Strike While The Iron’s Hot!

A Handheld PC and a little quick thinking land a $150,000 contract.

By James L. Kendrick

I had a presentation meeting with a major oil company here in Houston and went to the meeting accompanied by our marketing representative, who was to do the actual presentation. I was just there to represent management and answer technical questions that might be asked. Ten people from the Client Company were there, ranging from technical people to management – they were the decision makers, capable of awarding us contracts.

As our marketing guy gave his presentation, I pulled out my HP 320LX to take notes on areas we needed to give more or less attention to in future presentations, material the marketing guy needed to get more familiar with, etc. My experience with larger systems (such as notebooks) is that they tend to distract the clients. It’s like you’re hiding behind it so they can’t see what you’re doing. The handheld is far less intrusive and they hardly noticed it.

I loaded a Pocket Word template for a proposal of this type, filled in the information, and was ready to make the proposal in 15 minutes.

I use the “James Kendrick” shorthand method for entering meeting notes. I type in key phrases, a dash, and then an observation. For example: “PreDM- GOM sub-salt.” This phrase tells me the client was interested in “pre-stack depth migration to solve Gulf of Mexico sub-salt imaging problems.” That may not mean much to you, but it means volumes to those of us in the oil business. I find that my notes don’t have to be that comprehensive because these client meetings are normally focused on a given area and I can fill in any gaps from that context.

I developed this method of entering abbreviated notes years ago because my handwriting was so bad. I figured that if I didn’t write as much, I could put a little extra attention on making it legible. This method has carried over well to the H/PCs small keyboard. I’m also going to experiment with a product called InScribe (see review in Handheld PC Magazine Buyer’s Guide, page 66). InScribe adds an alphanumeric keypad to your H/PC’s screen. To enter text, all you do is tap on the appropriate key. I’m going to use it for a full week “in the field” and see if my throughput increases.

A proposal in 15 minutes

As the meeting progressed, I noted each question asked by the clients so I could get a feel for the type of services they really needed and how our company could provide them. Based on the questions they asked it became apparent to me that the real reason they had invited us over was that they had a different, rather large project in mind that they were considering us for. I carefully made notes about this over the course of about an hour as the details and variables about this project were fleshed out.

As soon as I had all the information I needed about the project, I immediately went to work on a proposal. I worked on it as our marketing person continued with his presentation. I already had a proposal template I’d transferred to Pocket Word from my desktop version of Word. I pulled it up and filled in the necessary information. In about 15 minutes I made an actual proposal for their project, including estimates on cost, time involved, and personnel needed for the project. As luck would have it, the manager who made the final decision wasn’t at the meeting. As those present began discussing my proposal, I pulled out my cell phone and FAXED the proposal to the missing manager.

Within five minutes he appeared at the conference room door, apologizing for being tied up. The discussion then turned to the ACTUAL PROPOSAL he had in his hand. We left twenty minutes later with a $150,000 contract in our back pockets, leaving a client convinced that we were technologically more advanced than our competition.

Part of that image, I have no doubt, cost me $700 — the H/PC!