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56 SMT Magazine • December 2016 SUCCESSFUL SALES STRATEGIES Las Marias: There always has to be data as well, right? Krajnc: At the end of the day, it's all about data. There's a lot of data that you have to crunch to get some good outcomes and once you have the data and you analyze it, then you have to execute. So you need a very strong and skillful team that acts and executes on all the data. Las Marias: Matej, what do you think are the three most important attributes of a great salesperson? Krajnc: To be a good listener, have empathy, and to really be someone that contributes and not someone who is pushy and just trying to sell. If a salesperson can do that, it's perceived on the customer's side as a real readiness and willingness to help address the needs, and it can accelerate the development of the partner- ship between the seller and the customer, and that's what you want. Las Marias: Is there any particular sales strategy that you can recommend? Krajnc: I would say sales strategies always have to change, because you only have a sales strat- egy according to the situation and require- ments which you currently have. If you just say , "This is the most effective sales strategy that we can use," and put it there on the wall, that might be so for a specific case or a specif - ic industry, but if you move somewhere slight- ly different it might not be the best. Consider- ing the world we are in, that has to be contin- uously adjusted and updated according to the situation. Las Marias: Matej, what do you think are some of the key electronics manufacturing industry chal- lenges to expect next year? Krajnc: If I talk about my region, for some time there has been the movement towards manu- facturing in areas that provide lower cost man- ufacturing, and I've seen that significantly in Australia for the last ten years. On the other side, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and part of our territory have seen benefits on this side. Ul- timately, I think we need to always look for new opportunities and shift resources, where neces- sary. The real challenge is to be on top of all this. Las Marias: Do you think there is one trend in the electronics industry next year that stands out? Krajnc: There are a lot of trends happening right now that pretty much everyone talks about. One is related to the industrial Inter- net of Things. The other one is related to new communications like 5G, because there's a lot of research happening, and not only in big countries. We've seen it even in countries like Indonesia, for example, where they've done some impressive research in 5G. It's happening everywhere, because everyone wants to con - tribute and use different algorithms and dif- ferent parts of the 5G that they want to work on. That will continue to be a big focus in the industry. The other part I see is related to the auto - motive industry. If you look at cars right now, they are so intelligent. There is so much high- end technology built in and, at the end of the day, everyone wants to have that self-driven or fully autonomous car, but we've seen that it will require a much better communication infrastructure. That's why 5G will play a very important role in that, as well as the Internet of Things. On the other side, there are other technol- ogies like radar, V to V, V to X, and what we'll see in the future is that cars will be communi- cating between each other, using global naviga- tion systems, communicating with road signs, traffic lights and will have all the sensors built in to detect the proximity of other cars or peo- ple walking in the street and so on. In my view, I would say those are the three areas that we will see much of the excitement and develop- ment in. Las Marias: Okay, great. Thank you very much, Matej. Krajnc: Thank you. SMT