This past week has made me understand the need for preparedness and understanding what is expected of me in the corporate space. The week started with a scheduled meeting with my company's OEM which was to be held on a Tuesday. We all got so excited for the meeting and personally for me, it was an opportunity to finally meet our OEM face to face. The oil and gas industry is a very competitive industry and every company is looking to make deals no matter the cost. My company is also guilty of these because we have taken advantage of opportunities where we saw another company’s weakness. Our industry is like a jungle where weakness or any form of weakness can not be tolerated else you become the victim or prey and this last week we became both.
The meeting with our OEM was to discuss our sales within the last two years which in all honesty has dropped. However, the reasons for the poor sales wasn’t entirely our fault, but I guess it doesn’t matter why you lose at the end of the day. No one gives excuses for winning. I was in my office when my MD called me to his office to discuss the meeting. He had taken his time to prepare some slides on how we plan to make sales for the coming year, and he wanted to discuss those plans with me. Alongside me, he called a couple of other staff, we were not much, just the head of Administration and our Level two technician whose input would be highly needed for the meeting.
MD: We can not go into the meeting tomorrow without our Sales manager, and we need to get a substitute or someone who can relay our sales plan for the year.
Head Admin: I can step in for him since I have been communicating with the OEM before now and also have access to our sales funnel and client details.
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I watched them talk and talk about the boring stuff, but something seemed to be missing. I couldn’t place my hands on it, but I knew we were missing a very important detail until my MD asked when is the scheduled time for the meeting? 4:00 PM sir, our admin answered almost immediately. It was as though she had rehearsed and memorized the time.
MD: Send a mail to everyone that needs to be in that meeting with the link and time of the meeting.
This was the last instruction my MD gave before dismissal. Leaving the meeting, I asked the Admin: Are you sure we covered every single thing in regards to the meeting with our OEM? Yes yes, she replied listing out the things in her checklist. Later that day I got the mail for the link and time for the meeting and the next day, I was ready for the meeting or rather I thought I was ready.
By 3:30 PM the conference room was set, and every one sat with the team's link connected to the big television screen so that the OEM could see every one of us together and see how serious we are in doing business. But then we began to wait. Checking the time again it was 15 minutes past 4:00 PM and if there is one thing we could trust our OEM for, it is to always be early. In a bid to rectify the situation, our head admin decided she would send a mail to them as a reply to the mail that came for the meeting notification.
That was when we realized what was missing all along. Yes the meeting said 4:00 PM, but it wasn’t 4:00 PM Nigerian time but rather it was Dubai time. It would have been better if that meant we were too early, but it meant we were 3 hours late, they had come, waited and we did not show up. Immediately the admin realized, she screamed at the top of her voice: JESUS.
All heads snapped towards her in alarm, at this point I knew that whatever she had just discovered was the reason for my gut feeling and then she explained her mistake. The disappointment on the faces of everyone was evident, we trusted her to do a simple job and she made the entire company look like a fool before our partners.
In a quick response my MD wrote back to them apologizing for the oversight and requesting for a new meeting time. Luckily they were kind enough to reschedule but not after making us know that their impression of us had taken a hit after that incident. The rescheduled meeting wasn’t just a meeting, it was an avenue for us to redeem ourselves and we all knew it. This time we planned again and made sure everything was in place but then again, my gut was telling me there was still something we were missing.
But this time I told myself I was just being nervous. The meeting was rescheduled for Friday and by Friday we were seated and ready. This time we were early and waited for them. This time we found them, but it wasn’t what we expected. We went in for a meeting but they came for a sales report and for us to give them reasons why they should continue partnering with us. At this point we were all unprepared. From me they needed proof and result for advertisement from the others they needed different things. And we were not able to provide anything because our Head admin who had been communicating with them told us we were coming for a business meeting to discuss plans for the future and not give a report of the past sales.
This was another blow, they saw right through us, they saw our level of preparedness, and they saw our lack of understanding and information dissemination. It was a quick decision that ended years of partnership and for the first time in many years, I felt what it meant to really lose an opportunity. I sat down in the conference room for another 20 minutes after the tragedy of a meeting had ended, reliving every single second of that devastating encounter. After that I stood up and said to myself: Well, better luck next time, I can’t keep dwelling over a missed opportunity, I will be prepared next time.
THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL COMBINED WRITING PROMPT #57