Benz Thonglor CEO sets new vision for company

Ploykarn, 35, succeeded her father Wasan, who founded the company in 1977 and built it into one of the top Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Thailand.
She became CEO on February 28, on the company’s 39th anniversary.
“My ambition as CEO is to maintain our leadership as a top-three dealer for Mercedes in Thailand, representing about 10 per cent of their sales,” she said.
Benz Thonglor was responsible for 1,300 out of the 12,000 new Mercedes sold in the country last year.
After earning a bachelor of business administration with emphasis on marketing from Chulalongkorn University in 2002 and a master of business administration with an emphasis on entrepreneurship from the University of San Francisco in 2004, Ploykarn worked for Giorgio Armani Company in San Francisco as a sales coordinator from August 2004-February 2005 before helping her family business about three years ago.
She has solid skills and knowledge in marketing, international finance and strategic management, with outstanding communication and interpersonal skills.
She has a proven ability to work with various groups of people, including top management, other functional teams and customers.
She also has a strong interest in developing and implementing strategies.
“I have applied a professional style of management to enhance the business organisation more systematically,” she said.
“I, however, have absorbed many things from my father, who initiated many activities, not to support the sales of our luxury vehicles, but to benefit society,” she said.
In 2000, Wasan arranged a market fair for people who used to be rich but were hit by the financial crisis at that time.
“Such a social activity created by my father allowed people to remember Benz Thonglor when they went to buy vehicles,” she said.
“The point is how will we make people think of us at first and give us the opportunity to meet our potential customers.
“My father always said to me that if we do something similar to others, it’s better to not do it.
“If we do things, we need to have deeper knowledge than our rivals and we have to get it through. This will be a key success factor that makes us different from others,” she said.
The strength of Benz Thonglor is its solid reputation as a prime Mercedes dealer in Thailand for 39 years.
“My father, Wasan, is a great salesman with strong entrepreneurship. He started the business by selling Mercedes-Benz by phone at Chok Chai Building.
“With enriched selling experience, he will be able to personally evaluate and classify all potential customers, whether they will buy or not, only from talking with them via phone,” she said.
Another strength of Benz Thonglor is its honesty with no bad record at all.
“I would like to give this credit to my mother, who has applied Dharma to the training of staff.
“My mother, Jessupha, has been involved in all activities regarding human resource development and every time, she will apply Dharma to them,” she said.
What the company will focus on during her term as CEO is maintaining its size and retaining its loyal customers with good service quality.
“Today, customers have many choices. And what we can do to retain those loyal customers is to impress them and turn them into our fans and relatives.
“Our five-year vision is to modernise Benz Thonglor with world-class facilities to serve our customers. We are on one of the prime locations in Bangkok. We will further develop our service quality.
“Sometimes, we have to sell at a loss due to the strong supply of luxury vehicles in the market. Customers are smarter and like to scout many dealers to find the one offering the best deal.
“It’s also my father’s management style to keep zero stock at our showroom,” she said. “Getting involved daily in front-office operations is necessary so that we can see the behaviour of our customers and use that as information in our decision-making,” she added.