The Soft Issue
August 2017
Story from Outside
People build experience
by doing things — i t is hard
to ‘learn’ experience,
you have to experience
it.
THOSE BAD
JOBS ARE
By: Editi Effiong
M
onday last week, on
the verge of signing a
major deal, the client’s
procurement team sent
an email requesting
discounts on our costing. The team
member who was following up on
that transaction was not really a
client management (CM) person
-- she had studied marketing, and
was working with the strategy
team. However, on this project,
I had seconded her to the client
management team, and the CM lead
on that project had called in sick.
Her immediate thinking was to
escalate the client’s request to
me — t he right thing to do, but I
asked her to handle it. Instead of
calling the client to fulfill their
request, I went through a 5-minute
conversation of how procurement
negotiation works, how to move
from the 20% the client wanted,
to 12% (via 10% temporary). The
client called back in 5-minute, and I
listened in on the conversation, but
she handled the negotiation.
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Within a few minutes of
doubting her abilities, she had
handled and won a negotiation
with a procurement team.
It was not her job, but the
experience will never be lost,
and the next time she is faced
with a negotiation, she will
have experience to draw from.
This is how experience works,
you never know where the
chance would come from, but
when it does, you grab it.
This real story is exactly how
we treat interns and young
people who work with us. In
honesty, I do not know any
other way to ‘train’ people.
People build experience by
doing things — i t is hard to
‘learn’ experience, you have to
experience it. The lady in the
story above worked with us
in 2014 as an intern for a few
weeks, went off to school, and
returned last year to a full time
role.
It is in every young person’s
the
LENS