Commerce
As I said, I originally came to New Zealand to do recruitment. It was a job I loved and did well at whilst I lived in the UK. On arrival in New Zealand, I found that the personality traits that matched the job best in the UK (thick skin, dogged determination and complete pessimism regarding the personal ethics of clients, candidates and my competitors) actually made me woefully unsuitable for the successful performance of the role in New Zealand.
Wellingtonians regard themselves as being much more modern and cosmopolitan than rural New Zealanders and in many ways they are, but business here still moves at a snails pace in comparison to the modern world and relationships are built over endless cups of coffee and anecdotes about shared experiences rather than through such trifles as track record, delivery and formalised strategic alliances.
On arrival, my boss (whom I still think was utterly useless) continually laboured that you can’t develop relationships by being ‘transactional’. Being ‘transactional’ was exactly what I enjoyed about being a contract recruiter in the UK. It wasn’t about telling a client how your weekend was. It was about repeadly delivering a service faster, more efficiently and at a previously agreed and negotiated rate. I wasn’t in it to meet new golf buddies.
Anyway, I’ve been out of recruitment for over a year and the frustrations that I had with NZ commerce when I arrived here are now seen and understood.
I recently built a relationship with a business which I think is representative of how things are done here:
I look after a relationship with an organisation, who knows someone else whom runs similar organisation that he recommended us to.
We brought the second organisation on as a client based on the recommendation of the first guy.
I went to a business forum down south that they held and met a bloke who does asset financing for this local consultancy company.
I put him in touch with a guy that does fleet management and often gets asked for people that do asset financing and he recommended the consultancy firm give me a ring, cos there’s a lot of correlation in what we do.
I spoke to the consultancy firm about an idea I had, and they spoke to a bloke from a supplier that I know well - he recommend to the consultancy guy that we speak further.
The consultancy firm and I talked about some relationships that we have, and have identified some prospects from each others pools that we’re keen to work with.
He’s introduced me to this organisation that he knows and I’m introducing him to this organisation that I know.
There was a hell of a lot of talking about nothing (mountains, sheep, holidays and football) to get to this point.
