By Yves-Michel Marti, Chairman, Egideria.
First example - a few years ago I was an engineer with Dassault Electronique. After a career in France, I was really keen to go and work in the United States. I went to see my manager and asked him if he could send me there. And he replied that no, he couldn’t, there was no money. There was, however, a tender proposal from DRET, the Directorate for Weapons Research and Technical Studies of the French Ministry of Defence, offering to finance an engineer being sent to the United States and that a certain number of posts were open every year. He told me that if I managed to pull in the contract and get the financing, I could go.
And with this, he passed over the file that had been hanging about on his desk for weeks. Time was of the essence for the submission date was just ten days away. And DRET really does finance four or five engineers going to the States every year. I had a look at the topics in the file. Luck was with me, for among the main areas of interest to DRET was my specialisation at the time, designing micro-electronic circuits for radars and microwaves, more specifically Gallium Arsenide integrated circuits.
I told myself that my chances were good if I produced a submission supported by Dassault around one of the key areas of interest to DRET. I found out that there were three thousand candidates for five places. And then I thought that if I didn’t have a bit of pull, if I did nothing very special, I really had no chance of winning through.
I managed as best I could. The first thing to do was to find out the name of the person publishing the call for tenders and then I requested a meeting. I really had to force a bit because he didn’t want to meet me. He said he was sure I understood, that there were lots of people who wanted to go, that he didn’t want to show any favouritism and so on. I really had to insist and I landed up with a meeting in the DRET tower. He greeted me a bit like a bull in a china shop, only spent about ten minutes with me, saying here's the file, now you know everything about it, good afternoon. So that was a dead end. But I hung around, trying to glean a few bits of information here and there and scanning the secretaries’ desks for floating papers.
Then I noticed a young military from the department was doing some photocopying. I oiled my way into a conversation with him, asking how the programmes were going, were they producing results, etc. He didn’t want to talk to me much either, but he was bored with photocopying. And then as we continued to chat he let slip something. He said that, yes, they were finding this project slightly frustrating. They had been sending people for years and had always placed them in university laboratories, never in private companies. Aha, I thought, that’s interesting! It was a minor frustration, a little snippet that apparently didn’t just come from him but from higher up in the DRET's hierarchy. I thought to myself that if ever I managed to have a partner willing to host me, whilst being financed by the French army, for military technology, if I managed to put together a submission with a private firm, then I might have a chance.
I therefore slogged my guts out for the rest of the week to put together a specific submission where I would be hosted by a private firm.
It just so happens that in my capacity of engineer I attended international conferences once or twice a year and there was a conference taking place in Florida. There’s usually a host of social events going on after scientific conferences. The French normally don’t care about them, because they often take place on the Saturday and they are keen to get home. But I wanted to stay on for a while, the more so that it was in Florida. The weather was great, it was pretty good fun and in particular there was a golf tournament organised at the end of the congress. I was a modest golfer but I decided to go anyway. So I made up a foursome with three grandpas (I was younger then). It was good fun. All of a sudden my ball came to rest three metres away from a baby alligator some forty-five centimetres long. I told myself that it didn't look too mean, and that it was two or three metres away. If I was careful I could get my ball back without too much risk. Suddendly, everyone else turned up, including the groundsman in his little cart, telling me no, no, it’s dangerous. We all had a good laugh and a personal link was forged.
When I was looking through my file of business cards for contacts to land in the United States, there were these three people I had played golf with. One of them was Vice-President of an electronics firm, a start-up in my field. I had phoned as many people as possible during the week. I had contacted lots of hopefuls and had lots of disappointments, and then one after the other my hopefuls disappeared under a flood of negative replies. He was the only one left. I remember saying to myself as I looked at his business card between my fingers that I had to phone him, that I mustn’t get this wrong, that I simply had to succeed. How should I present my project to him so that he agreed to take me on? I closed my eyes to bring him back to life, which wasn't obvious as I didn't remember all the people very well. Finally, I ‘phoned him, asking him whether he would like a well-educated, well-trained engineer very familiar with his technologies, for a quarter of the price. He thought that sounded interesting, but where was the catch? And we carried on talking and then it was all signed and settled.
This is a personal story, but I think it is interesting from several aspects:
Firstly, just a small piece of information made all the difference. It was the fact that this information presented itself, informally, without being written in the tender file. The decision-takers were feeling slightly frustrated for there was something they had failed to achieve. I put together the whole submission based on this and because of it I won.
Secondly, never ignore conferences, professional congresses and the like: there is the official part, the meaningful part and then behind it all is the chance to make contacts and for networking.
I was also extremely lucky - the chap remembered me because of the crocodile. Immediately a sympathetic ear was listening - yes, of course! and so on. So that was a slightly stronger human link. It’s not at all sure that he would have given me a positive reply if he hadn’t had this memory, because he collects hundreds of business cards. So a second lesson is, therefore, to do some networking when you have the chance and not just keep your head down working.
The third lesson is that while networking, why not try and build up strong relationships. The strength of the relationship between people is built on a series of little things - common experience, services rendered, etc. These are the things that we’ve been doing for ages, but we only start to reap the rewards much later on, years after. In my case, the link was all thanks to the alligator!
All this can be of use in your commercial initiatives. If you have to satisfy major accounts you need to identify these snippets of poorly-defined needs. We all know that that are official, expressed needs and implied needs.
It's worth working as a team to assemble these bits of information that make all the difference. Because these bits of information are not necessarily assembled by the sales rep or by yourself. They may be collected by a secretary. They may be collected by someone in the post room. They may be collected by any number of people, even computer specialists.