earnings every half yearly for the past 18 months. He hopes to implement the second phase of changes to improve operational excellence by next year.
On the subject of success, he said that for a successful career, a person must find a job that he loves to do. Only then will he have the drive to continuously push himself to improve and become the best at his profession. He also said not to value the job satisfaction in terms of the money earned. He gave the analogy of the professional football player- even if he was not paid a cent, he would still play football because of his passion for it. When you are the best, success will come in monetary form also, he said.
Another pearl of wisdom he gave was that the former Canon President of Asia once said to him “what we donít have, we make!”
In other words, if there are problems or obstacles, take a positive step and look for solutions, not just complain about it. This he said can apply to every individuals and businesses alike.
He hopes that the government can give more support to the SMIs/SMEs because he believes that they are the main contributor in the creation of the middle class. If there is a big middle class in Malaysia, then it shows that Malaysia has reached developed country status. He reasons that a big affluent middle class is a powerhouse of consumption, driving the country’s economy.
Mr. Liew’s dreams for the future would be to set a sales academy that provides professional qualifications for sales people, something that does not exist at the moment. But whatever it is, Mr. Liew will approach it with unbridled enthusiasm.
