FEATURE-GE uses training to build customers in Asia

By Scott Malone

OSSINING, N.Y., Nov 26 (Reuters) - On a warm October morning, some three dozen executives gathered at General Electric Co.'s (GE.N) training campus north of New York for a weeklong program.

But rather than a group of up-and-coming GE managers, this class was made up of executives from airlines, oil and gas producers and power companies, all of them GE customers from Southeast Asia.

The training course is just one way that GE, a conglomerate with more than 300,000 employees in 100 countries, stays close to its markets around the world.

Asia is one of its fastest-growing regions, and GE holds about six such training programs each year for executives from the region.

"Investing in the relationship pays huge dividends," said Stuart Dean, president of GE's Southeast Asian operations.

"We almost always have the higher price in a particular transaction, and where we've had a strong relationship with the customer, where there's a high level of trust, we always get a last look, at a minimum."

GE expects to generate about half its sales outside the United States this year, and growth in Asia will be key to hitting its goal of getting 60 percent of its revenue outside its home country by 2010.

In a sign that these efforts are paying off, the company's emerging-market revenue rose 20 percent last year to $29 billion, or about 18 percent of its total revenue of $163 billion. It aims to boost the emerging market figure to about $50 billion by 2010.

TRICKS OF THE TITAN

For those who made the trip across the Pacific, the desire is to learn some of the tricks that GE has used to build itself into the U.S. company with the second-largest market capitalization.

In one exercise, a GE trainer asked the class to plot their reactions to statements like "innovation always starts with customer insights" on large sheets of paper, to show how opinions varied within the group.

"This is a very valuable chance, for me to come up here, to really learn from GE," said Kathleen Tan, executive vice president, commercial, at Malaysian budget airline AirAsia Bhd (AIRA.KL).

"Everyone knows they are a big company with a long heritage, very strong leadership and I really like learning about the operating system and their management," she said.

GE's reputation for training -- the chief executives of Boeing Co (BA.N), Home Depot Inc (HD.N) and Honeywell International Inc (HON.N) all have GE pedigrees -- seems to have a particular pull in Asia.