The ringing was faint. Still the dazed mind of Rodney Marsh could hear it. 5:30 AM. The delightful dream of swimming on the blue Caribbean waters was fading away. Numbers, with a wicked grin, started appearing from nowhere; the numbers that he has been contemplating almost every second in the last few days, the very dreaded numbers that he has to present in front of a team of ruthless money making machines; the management board of his company.
Prima-Dona Energy Consulting was founded on the very same day the late Steve Jobs of Apple stood in front of a packed audience and showed them the first iPhone, Jan 9th 2007. Started with the aim of providing consulting services for government agencies, the rapid growth rate of the firm placed them inside the pages of all leading business magazines.
Alex Blovak an early immigrant from the old Czechoslovakia, experienced poverty first hand in his home country and vouched he will never face it again. Moving to United States with one goal in his mind – make tones of money and his method was doing anything and everything aggressively. The same aggressiveness is running in the corporate culture of Prima-Dona, the company he started; aggressive growth, aggressive undercutting, aggressive diversifying and what not.
Last year, on a summer morning, after the third hole on Pebble Beach, Alex had given Rodney a four page file with a series of numbers marked with perfect red ovals; the sales targets he wanted to see in a year. When Alex says he wants to see it, it means he must see it - nothing less. A year has passed by so fast and the targets were yet so far.
The tall sixteen floor building with dark stained glasses covering all the sides stands radiating an eerie sense of power to the business housed inside; the headquarters of Prima-Dona.
Rodney drove through the security gates, the same thing he has been doing religiously for the last so many months.
“Cannot afford to lose this job. Money is good” thoughts were drumming inside his head. “Need to achieve the targets. No compromise on that with Alex” the more he thought, the more pressure he felt.
The ringing was faint again.
Good that it helped to break the train of thoughts. Black and white photo of Mike, his old colleague, now an independent government contractor stared at him from his phone. “Rod, Need a favor to ask” the cheerful voice of his old friend made Rodney smile “Sending you an email with a link. Trying to build a professional profile for myself on invouch, you see. Give me a testimonial will you?”
This was the first time someone was mentioning about invouch to Rodney. He was curious. “Hey Mike, what is this invouch?” He could see Mike’s smile in his mind’s mirror “Rod, check out www.invouch.com. All information you need is there. Call me if you need okay?” Phone went dead.
Smell of the new Macbook Pro gave an adrenaline rush every time it was opened, like enticing him to do something wild with it each time. His fingers were still not accustomed to the sensitive touchpad of the artistic marvel that they call, the Mac. The Safari web browser was eagerly looking at Rodney, waiting for him to give its food. He typed in www.invouch.com and the screen displayed the vivid orange colored logo and the simplistic home page of invouch.
A social network exclusively for businesses that helps in managing testimonial collection, he was hooked. Building a profile was a breeze. He connected it to his Facebook and Twitter accounts. On the right hand corner the orange link announced the testimonial request from Mike. Leaving a testimonial with the help of the hint-text from Mike, it didn’t take a minute.
“Wow!”
Rod took his Rolodex. Long fingers busily started sifting the cards. Old clients, suppliers and those business contacts with whom he worked – his fingers graced those cards after such a long time. Within 10 minutes he had send out 25 testimonial invitations and then it started coming in; strong positive testimonials, giving the inspiration he needed badly for so many days. His invouch profile was getting filled up with testimonials so fast. “Was this so easy?”
Then it happened again, the same old ringing.
It was David Humphrey, one of his old clients. “It has been seven months since I talked to him. What does this guy want?” Rod’s mind was racing. There was a slight shivering on his fingers when he pressed the answer button on his phone.
“Hi Dave, How are you? Long time!” a slight tremor in his voice.
“Doing great Rod” the booming voice has not changed even a bit after all this time “Yeah, it has been some time. Our business took off so fast we couldn’t even imagine. Been swamped with so many new responsibilities, making me feel like twenty four hours in a day is not enough. It has been really crazy here. Look, Rod, the reason I called, I might be having a very prospective business opportunity for you. We are launching a multi-million dollar project in Rwanda in next few months and we need your expertize to do the initial prep phase. What you say?”
Rod felt his throat suddenly go dry. It was so unexpected. Things were happening so fast. “Sure Dave. Let’s meet for coffee and discuss” was all he could say.
“Perfect” Dave boomed again “how about tomorrow 4 PM at my office?”
“Sure thing” said Rod’s meek voice.
“Great. See you tomorrow” and the line went quiet.
He couldn’t believe what just happened.
Epilogue
That day the phone rang three more times like this. Old clients touching base, giving leads to new business. Those numbers didn’t look scary anymore. Rod now lives in the virtual world of invouch, interacting and connecting with his old clients. Repeat business has been spreading smiles across the management board of Prima-Dona. Alex still plays golf at Pebble Beach. And for Rod, he has a nice little cottage overlooking clear blue waters of the Caribbean from where he works six months in a year and all this because he built a business profile for Prima-Dona on invouch.
Article by Invouch
Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.
