“Please, call me Valencia,” she said, as Shy handed Valencia her business card. “Import—export business.” She paused. “I would love an opportunity to sit down with you and talk about some of the things that we could do for you and your business, Mrs. Black.”
“I’m sure that we could set something up. You have my card.” Shy held out her hand.
“I am looking forward to getting together with you,” Valencia said, shaking Shy’s hand and thinking that when one door closes, another one opens.
“Same here,” Shy said and walked away.
Chapter Seven
As soon as Valencia got in the car, she called Adrianna and once she recapped the meeting for her, she told her to get Pooja Rajani started on putting together a suite of services that they could offer Shy in her import-export business.
“And tell her to have something ready to brief me in the morning. I want to move quickly on this.”
“Who’s the prospective client?”
“CAMB Overseas Importers.”
“I’ll get her started on the research.”
“No need for that. I’m going to handle this account myself,” Valencia said as she left the parking lot, thinking that cultivating a relationship with Shy wouldn’t be a bad thing, and might prove to be beneficial in the long run. And besides, selling her on their services was never a bad thing either.
The following morning, Valencia met with Pooja. In the short time allotted her, she had put together a detailed presentation that would focus on agility, planning, integration, scalability, and competitiveness.
“It will highlight the advantages cloud computing provides in having the real-time ability to predict possible disruptions within the supply chain, and be responsive to them,” Pooja explained.
At the conclusion of that meeting, Valencia had Adrianna make an appointment for her to meet with Shy. The meeting was set for Thursday morning at eleven o’clock. That gave Valencia a little less than forty-eight hours to become an expert on the subject. Two days later Valencia was in Shy’s office presenting her proposal.
“Import-export businesses globally have realized the potential for applying cloud-based solutions into their supply chain strategies and activities, in order to increase profitability,” Valencia began, after a bit of small talk.
“Increasing profitability is the reason we’re in business,” Shy said.
“Small to intermediate sized import-export companies like yours, Mrs. Black, need visibility over the movement of their international trade. You need transactional systems with dashboards that provide im
mediate visibility and alarms that go off when an issue transpires.”
“That’s valuable information to have in real time,” Shy commented.
“It gives your team the ability to quickly analyze the data to find the cause of the problem, and it provides simulations of each situation, and key performance indicators that give management insights to assist in making administrative decisions.”
“What I’m looking for is the ability to drill down on the information that I need quickly. From the tally of cargos for individual shippers, to consignees, right down to the details of each transaction.”
Valencia smiled. “What I’m prepared to show you today is a way for you to have the data that you need to take your business across borders at your fingertips,” she promised, and their meeting began in earnest.
“Very impressive, Valencia. You seem to have an amazing grasp of the industry and exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Black.”
“Do you always make the presentations for your firm?”
“No, I don’t. Although I am involved in every step in the process, I have an excellent team that generally makes client presentations. Under normal circumstances, Pooja Rajani would be making this presentation, and she will be your client services manager once we find the right suite of services to meet your unique business needs.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“You are not just any client, Mrs. Black. I am trying to close an important deal with your husband.” Valencia smiled. “I thought that currying favor with his wife wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“True.”
“You said that I should be honest with your husband. I imagine that advice applied to you as well.”