How do I describe this?
Thursday started with a pretty lazy start to the day. Brett had a meeting to go to, that I couldn’t give any contribution to, so I slept in while he got up early.
Breakfast was in the room – some jam and toast, with a juice on the side. After a bit, Brett called on his way back from the meeting, and we had a chat about the day. Lunch was a meeting with the Global Sports guys. It was a fantastic meal at a Hong Kong restaurant, starting with Peking Duck, and it just kept getting better from there. The guys were completely sold on the concepts we were selling. It is not possible to compare a social lunch with any sales meeting I have been to with any previous employers. The biggest difference was the presentation – Brett told them what worked. It wasn’t trying to buy them, but rather telling them that this is the way we do things. As they knew his stadium was successful, they could see the how the differences apply. Having been dragged to sales meetings with KESEM / CAE, where the aim was to sell a product / staff time, compared with this informal lunch where they knew they wanted Datascore, and Brett’s knowledge, and the casual lunch just confirmed this, I realised the value of having the “expertise” in a “closing deal”, rather than having people representing the business and making false promises. S&M people may find and close deals, but when it all happens, it’s the people in the field that make it happen, and if people at that level are involved, then the customer has a much higher degree of confidence in the product being sold. I always knew this, and now I’ve seen it. Big business will never pay for it, but it’s the model I will always use, and customers will always appreciate it.
Brett and I went for a drink and planned our next couple of months in the afternoon. I’m not going to document it here, but it’s going to be a pretty busy time! We caught a taxi to the airport, checked in with Andrew, and flew to Bangalore.
Bangalore Airport…what a buzz! Our only problem at immigration was that they didn’t like the signs we were bringing in. Luckily that was the “Decoy”, which kept them away from the laptops / iPad’s / phones in our bags, as that would have cost us a fortune. It was pretty obvious it was just them picking up some cash – the fact that a) where the “duty” was paid, they didn’t have a POS machine, b) they didn’t give change, and c) it was just recorded on an old fashioned ledger. But Brett paid it, and we were through.
The hotel had sent 2 cars to pick us up (part of the package). The driving was possibly worse than in Vietnam! Lines were only guides, and it wasn’t uncommon to see the driver straddling the line rather than picking a lane – and it didn’t matter if there were any cars around or not! So it was a pretty “interesting” drive. Once at the hotel we checked in, and managed to get a quick drink in before the bar closed (and then we had a couple of Beers in our room).