CPS Generators is proud of our commitment to strong relations. Our customers and workers make us what we are, and we wouldn’t be the UK’s number one worldwide supplier of power equipment and solutions without them. To strengthen our bond with our customers, we got some of our valued team members, Daniel Arnett and Stephen Lucas down for a chat.
Daniel Arnett is one of the founding Directors of CPS Generators, and Stephen Lucas is our Technical Sales Account Manager. Both have been with our team for a long time, and in the interview give us some information about themselves so you can know a little more about the CPS Generators team. To watch the interview, feel free to check out the CPS youtube channel. Otherwise, read on for a quick summary of the bits you may want to know.
Stephen’s main role as a Technical Sales Account Manager is to provide our customers with diesel generators. Daniel Arnett describes his role as “changing every year” as he often finds himself doing what has to be done. In his words, being a Director involves “look[ing] after the bigger picture.”
Both had a tough time when asked what the biggest customer they’ve worked with is. As CPS has grown over the years, so have our clients. Both believe many of our biggest customers come from outside the UK, such as Yemen when you define “biggest” as being measured by order value. However, Daniel would argue our biggest clients are those we have built a long term relationship with, including regular orders. Daniel describes this as “investing” in us. One of the clients that came to his mind is Hampshire Generators. Stephen agreed, adding enthusiastically that throughout their relationship with CPS they have gone from “one guy” to a “good team”, with Daniel agreeing that they’ve “grown with us.”
When asked what his favourite part of his role with CPS was, Stephen said it was “creating business relationships with customers” as he was keen to support them so they can sell more. Daniel was in agreement, but would argue his favourite was “working with the team [he’d] assembled over the past seven years.”
He had lots to say about the team, calling them “young”, “fun” and “committed.”
When asked why a customer should buy a generator from CPS, Daniel said: “we don’t force customers to purchase from us, we want customers to invest in our brand.”
He continued, “At CPS we genuinely believe in our mission… and that’s something we work through daily that ensures customers always get a good quality product, a good lead time and a good price.”
Moving away from the company, when asked who they’d compare themselves to Daniel said “I think I’m similar to my granddad, I’ve never met him, but family… tells me I’m just like him, quite a tough character but kind at the same time and he loved business as well. He loved making things, he used to work on the tanks in World war two so I think I’d probably say my Granddad.”
Stephen had a unique take, saying sarcastically “…Micheal Jordan because obviously, I’m great at basketball.”
He explained further “I’m a big admirer of Michael Jordan… Obviously he’s a born winner, like myself, but he’s not afraid to lose at the same time.”
Daniel gave an amusing anecdote from his time at CPS, saying “when we built our fifth generator set, my business partner who’s fundamentally in charge of production and purchase… he thought rather than using the UK European components, [he’ll] cut some corners and they used some imported Chinese emergency stop button. I said ‘look, just spend the extra five pounds and get the European emergency stop button’ because it’ll last longer, the quality’s better… he wouldn’t listen and that night he had to drive at one o’clock in the morning all the way to Inverness to change it because it failed the first time it was used.”
That’s why, in Daniel’s own words, we use British parts in our generators, because “not only is the quality good, but the lead time is good because chances are the parts are local.”
This only takes us to around halfway into the interview, and there’s plenty more to hear. From more amusing anecdotes to examples of us going above and beyond for our clients. To pick up right where we left off, click here to take you to the next question in the video. We hope this has given you valuable insight into our company and our staff, and has given you a human impression of the UK’s finest power solution provider, CPS Generators.