Feeling nervous about my impending presentation

This week I finally got the Marketing Plan out of the way. I was helped by Sales Manager Frank Hunter who came over from Stevenage each day (I say “helped“, but he generally arrived about 11 o’clock, spent about an hour making calls, went to lunch, and then worked with me for a couple of hours before going back to Stevenage). So every day this week I have worked at my PC, my notes spread out over an adjoining veneered repro retro table (all the furniture in the company is of incredible quality - about five years ago the offices were fitted out with the contents of a furniture wholesaler who had gone out of business).

Occasionally I would stop to look up statistics on the internet or telephone the Bleeding Heart Partnership (our advertising agency) for some media information. Customer analysis was particularly difficult - the company is involved in so many activities, one merging into the other, that the offerings are not properly differentiated. As I worked I had the nagging suspicion that the Plan was rather superficial.

“How’s it going?” asked Frank Hunter on Friday morning, hours before the Plan was to be presented at the monthly Board meeting.

“Too many people are hoarding information” I said. “Nothing really makes sense. I feel like Hercule Poirot trying to unravel a mystery”.

Although Frank Hunter is in his mid-thirties, and has a young daughter (by a partner he is now estranged from), his behaviour is so juvenile that sometimes it is difficult to remember he is senior to me. He knows almost nothing about marketing, and when I explain very basic things to him he looks at me with round-eyed amazement, as if he were a child listening to a teacher (his eyes are a bit off-putting - they are amber-brown in colour, and have a glassy shine to them, the whites of the eyes absolutely clear and unmarked by any red veins). Occasionally he tries to pull rank, and on Wednesday we had quite a confrontation about a section of the Plan (I made him back off by threatening to involve Managing Director Marc Bottoni but afterwards I felt that perhaps I had gone too far. I won the point, but at what long-term cost?).

Friday morning, when I was rushing to get the Plan finished for the Board Meeting, I received almost a confessional from him about how worried he was about his job. “I can’t stop clenching my teeth or biting my tongue” he said, “and I take the top off my pen and put it back on again compulsively”. I didn’t know what to make of all this soul searching, since his public persona had previously been one of overwhelming self-confidence.

An awkward point came when he asked me “Are you going to have a role in deciding the marketing budget?”

I didn’t know what to say to this, since the previous day I had asked Marc Bottoni what money was available and he had told me to use the salaries of the Business Development team (who all report to Frank) as the basis of the new marketing budget. Does this mean the Business Development team (about ten people) is going to be made redundant? And since Marc Bottoni has a reputation for setting people up, will it look as if I am to blame for their dismissal?

At noon I went into the Board Room and laid out my papers, checking the laptop was connected to the projector ready for when the meeting started at two o’clock. Then I went to lunch with Frank Hunter, going across to the company’s cafeteria located in a converted bungalow near the entrance to the site. It was the first time I had had a meal at the cafeteria.

Inside the bungalow was a big kitchen and a dining room, the two rooms connected by a wide hatch (there are also two small sitting rooms hardly anyone ever uses). The dining room was crammed with tables, about ten in number, all of them occupied. There was a heavy smell in the air of fried food (afterwards I was sure my clothes smelled of chips - or was this paranoid imagination?). The noise of fifty or so people talking in the confined space, together with the sound of Radio One relayed through speakers on the walls (David Gray singing The One I Love) produced a loud racket so that it was difficult to talk properly. Frank and I queued at the hatch (I just had a mug of tea and a bowl of apple pie and custard) then went to sit down. Because it was the day of the monthly Board Meeting there were lots of managers in the cafeteria, but Frank led the way to a table occupied by six drivers. He greeted them like they were old friends but they were sullen in response.

“There’s lots of the Executive in here today” said one of the drivers. “Not many blue uniforms - we’re outnumbered. By Executive I mean those with a higher job.”

The only person at the table that I knew was Senior Driver Carl Stockton (aged about thirty, lean build, hair cropped short). He introduced trainee driver (aged eighteen) Matt Leigh. Frank Hunter treated Carl Stockton with jocular familiarity, but it seemed to me that this was not reciprocated. He seemed embarrassed by Frank Hunter’s banter about having to sleep on the lorries when on European jobs, and went red when challenged about the amount of money he gets from the customers in tips.

Feeling nervous about my impending presentation I left the cafeteria early, wanting to go across to the Board Room to check things over one more time. Leaving the noisy dining room, it was a relief to be in the fresh air again. I walked across the big landscaped car park, under the elaborate glass and steel porte cochere, through the automatic sliding doors, up the grand staircase three floors (so that I was slightly out of breath when I reached the top), through the glass-encased PA’s section, and into the inner sanctum of the Board Room…

I remember little about my presentation, which I delivered standing up, using Power Point slides. Some of the managers scribbled furiously as I talked, as if they were taking everything down verbatim (although it is possible that they were completely ignoring me and working on something else). Managing Director Marc Bottoni sat basilisk-like and unblinking, watching me intently. Beside him was the Divisional Managing Director, occasionally nodding. Sales Director Mitch Holmes, from whom I had expected some support, sat with his arms folded, looking uninterested. Only Frank Hunter seemed to react positively, looking animated and nodding vigorously.

After about an hour I finished. Marc Bottoni thanked me for the presentation and without a vote said the company would be adopting the Plan (so that was that!). He then asked me to stay for the rest of the meeting (what did that mean I wonder? Am I to be included in the “Executive” from now on?).

At the end of the meeting it was announced that the business unit had gained the Investors In People standard. The staff from the middle floor came into the Board Room and we all had glasses of fizzy French white wine and slices of a big square sponge cake (“Investors In People” in blue and white icing). Toasts were made, short speeches were given, bunches of flowers were bestowed upon Quality Manager Sue Napier and her team who had guided the unit through the Investors In People process.

I was incredibly tired after the meeting.