You are what you eat; could that explain a dog and pony show?
Just kidding. So, while much of the European media is running around like headless chickens, we will promote the image of business as a rational enterprise!
There must be millions of web sites that tell you how to build your own successful business. Fool-proof offers, costing you just one dollar a month, and before you know it, you have made it in the business world.
The K-Landnews reliable source that brought you the post "Vancouver airport at midnight" offered us a story about a young entrepreneur's way of doing business. Once again, we asked for a first person, present tense narrative.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.
We are a three-person outfit, that American startup dream with a vision. Do you need to know what the vision is? Oh, you would like to know. The vision is to build up a business, sell it after five years, and then retire or do it again.
There are three of us, the Chief, the Sales guy, and me, the techie. We work together quite well, and there is money coming in. We have a handful of clients, and enough contractors to do the work.
But the pace of growth is not what Chief and Sales guy want it to be.
I have just finished integrating our website with Salesforce and asked for access to the Salesforce database to do some testing. Sales guy lets me use his computer for a few minutes. I know, I have done a good job, and I really don't need more than a few minutes of verification. The database looks a little odd, and I do not want to explain to you what exactly I saw. But I can tell you that Sales guy downloaded the customer and contacts database of his previous company. He stole it. He had told his previous company, operating in the same sector as us, that he needed a couple of months off to deal with some personal matters. Enough time to grab their database.
I was not pleased to see Chief go down this route, but the events that make me leave are unfolding now, several weeks after I had realized they stole the database.
We are in the last few days before a visit from a potential new customer, a big one. If we get this company as a new client, we are on a roll.
The day before the visit, Chief and Sales guy tell me they want to show me something. We walk across the street, enter a large office space that has just been vacated by a company that went under. Sales guy explains to me that the defunct company agreed to let us use the space for a week, and that he and Chief will conduct their part of the prospect's visit there. Our own office is really small, kind of dingy, and I am happy about being able to finish up a big project for another client without detraction.
They explain to me that they will conduct the initial presentation and negotiations in that rented space and that I will join them after lunch. The next day, after lunch, they show up with the prospect's delegation of two senior managers. Chief and Sales guy explain to me that they thought it was nicer to bring the two over, and we chat for a while. The managers are nice, they ask questions and are pleased by the answers they get from me.
Then the potential clients leave. It's a win. Sales guy and Chief are ecstatic.
Which partly explains why they start gushing about the future and about how they made it happen. Since I will work closely with the new client, Chief and Sales guy feel they need to tell me about how they presented our company.
It is at this point that they tell me: To the two client managers, they had explained the space across the street was "our permanent office", and that the twenty job seekers they had invited for interviews and skills tests were "permanent, full time employees". The job seekers were given some tasks to do while Chief and Sales guy buttered up the prospect's managers and made sure they did not try to talk to any of the "full time employees".
I feel sad and mad.
And it does not stop there. The following week, there is a presentation at another prospect's office in our area. Sales guy brings in a couple of people from his previous company to bolster our numbers. So, instead of three, five of "us" show up with two brand new "department heads". They do not work for us, but why should Chief volunteer this information?
And they make me come along, because technical execution rests on my shoulder, and I have a good reputation in this small local market.
This time, I get to see the PowerPoint presentation, too. The presentation is identical to Sales guy's previous company's. The exact same slides with our company name and log instead of the old one's.
Sales guy proudly tells the new prospect that we are now a supplier to Big Company X, whose delegation had visited us last week to see our operation and meet our employees.
Four weeks later, I resign.
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