Chapter 46: Ways to Spend Money
When the Finance Department saw that the Design Department had taken the lead, they were not willing to be outdone. The director immediately knocked on the door and came in to give a brief report on the accounts of the overtime work in the past two days.
Lin Ruoyan didn't know much about finances, but the company's overall spending sounded too low. Even if they included the 30 million yuan film investment, the 20 million yuan design contracts they'd signed this month, and the overseas travel expenses, it still wouldn't add up to 100 million yuan.
So she still needs to figure out how to reasonably spend tens of millions of dollars on the project.
The CFO didn't dare ask why CEO Lin was so gloomy, as she had no idea it was because he wasn't meeting his spending targets. She assumed it was due to excessive expenses in the early days of the company, but fortunately, the company had no debt, and once it got going, monthly expenses would drop sharply. She could only offer some conventional advice on saving money, but seeing CEO Lin's increasingly serious expression, she reflected on herself, made an excuse, and quickly slipped away.
What made Lin Ruoyan feel better next was the interview with the marketing director.
In everyone's mind, the departments that spend money in real estate companies are definitely design, engineering, and cost. Marketing, on the other hand, is the department that generates revenue for the company. However, Lin Ruoyan knows that good marketing requires significant upfront investment. This is especially true when selling luxury properties, where long construction times and discerning clients create lengthy sales cycles. It's best to build a model apartment first to slowly build up a customer base.
This type of model room is usually a temporary structure, renting land to build a small building, or renting a large space in a luxury city and dividing it into real luxury decoration. It is not difficult to spend tens of millions. Once the marketing director is decided, someone will be able to take care of the model room.
So Lin Ruoyan thought it through early on. The marketing director she wanted to choose had to be someone who could spend money, and it would be best if he had experience in promoting model rooms in other places.
However, every marketing director candidate who dares to come in for an interview will first talk about how much money they've made for the company, then go on to explain how they leveraged their girlfriends' resources and cut costs during the initial marketing phase. There are actually many strategies for reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Selling a house is like selling goods; many of the principles apply. Bosses love to hear low initial investment, and if you want to sell quickly, you should sell at a low profit margin and in large quantities.
With the above ideas, you will definitely have no problem applying for ordinary commercial housing sales positions.
However, this was far from what Lin Ruoyan had expected. She wished the new marketing director could cover more than half of her large expenses in the coming months.
Lin Ruoyan then patiently listened to the self-introductions of several candidates one by one, trying to find those who were relatively willing to spend money in the early stage from their boasting. If that didn't work, she would try to pick the best from the worst, after all, she might not live to see the day when the house could be officially sold.
When Lu Gan arrived at the company for his interview as instructed, he saw several candidates ahead of him, each leaving with a smug look on their faces, feeling even more frustrated. He thought he was just someone HR had brought in to fill the gaps in order to meet their KPIs.
Although he used to sell houses and had been in the sales industry for more than ten years, he had almost no achievements to brag about. No matter what he sold, most of the projects did not have a good ending. It was just tears to talk about it.
He was very grateful to the company's human resources department for not being intimidated by his resume and giving him a chance to interview.
Little did he know that at this time, Human Resources Director Wen Erya was angry about Lu Gan's matter.
Wen Erya angrily scolded her subordinates, "I told you to check these people's resumes one by one yesterday. The projects that Lu Gan wrote about are all true, and he did serve as the sales director or deputy director for these projects. But you need to look at the results of these projects and the related companies!"
The subordinate was also filled with grievance. He had spent a lot of effort verifying that the projects were real and that the person in charge was Lu Gan. Who could have imagined that the projects would eventually fail? How could someone be so unlucky? Every project he sold, whether it was a house or something else, either lost money and was left unfinished or the boss absconded with the money. It was clear that this person had both ability and luck.
The question is, how did he find those jobs before? Is he deliberately chosen to be the scapegoat?
Seeing her subordinate's face full of apologies, Wen Erya didn't dare criticize him too much. After all, such misfortunes weren't common. She'd only occasionally heard from other friends about Lu Gan's deeds, but someone like her, who had only graduated a couple of years earlier, probably wouldn't have considered it that way.
Lu Gan was waiting outside. Since he was already here, it would be disrespectful to just send him away. It would also spread rumors, so Wen Erya cleverly arranged Lu Gan to be the last one in line. She had observed that Boss Lin generally selected his candidates from the first few and didn't have the patience to interview all of them.
This time, the selection of a marketing director was probably so important because it affected the company's future profits that they arranged six interviews in one day. They also specifically stated that she would be interviewed individually.
Based on the performance and ability of the directors she had previously selected, Wen Erya now fully believed that Lin Ruoyan had a unique way of selecting people. After all, she had screened the candidates first, so she felt confident in choosing any one of them.
The first few people who went in for the interview were all very talented, and Mr. Lin was one of the last few. The interview time was getting shorter and shorter. Perhaps a candidate had already been chosen, and the ones who came in for the interview were just checking the situation.
So she annotated Lu Gan's resume with a reminder and took the resume and the candidate to General Manager Lin's office. She figured that after reading this line, General Manager Lin would probably quickly dismiss Lu Gan. So she didn't have to worry.
Lin Ruoyan sat in the office and looked at the resume in her hand.
Previously, the Human Resources Department would annotate some tips on everyone's resume, some of which were to recommend the person's strengths, and some were to point out the person's shortcomings.
But this resume only has one line of words: All the projects this person participated in or the companies he joined failed.
Most bosses would probably think, "Is this just HR calling in to fill the numbers?" Then there's no need for the boss to interview them personally. Since Wen Erya called them in and didn't find any other excuse to send them away, there must be something good about them.
Lin Ruoyan was a little disappointed with the previous ones, but the last one was not a big deal.
After the standard self-introduction, Lin Ruoyan didn't intend to let the candidate speak completely as she had just done. Instead, she got straight to the point and asked, "Let's talk about this. If you were the marketing director of my company, selling luxury homes, what would your sales plan be?"
Lu Gan thought to himself that he wasn't just here to meet his manpower KPI; he was probably also being tricked into a sales plan. He had researched the project before arriving and knew the company had paid a high price for the land. Based on his previous experience, he roughly estimated that selling ordinary residential properties would likely not generate a profit on the land investment alone. So, he had considered selling luxury properties.
But that was experience he could contribute after he got the job. He had completely given up hope of ever getting a job at this company. He had just seen a familiar face, a veteran in the industry who had once sold over a hundred houses a month. How could the boss choose someone like that who had interviewed before him?
In that case, he might as well take this opportunity to speak his mind.
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