Managers & Engineers

Yesterday, I went for a joint sales call with a colleague. This is the first time we are submitting quotation to this customer for a project. Since we have only been communicating over the mails and phone calls for a while now, we thought it will be good for us to just drop into their office to formally introduce ourselves and our company and the things that we do and see if we can have other potentials to work together.

The other reason is also to get a feel of what this potential customer of our is feeling about our quotation and how serious are they to work together with us for this project, which they are also still bidding for.

Initially, we thought there might only be perhaps 2 engineers will be attending this meeting. However, as we sat in the meeting room, there were 3 engineers and one manager came to discuss with us. Imagine this, we were there to just to introduce our company and discuss about this project. Then, they started to go into technical details. From the conversation, it can be noted that this customer is not technically sound in the area of our expertize. We are in a way giving them lessons / lectures on the system we quoted.

Isn't it as a customer, they should be more well informed than us? They were asking us very basic questions of our area, which surprises me. They were all engineers with a multi-national EPCC engineering company who had done so many high profile projects everywhere around the world, yet when it come to our area, they were like fresh graduates.

As we were discussing, we came to a point that we think might be educating the customer too much and we started to just give simple answers and left them wondering themselves. It is always dangerous to educate the customer too much of your area of expertize. I think they were amaze with us as we not only able to talk about our area of expertize, we were also able to talk all other portions of the project, from M&E to C&S to Instrumentation and Controls. We can describe the plant in and out inclusive of all the civil requirements, environmental impact, mechanical lifting requirement, water requirement etc. One of best remarks made by the manager which I really like hearing is ... " you guys seems to know more about this plant than us."

Well, both of us just smile back and I say ..."this is our job to know everything about the plant and how can we work together with you".

It is sometime nice to see that people admire your knowledge and know how in their field. I always like the saying ... "Managers knows a bit about everything, and engineers know everything about a little bit". We are speaking to a group of engineers, so they know only the area of their coverage without looking at the big picture.

Remember, always learn a bit of everything...... and manage the bit you know well.