KA | Chapter 19

On Thursday morning, Sun Qiongyin said that I should go to Tianlai tomorrow afternoon.

Since the education summit, I had been in intermittent contact with Tianlai for three months. The first time was sending Sun Qiongyin a general proposal, the second time was a face-to-face visit to pitch to the admissions office director, and this time, if nothing unexpected happened, I should be meeting the principal.

For performance-related positions, Lanhai imposed heavy assessment tasks; for functional positions, it practically wanted one person to do the work of ten. This led to planning taking on too many cases, and after KA got a requirement, it usually needed about a week of scheduling.

Luckily, I had planned ahead. After meeting Tianlai’s admissions office director last time, I had already made the proposal.

Unlike the small fish and shrimp we had talked to in the last quarter, Tianlai Art School had over a thousand students, art exam prep classes starting at thirty thousand, and annual revenue of over a hundred million… I went through the PPT again and again, simulating negotiation scenes and practicing sales talk. Before going to bed, I sent a message to Shen Yuesheng

「Me: Boss, lend me Baodao to drive tomorrow, okay?」

After 5 minutes, there was still no movement on the phone

「Me: Master【small dog cuddles.gif】」

The other side replied instantly

「Clingy Thing: Fine」

「Me: Good night【small dog hug.gif】」

On July 9, 2027, I drove the Baodao and arrived at Tianlai.

Tianlai had closed management, and entering the gate required internal staff to swipe a card. Sun Qiongyin stood at the entrance to meet me.

“Yo, Baodao. Manager Zhao, you must have made a lot doing sales!”

I scratched my head and dressed myself up a bit, “These years I haven’t signed many deals. Mainly, the clients with money are all willing to cooperate with me.”

Sure enough, Sun Qiongyin took the bait, “What’s the biggest deal Manager Zhao has signed?”

“Over a million, I guess.” I tested the waters. “Maybe Tianlai will sign something over two million, and then it’ll become my biggest client.”

Sun Qiongyin said, “Our school has never done any advertising. The principal is very conservative. Not to mention 2 million, I think even 200,000 would be hard.”

Passing the school lobby, I saw a group of boys and girls around 15 or 16, laughing and roughhousing, the boys handsome, the girls pretty.

I asked, “Are they models?”

Sun Qiongyin shook her head, “They’re in the broadcasting and hosting program.”

“The threshold for being a host is this high now?”

Sun Qiongyin nodded, “Parents all hope their children can get on TV. Radio station review requirements are that your features must be decent. To increase the chance of passing the interview, many students need minor adjustments.”

“Minor adjustments… you mean plastic surgery?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t hosting supposed to test written skills?”

“Basic skills are certainly important, but when everyone’s basic skills are about the same, looks become a more important bonus point.”

I could hardly believe it, “They’re all still minors!”

“If they can’t get into radio stations, they’ll most likely end up hosting weddings in the future. Their families have raised them for so many years, of course the parents have to spend big.” Sun Qiongyin joked, “If Manager Zhao went to an interview, you definitely wouldn’t need any minor adjustments.”

I waved my hand, “I know I’m handsome, but my basic skills aren’t good, so I won’t go embarrass myself.”

Now there were students everywhere in college, and even graduate students couldn’t get an offer that satisfied them. The employment environment was nowhere near what it had been for our parents’ generation.

A lot of parents from the 70s and 80s had never been to college, and they transferred their own regrets onto their children. First, they made sure the kids won at the starting line, then they paid for tutoring and special talents, and in the end they spent money to find jobs… They hoped their sons would become dragons and their daughters phoenixes, investing huge amounts of time and spending their entire savings for the children.

Parents exhausted everything they had, wanting to achieve a leap across social classes, paving every road for their children, all just to fulfill the long-held wish that they themselves had failed to become exceptional people.

Sun Qiongyin led me to the reception room. Inside, there was a noisy crowd seated there, including a few familiar faces.

“Xiao Zhao.” Li Hua greeted me.

“Brother Li, what a coincidence!” I walked over and sat beside him. “Didn’t Brother Li go work for the real estate client side? Why are you still here talking to an education client?”

“My son isn’t cut out for studying, so I signed him up for Tianlai’s art class. Last month the art teacher said the principal had a plan for advertising placement, so I came over.”

Right now, wanting to work at one place and quietly make a lot of money was not very realistic. You had to go wherever the business opportunities were, and do whatever made money.

The effective way to catch business opportunities was to have “informants”. My informant was the dance teacher, and Li Hua’s informant was the art teacher.

Salespeople from all kinds of channels gathered here through different informants, all eyeing Tianlai like meat on the block.

“Has Brother Li met Tianlai’s principal before?”

“I haven’t met the principal, only the admissions office director.”

“I’ve only met the director too.” I said. “So it seems like everyone selling here should have all met the director, and the director screened them, for the second round.”

Just now Sun Qiongyin said Tianlai had never done advertising, so the principal should want to hear more salespeople’s opinions, gather strengths from a hundred schools of thought, and finally decide on a suitable promotion plan.

The principal’s idea wasn’t wrong, but salespeople, in order to close deals, would definitely exaggerate. By the end of it, the principal would very likely become someone who didn’t know what she really wanted.

“Institutions that don’t understand anything are the most damn annoying.” Li Hua got irritated. “They act all high and mighty and call in a bunch of people, like they think they’re something special. By the end of the talk, they probably won’t even be worth a stalk of scallion.”

The reception room was noisy and bustling, when the admissions office director pushed open the door and entered. The scene immediately fell silent.

The director had no smile, and said in a rigid, formal manner, “The principal has limited time, so each person only has 10 minutes. The companies whose names I call can come with me to the office now.”

Li Hua kept muttering, “The bosses of listed real estate groups have to respectfully call me ‘Manager Li’, the smaller the institution, the more they like to put on airs. Without a budget of tens of millions, how can they have the nerve to call a bunch of people together to talk? Ten minutes each, and they won’t even tell us the time in advance, making us wait here for an entire afternoon. What, do they really think they’re the sun and the earth has to revolve around them? This way of doing things is doomed to never amount to anything…”

It was true, Pingsheng’s revenue was a hundred times Tianlai’s, Tianlai’s principal was putting on airs, but Shen Yuesheng didn’t have much of a shelf at all.

“Brother Li, we should think on the bright side. Tianlai putting on airs means they value this, have a recruitment plan, and have a budget.”

Li Hua laughed loudly, “You kid really know how to find joy in hardship. Later, big brother will help you scout ahead and see what Tianlai’s principal is really made of.”

“Thanks, Brother Li.”

At half past four in the afternoon, after Li Hua finished his face-to-face meeting, he said briefly and clearly, “Tianlai mainly pushes flight attendants and broadcasting and hosting, budget 30 to 50, and the principal is a pain in the ass.”

I pressed, “30 to 50 for the whole year?”

Li Hua shook his head, “This tiny bit of damn money might not even be enough for spring recruitment. Brother isn’t talking about this kind of unprofitable, annoying crap. Good luck to you.”

I: “……”

Li Hua had his main job and didn’t want to talk, so he could just cut the matter off. I had no clients, so I had to pick meat from a fly’s leg.

In order to get more useful information about Tianlai, I sent a message to Shen Yuesheng

「Me: Are you familiar with Tianlai’s principal」

The other side didn’t reply for 2 minutes, so I added: Master.

「Clingy Thing: Jiang Feifan, a woman in her sixties, likes wearing pink clothes, and has no opinions of her own」

「Me:【small dog thanks.gif】」

Combining the information provided by Shen Yuesheng, Li Hua, and Sun Qiongyin, I estimated: Tianlai’s budget was around 30 per quarter, and the principal didn’t understand advertising and was cautious in making decisions.

For a 60-something principal to fully grasp an advertising and enrollment plan in 10 minutes was as hard as a fantasy tale. To highlight their own advantages, peers would definitely make their recruitment proposals sound incredibly grand. Jiang Feifan had listened to that for an entire afternoon. If I were to talk about similarly homogeneous content again, she would definitely get bored.

So these 10 minutes could not be used to explain the proposal. I had to use a small brick to throw out jade, spark her interest, and then win more time.

The director brought me to the office. Jiang Feifan sat behind the desk, wearing a pink skirt.

To put it nicely, this outfit was: time could not hide a girlish heart; to put it bluntly, it was: awkward and out of place.

Given Jiang Feifan’s pain-in-the-ass personality, she would definitely ask about anything she didn’t understand, so I had to talk about things she could understand.

“Hello, Principal Jiang. I’m Zhao Zhiyong from Lanhai KA, mainly doing recruitment planning for educational institutions.”

Jiang Feifan didn’t even raise her head, “Which schools have you worked with?”

“Pingsheng.”

“Pingsheng?” Jiang Feifan became interested and looked up to ask, “Who at Pingsheng did you talk to?”

“Shen Yuesheng.”

The moment the five words “Pingsheng Shen Yuesheng” came out, light instantly filled Jiang Feifan’s cloudy old eyes, and she asked further, “What project did Pingsheng cooperate with you on?”

“Quite a lot.” I lied through my teeth. “Offline execution, event planning, enrollment promotion… I handled all of Pingsheng’s advertising business. Oh right, last month President Shen said he wanted to open beauty industry courses, and asked me to make a separate enrollment proposal recently.”

After entering the office, I had been answering passively, but in fact every answer had a hook, leading Jiang Feifan to ask more. Jiang Feifan had no opinion of her own, so she would definitely be interested in the enrollment proposal of an industry leader. That was why I used Pingsheng as the entry point, raising my own value while also getting her to focus on the recruitment proposal.

Of course, all of this was based on one premise: I was certain Shen Yuesheng wouldn’t expose me.

Because I had my master backing me up, I had no worries.

It was Shen Yuesheng who gave me the confidence to negotiate.

Jiang Feifan said solemnly, “Tianlai is not like a listed education group with that kind of strength, but Pingsheng only developed over these past three to five years. We can learn from the things they did well.”

The common problem with famous school principals was that they always spoke with hidden meanings.

Jiang Feifan thought Pingsheng had seized the opportunity of education reform, developed rapidly but without hard power, and that with Pingsheng’s example ahead, Tianlai did not need to cross the river by feeling the stones.

She wanted to gain a sense of superiority by belittling the industry leader, without first weighing how much she herself was worth.

A sixty-year-old woman with only a girlish heart, whose own positioning was not clear enough, was arrogant, conceited, and willful to the end.

I didn’t expose what she was thinking, but instead told her a story: “My younger brother failed the middle school entrance exam by less than 300 points. My second aunt thought he should have a way out in the future, so she signed him up for art class. My second aunt had no job, and my second uncle was an ordinary employee. To support my younger brother as an art student, they sold everything they had and gave all they owned. I once asked my second aunt, when she originally signed my younger brother up for art class, did she know he would have to spend several hundred thousand later? She said: I knew, I chose the most expensive school to sign him up for right away!”

“No one forced my second aunt to spend so much money signing up for art class, she wanted to sign up herself. She wanted to fight for an opportunity for my younger brother. Even knowing that the number of admissions at famous art schools for art exams was limited, she would still often think: what if my kid can make it!”

“And the core factor that made her have this thought was the school’s brand awareness.”

Every family that doted on their children was a huge business opportunity for educational institutions.

Tianlai was my sugar daddy, and the parents were Tianlai’s sugar daddies, so if I analyzed the demand deeply from the parents’ perspective, I could turn the tables and become Tianlai’s sugar daddy.

The 10 minutes passed in the blink of an eye. I didn’t talk about the product, didn’t talk about the proposal, and didn’t even mention Tianlai. This was the first time I used this kind of guided negotiation method, only to move Jiang Feifan and stand out among the many media outlets.

As expected, Jiang Feifan fell into my net, started using honorifics, her speaking speed was a little fast, and one could even say she was impatient, “May I ask, Manager Zhao, how should Tianlai improve its brand awareness?”