That was one of the big IT Companies in India. People there had devised unscrupulous & unfair trade practices.
This story dates back to 2003-04 times. That was the time I had just started my business. I was into pure play IT Consulting. But it didn’t take off. Some clients asked me if I can help them find people. That’s how I got into the recruitment business. I wanted to create a niche for myself and focused on few areas – like Technical Architects, Business Analysts, Technical Writers, Testing Professionals etc.
When I was searching for Technical Writers, I accidentally found a lead. As the story goes, I eventually worked with that client.
I started working on their Technical Writer position. I found a candidate, shared the CV with them but they didn’t shortlist her. I had to convince them to shortlist her. They shortlisted & then interviewed the candidate & found her fit for the role. I signed a contract with the client. My contact was a Project Manager and his boss, who was the Practice Manager, signed the contract.
I rolled out an offer to the candidate & the candidate started work. It was a contract position. When it was time for billing, after one month, the HR people called me up and asked me to route the transaction through another vendor. I refused. I was stubborn. I am a rebel.
The practice manager called me up and asked me to kindly agree to what the HR says. He said, “Kannan, it’s a small world, why do you want to create enemies?”. So, I agreed & routed the transaction through another vendor.
After 3 months, they hired her directly and I didn’t get any conversion fee.
HR said, they will offer me an opportunity to work with them directly, in future. And they did. What I didn’t know at that time was this: There was an understanding between HR & the vendors. You won’t be successful here if you too didn’t have an “understanding”. Whatever you infer from this is entirely up to your imagination. 🙂
They wanted resources on contract & asked us to submit the profiles online. But some vendors got heads-up & they finalized on the resources before they opened it up on the portal for other vendors. The rest of us spent valuable time & effort on it only to see the positions getting closed after few days without any updates on our candidates. This went on for several months with no results whatsoever.
I walked out & blacklisted that client.
This was the same client who later had asked another vendor [a friend of mine] to mark up 5% on the salary they pay to their candidates. The justification given by the client was that the vendor does no value addition whatsoever. I asked my friend to ask that client to share their client contracts and tell them that they can deduct 10% from the sale value and pay the balance to them. After all, all of us are only in recruitment business. What value addition does that client do to their clients? Nothing.
Learning:
- If some sales situations are not profitable / sustainable, then we should walk out of that situation at the earliest.
- If a client abuses a seller then that’s not a healthy relationship.
- Not all that glitters is gold.
- There is more power in doing business in a no-nonsense manner, even if it means doing less sales.
Happy Selling!!
#b2bsales #entrepreneurship #kkrocks
