Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Monday morning.
At 8:40, when Lin Yao arrived at the 26th floor of the Yueyang Building, she saw a tall girl with a mug in her hand as soon as she entered the door.
Lin Yao almost thought she had arrived at the wrong floor, but Lingyun Industry was the only business on the 26th floor of the Yueyang Building.
The girl didn’t seem to see her and walked right past her into the pantry.
Auntie Yuan had finished wiping down all the tables in the big office, and she greeted Lin Yao with a smile.
Soon, the girl holding the mug came back from the pantry. She sat down in the seat opposite of Lin Yao and slowly drank the hot water in the mug.
Upon seeing how standoffish and hard to approach the girl appeared, Lin Yao abandoned the idea of greeting her.
She turned on her computer and was ready to check for new emails. Lingyun Industry’s old customers occasionally sent emails over.
Lin Yao usually read the emails before Lin Yun arrived at the company, sorted out the important ones to bring to Lin Yun’s attention, and then replied to them one by one.
In the next ten minutes, five new employees came to report in one after another, and all of them were girls.
At 8:55, when Lin Yun walked into Lingyun Industry, she discovered that seven girls of similar ages were sitting in the large, empty office. Perhaps it was because they were still unfamiliar with each other, but everyone sat far away from each other, and no one appeared to have the intention of breaking the ice.
What surprised her even more was that, usually, there were always calls coming in at this time, but not today. The office seemed extremely quiet and especially gloomy. This vibe was obviously different from what she had expected.
The appearance of Lin Yun was like a sudden light shining into a dark world, instantly breaking the silence of a room.
The people in the office all stood up in unison and greeted her.
“Hello!”
“Good morning!”
“Greetings!”
Lin Yao, as usual, met her gaze and greeted, “Good morning, Director Lin!”
Everyone was watching Lin Yun, and Lin Yun was looking at the people in front of her.
They were chubby, skinny, tall and short, didn’t look very neat, and had rather bizarre fashion senses, not to mention they didn’t appear very collaborative… but nonetheless, they made the office feel a little less deserted.
A smile appeared on Lin Yun’s face.
“Good morning, everyone!”
******
In the conference room, everyone sat around the oval conference table.
Lin Yun was naturally the one sitting in the head seat. “Today is Monday, and I specifically called you all in for a morning meeting.”
Lin Yao hurriedly opened the notebook in her hand and prepared to take meeting notes.
“First of all, let’s get to know each other. I am Lin Yun, the Director of Lingyun Industry.” She pointed to Lin Yao on her left and said, “This is Lin Yao, our company’s office staff.”
Lin Yao quickly stood up. “Hello everyone! Just call me Xiao Lin.”
Lin Yun nodded, then motioned for her to sit down. Then she pointed at the tall, cold-looking beauty sitting opposite of Lin Yao. “This is Jian Wen, a foreign trade salesperson.”
“Hello everyone, I am Jian Wen.”
When Jian Wen spoke, she had a slight Northeastern accent. She had long dark hair and a pair of slightly slanted, Phoenix eyes. She was an extremely alluring girl.
Lin Yao remembered that Jian Wen was the first job applicant she received last Wednesday.
Lin Yao had also seen Jian Wen’s resume. She was a high school English teacher not that long ago, and at the moment, she was the only one with TEM8 certifications at Lingyun Industry.
“This is Zheng Yuning, a foreign trade salesperson.”
“Hello everyone, I am Zheng Yuning, from Shaanxi, please take care of me!”
…
After several people introduced themselves, Lin Yun briefly introduced the development history of Lingyun Industry. The company was established five years ago, and its main business was the import and export of machinery products. It moved from Guangzhou to Hangzhou just a month ago.
Then Lin Yun also talked about the company’s development plans for the next few years, such as the second round of recruitment and the third round of recruitment after the Spring Festival. They strived to fill up the office within three years and talked about what development platform the company could provide to the employees in the future.
Finally, it was time to discuss the topic of employee welfare benefits and the promotion path that everyone was most concerned about. For example, every salesperson would undertake a performance assessment every month. Any salesperson who did not perform well after three months and who didn’t make any progress would be fired.
If you passed the assessment before the three months were up, then you would be able to become a permanent employee early. After joining, your salary would increase by 50%, and then a specific commission percentage would be given. The commission rate would be long-term and fixed.
That was to say, as long as the new customer that the salesperson brought in collaborated with Lingyun Industry, the salesperson would continue receiving commissions with no limit until they left Lingyun Industry.
Lin Yao was watching Lin Yun as she wrote down notes from the meeting. The more she listened, the more reasonable Lin Yun’s words sounded. She had a mountain-like imposing aura, and she was very good at expressing her thoughts. You could practically hear how emotionally involved and eager the six saleswomen were.
Lin Yao was an office worker, so there was no performance to be appraised for the time being. Whether she left or stayed mainly depended solely on Lin Yun.
At the end of the meeting, Lin Yun announced, “I will hold a morning meeting every Monday at 9 am, can everyone remember that?”
“Got it!”
“Meeting adjourned!”
******
Lingyun Industry’s office wasn’t small, but there were still too few people in it.
To make management easier, Lin Yun slightly adjusted the seats so that the seven of them would sit next to each other.
The seating positions of Jian Wen and Lin Yao remain unchanged, meaning that they would both sit face-to-face from now on.
It was impossible for Lin Yao to sit opposite of Jian Wen without feeling nervous.
However, she secretly thought, “This way, won’t she have the opportunity to steal knowledge and information from the boss?”
During the morning meeting, Lin Yao was actually quite intrigued by the various platforms and benefits that Lin Yun said would be provided to the salespeople.
Lin Yao chose to be office staff because she knew that her current qualifications were nowhere near high enough to be a foreign trade salesperson at a startup company. But she didn’t want to do office staff work forever.
Lin Yao didn’t have that much knowledge about the income levels of foreign trade salespeople at other companies. Still, she heard Jiang Mingshu say that at Orlando Apparel, the annual income of a foreign trade salesperson was two to three million yuan, and that was merely the income of those that didn’t perform that well.
Lingyun Industry and Orlando couldn’t compare, just like she couldn’t compare with Orlando’s elite. Still, according to Lin Yun’s plan, an annual salary of a 100,000 yuan or more wouldn’t be out of the question, right?
Of course, that would be after a few years.
At present, Lingyun Industry’s sales platform wasn’t established yet, and the domestic and foreign trade fairs wouldn’t be planned until the following year or the year after that.
In fact, this time a week ago, Lin Yun was merely a lone-wolf boss!
In one week, Lingyun Industry’s boss, employees and cleaning staff all amounted to only nine people in total!
In the large clothing sample room, the clothing samples took up less than one-fifth of the place, and the room appeared just as empty as the office did.
Those foreign trade salespeople entrusted with important tasks could only look at the product catalog at the moment to get a preliminary understanding of the product.
The salespeople were actually looking at the product catalogs of other companies, such as ACG, a domestic brand, or well-known foreign companies such as Graf and Sil.
The catalogs of these large companies were complete, detailed, and beautifully printed. In comparison, Lingyun Industry’s own catalog, printed on A4 paper, paled in comparison.
Lin Yao noticed that foreign trade salespeople weren’t just staring at the catalog, they were also researching relevant information about factories or online customers to prepare for the next market development.
Lin Yao was different from them. As an office staff worker, there were old emails and orders from old customers waiting for her to process every day.
Lin Yao felt that due to her current level of English and Lingyun Industry’s existing resources, doing office work was the best option for her.