Auckland Presales

Knowing it is so easy for airline to mess around transferring check-in luggage, plus the 8-hour lag I had to wait in Sydney for the connecting flight to Auckland, I requested to pick up my check-in luggage at Sydney. As luck would have it, my flight from ShangHai to Sydney was delayed by 5 hours. I quickly went to the transfer counter in Sydney requesting them to pick up my luggage from the belt to my Quanta flight to Auckland.

I have got the promise, the delivery of my luggage was depending on the mercy of the efficiency of the Sydney airport crew. After arriving at Auckland after 34 hours of traveling, Quanta managed to lose my luggage. Almost burst into tears, the luggage department assured me that my bag was on the next flight to Auckland. Fine, I then wait for another 2 hours for it to turn up. I kept encouraging myself, things can get worse. 2 hours wait is certainly better than turning up in front of the clients in jeans tomorrow.

Finally arrived in the hotel at 2 am, I need to get up early to meet with the presales team at 7am since I have missed out the internal meeting on the very day.

The presales team seems to work together for a very long while, a strange bundle. I cannot tell that they are really that into their jobs or this is just a typical way of talking among colleagues. At any point of the day, their conversation is 100% about the clients, the software, and their wild speculation of possible clients’ perception about their presentation, or even to themselves personally. The level of their paranoid is like a teenage girl dreaming about her prom date.

They made fun of the clients, prying into their personal lives and laughed out loud about the how young the IT head’s second wife is (I am very impressed with their information gathering effort). While seeing the clients, they wore another face but giggling to themselves occasionally. During the presentation, 3 of them who worked together laughed a great deal while the clients, our sales and I stood completely silent. I really couldn’t understand what’s so funny and felt a bit embarrassed.

The presentation to my standard is not very professional. The presales woman is trying to hide the fact that there are actually 2 separate systems we are trying to sell them. However, when the clients asked why the valuations are done separately, she wasn’t giving a explanation but a spin. Even sweet and innocent I could sense something is fishy.

I can feel the presale woman doesn’t like me. She seems to be the center of this work force (she laughed the most loudly, chunked out ill-tasted jokes one after another). However, I turned up and more or less took away the spot light from her. I am younger and my make-up is lighter. I spoke conservatively and I don’t blindly laugh at the clients’ remark.

She ignored me after my debut in front of the client. She wouldn’t talk to me at all on the dinning table or in the meeting room. She only talked to her long-term comrades. At the end of our presentation, she asked me to build a report to show certain functionality. I did it in the background and indicated it can be shown now. She was urged by another colleague to check out my work. She came around reluctantly and had a quick look and instructed me to demo it to the client.

Half way through the demo, the client pointed out my report is missing a very crucial element. She then quickly joined at the clients’ side, questioning whether it can be done. Interesting, she didn’t think that way before asking me to do the demo.

One of this team seemed very keen to convince me to relocate to their office (because I seemed to be the only one who knows the risk stuff, should be useful to her work). “To work with them on daily basis?” I ask myself “I would rather quit” is the answer.