Whew
I just got a 15,000 page bid package (yes your read that right) to the shipper, and so my hell period of the last week is pretty much behind me. In my business, I bid to be a private operator of public and private recreation facilities, usually on a concession basis (). In this case, the government body we were bidding with required 16 copies of the bid, so really the bid was only about 900 pages long copied 16 times, but even generating 900 pages of business strategy and operations plans is tiring. Not to mention the logistics of making 14,000 copies.
While this may seem to be surprising, it is exactly this type of sales process that attracted me, in part, to this business. Yes, I know, most of you want to barf just thinking about preparing such a document. However, I knew myself well enough at the age of forty when I got into this to know that I am really, really good at this type of complicated written presentation and that I am really, really bad at face-to-face cold-call selling.
Postscript: So far, the business has been fun to run and we have had some real victories in privatizing public recreation, and new opportunities open up every day, as California threatens to close its parks. We do a fair amount of private work now, as well. I can't say that dealing with the government, particularly as a libertarian, is always fun, but so far the business has continued to be a pretty fair straight-up bid process with the best bid winning. However, the moment I start seeing evidence that the bid process is shifting to lobbying and rent-seeking, I'm out of here. I can't even muster up even the smallest desire to play that game.
Update: TJIC writes:
It's fascinating how modern technologies let introverts (or, at least,
people who aren't skilled or interested in traditional glad-handing)
thrive in fields that are thought to require exactly that sort of thing.
He was right the first time. I am an introvert. And this very blog is another great example of his point.
