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#HeraeusPeople Story 

How I won back a lost customer with a golden thread 

Kaiyue “Marvin” Ma, Account Manager, Heraeus Electronics East China, Changshu 

"For a decade, Heraeus had been knocking on the same door. A major optical technology player in China. Account manager after account manager tried. Presentations, price talks, arguments. None of it worked. Then the task landed on my desk: "Do something different!" I was new in sales. Six years earlier, I had been an R&D engineer. I understood materials, not mindsets. Now I had to navigate conversations, expectations and resistance. 

The straight road leads nowhere. So I changed the game. 

I did what everyone else did first. Procurement. Price. Cost comparisons. A dead end. Our gold-plated bonding wires weren’t the cheapest option – that much was clear. So I changed approach. Every week, I spent a total of two hours traveling one way to meet the customer on site, speak with various stakeholders, and understand what truly matteres beyond price. That’s when the shift happened: from selling gold wire to discussing future requirements, new materials like AgCoat, and how to meet the standards of global premium customers. 

During a sales training, I learned the rule: find the fox. Not the boss. Not the job title. The believer, the person who actually moves things. I found that person in a sourcing supervisor. Someone not visible on the org chart, but open, curious, willing to listen. Through him, doors opened. Trust grew. Step by step, I moved upward – without pressure, without force. 

I listened to procurement teams, engineers, product manager, sales. Slowly, a different picture emerged. I realized something crucial: this was never about price. My customer had a clear ambition, to enter a global premium ecosystem, but was working with a supplier who couldn’t take them there. It was a strategic gap. That’s when it clicked. And suddenly, our premium positioning became our strongest argument. Heraeus was already qualified, already trusted and already embedded in the global supply chain. 

When I finally sat across from management, I didn’t pitch a product. I told them a story about their future: about premiums supply chains. And I asked one simple question: “When your customer asks for the next step, who will take you there?” Silence. That was the turning point. 

From wire to partnership  

The next meeting was a workshop. One afternoon with a small team: Jianbo, Cathy, Charles and I working together with their engineers. No slides, just solutions. Just a team solving problems together. From gold wire to AgCoat, from today’s standard to tomorrow’s alternatives. That afternoon, our relationship changed. We became partners. Two months later, the first project started. Six months after my first visit, the deal was closed. I still remember the moment I got the confirmation and the words that followed: “Well done, Marvin. A difficult task, but you made it.” Yes, this is a story about bonding wires. About gold. About technology. About innovation. But more than anything, it’s a story about connection. And about the insight that in sales, perspective is everything. Sometimes, success comes down to one thing: finding the fox!"

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