My Best Friends: Mr. Readmyemail and Mrs ChitchatPhone..

Hi Again fellow readers,

I am back after quite long. I’m near the end of my first month at Apave IO Ltd and well it’s been quite tiring for me the last few weeks.

Loads to do with the event coming up and lots of time spent on the phone, whilst trying to make clients realize why this conference and its theme is what they need for their staff specially in this times of crisis.

 Well it’s true, even if I’m not an expert in selling techniques and marketing schemes, I myself find this conference quite interesting. I mean, who else but an American could best teach us how to face an on-going economic crisis.

My tasks at Apave had been clear from the beginning... Well I thought so... I never knew that signing contracts and sponsorships agreement meant that lot of details-reviewing and time-spending.

Luckily for me, I am in contact with loads of adorable people who are really willing to help and to facilitate my work.

My latest task was to finalise a sponsorship agreement with one of the biggest media group of Mauritius. I thought that it would be a matter of hours BUT how wrong was I.

WOW!!

It took me days if not weeks to finalise an agreement that seemed so simple at the beginning.

Every little tiny detail was to be corrected, specified, modifiable so as to satisfy both parties. I never felt so overloaded by a simple piece of paper.

It came as a surprise (maybe not that much but still a little) that phone agreements were useless in terms of official agreements. Though the discussion’s conclusions still ended up with both parties being happy, we still had to send an email to re-confirm everything a second time.

“Dear sir/madam,

As per our phone conversation, please note that that following the agreement discussed …”

I am becoming a pro at all this official email chat-chat and well it becomes automatic after some times to send a mail just after the phone conversation.

Microsoft word became my best friend and Outlook was my work companion. I had to deal with both parties and with all their expectations and constraints regarding the contract.

But again luckily for me, my contact was a very sympathetic person and she really helped me out on this and was willing to make all the necessary amendments less it did not change the main terms of the agreement.

After loads and tons of corrections, we finally made a deal which managed to satisfy both parties.

 I do understand now what one my Lecturers meant when she talked about working with journalists. It is really tiring. Interesting BUT tiring. You really need to get that diplomatic way of talking to them and to get them to do what you want. But let’s face it; at the end of the day, they still do what they want most of the time.

Take for example, I had to work on the official press kit that was to be released at the beginning of our media plan, and I tried my best to write a press release that would satisfy both my company and the insatiable thirst of journalist for newsworthiness articles.

Again something that should have been dealt with in a day was to be done in a week.

And yet, after all the last-minute-changed details, Journalists still managed to entirely change the press release.

Luckily however, their way of seeing things was to be helpful for us.

After all people do like to read their newspapers and do remember the interesting articles they’ve read in there.

Well, I guess that Patience is the best partner a PR Pro needs to have.

Anyway just to tell, I still have not read loads of your posts but the few that I did, I enjoy seeing that I am not alone in all this bizarre world that is the communication world.