Customer Focus and Team Spirit Drive ASBIS Bulgaria Forward

Mitko Topalov, ASBIS’ Regional Sales Director for Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, reveals  what it takes to maintain market leadership in an interview with asbis.com.

-- ASBIS BG has been recognized as the Best IT Disti for the 5th consecutive year. What is your recipe for success? How difficult is it for you to maintain the leading position all these years?

-- The No.1 position has not been our purpose, we never work with "rankings" in mind. Our main goal has always been to provide the best possible quality of service to our customers, to offer them support, diverse product portfolio, to have good relations and maintain good connections with them. And our success is a logical result of such customer-focused approach.
 
Very important for our good relations with the customers is the pre-sales support, our marketing activities, various trainings for different product lines. We are also focused on the B2B service, and our valuable online trading platform has been rated by our customers as the best Internet tool in Bulgaria, leaving far behind other web-based business tools offered by our competitors.
 
Another important aspect is the policy towards our employees, and the strategy to build a strong and motivated team. I must point out that the core of our team has been working together and is still together for over 9 years, since we started ASBIS Bulgaria. People come and stay in the company, and the number of people leaving the company is very small - it is the smallest compared to other IT companies. We try to establish the best possible working climate and working conditions, so our employees really feel that the company values their efforts. I must say this is highly recognized by the other IT companies in Bulgaria.
 
-- Have you felt an increased competition from foreign players since Bulgaria’s accession to the EU?

-- Since Bulgaria entered the EU, and the Bulgarian IT market stabilized and grew, especially during the last year, our market became attractive to foreign players. For the moment they have not established their local offices, but we feel their "incursions" from abroad. And this will probably continue. Nevertheless, with the EU acquisition of Bulgaria, we observe a decrease in the local grey market and we have expanded our customer base with many customers who maybe worked in the grey sector before coming to the official market as our customers. So, generally speaking, our EU entry has had a positive effect on our business.
 
-- What market trends do you observe and what are your development plans?

-- The most noted market tendencies are the development of the mobile PC market and the retail-oriented product lines. We plan to expand the sales channels, and to move away from the classical schemes of distribution by developing B2C and other business channels. Additionally, we plan to grow by adding new product lines to our portfolio.