Presentation....

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be part of presentation team to one of our principal. Our purpose there is to give a simple presentation of a project that the principal wanted to embark in the near future. So there I was, in this mega board room full with top-level management people from the organization. As the presentation goes on, I had a brief look on their faces and something tells me that some of them are not interested to hear what we are offering. I might be wrong or whateva but my gut feelings tells me that. You know, sometimes when you talk about something to someone and you can tell that the other person seems uninterested to what you are saying....so that's basically how i felt.

Anyhoos, I think the presentation went ok. The questions and answers part was very interesting. Especially when we talk about our fee scale. Hehehe. The presentation only took us about 30 minutes or so. I wouldn't know what our chances are in getting the job but I thought we did well in expressing our interest as well as how ready we are in getting the job done.

However, sometimes, things are not easy as it seems in getting a business deal. THings are not THAT straight forward. Especially in Malaysia. ( I can vouch for that, unfortunately). We can talk and talk about how good we are, how our products or services can help them, bla bla bla, but at the end of the day, it all depends on the MAN who has the DECISION MAKING power....if the MAN said yes, the people down the line, no matter what they say, they have to follow the MAN's instructions. Even if the products or services offered are crap!! If the MAN said NO, no matter how hard we tried in getting the business, we can say 'so long and bye-bye to our efforts...

A couple of months back, I can still remember this lady, I call her Mrs X. She's a nice lady but when we talked to her about our interest in serving her organization, she came out with reasons after reasons on why she thinks that we are not capable in doing the job. (that's what I thought, anyways...). Reasons, like you do not have your personnel, not enough staff, not enough equipment, bla bla bla.... you get the sense that no matter what you said, no matter how nice your company profile is, you won't get the business....As at today though, things has changed a wee bit, we are starting to get small jobs from her. That's a good start I think...

It seems that in business, you will always be in a catch-22 situation. Moreover, if you are on your own and you need people to help you run the organization. The nature of our job is purely giving services to our principals. Hence, if we don't get any job from our principals, then there will be no business. Zero. Nil. In saying that, sometimes, we have the people and the equipment ready, but because of reasons known only to God, the principals will always come out with various reasons why they won't let you do the job! Irony eh? Yeap, it happens and will happen again in the future....

Obviously, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background especially in getting a business deal. I'm not going into that but as you might have now it, it happens. I think, it happens in every industry at every level. Unfortunately..Until the day when all 'these background' dealing stops, only then hopefully, we can move forward as a better nation...but now...to a certain extent...it sucks....

Have a nice day.......