KA | Chapter 11

“Sis, the person in the video said he was a teacher, but he was actually just a streamer! This guy has a really good sense for online trends, he knows how to catch the camera; the playful little lines he said casually were actually all written in the script; and, most importantly, what normal teacher wears an ultra-short skirt to class!”

The principal lady suddenly understood, “Ah, so that’s why it was filmed so nicely, turns out you found an influencer to do it.”

“Yeah, if you let the teacher appear on camera, it definitely wouldn’t achieve this effect. Other salespeople, just to get the money, would probably shoot you carelessly. I’m different…” I looked at the lady and said earnestly, “You were introduced by Mr. Shen, and I’m super close with Mr. Shen, like iron buddies. Just for that, I definitely can’t fool you.”

This lady was added at last week’s education summit. Her core need was to build a social media account, and if we only talked about videos in the end, it would turn into price cutting, and we wouldn’t make much gross profit. Last time I bundled socks to sell to the lady, this time I changed my sales strategy and guided the principal lady to do content.

A streamer was part of the content.

Hiring a streamer could take a commission and raise gross profit, and also film differentiated content for the school that was different from other schools. Consumers recognized the streamer, so the school’s streamer could not be changed easily. After this filming was done, if the principal lady wanted her social media account to continue, she would have to keep hiring a streamer, and then I would keep making money.

The same need could be sold with different gross profits, and hiring a streamer had much higher gross profit than bundled sales.

“There were lots of people doing advertising who came to me before, but I didn’t understand it, so I never cooperated.” The principal lady said, “Xiao Shen was the one I watched grow up since he was little. This is the first time he introduced a friend to me, I trust his judgment.”

After the education summit ended, I thought that with the gimmick of the school providing free marketing planning, I visited more than 10 principals. The principals had extremely high opinions of Shen Yuesheng. With this layer of connections, education clients were much easier to close than selling junk.

Shen Yuesheng definitely would not have guessed that I used his name to bluff and intimidate people, and my frequency of saying “Mr. Shen” was even higher than saying “mom.”

I also didn’t want to forget my benefactor after getting a sugar daddy, but right now mentioning him really was useful!

“As the saying goes, ‘each profession has its own expertise’, if you knew everything, why would you spend money hiring me?”

The lady nodded and asked, “How much does it cost to ask a streamer to shoot videos?”

I took out the pricing sheet I had designed for education clients and said, “The streamer’s follower count, the amount of videos you need, topic planning, and so on will all affect our cooperation fee. It’s not appropriate to calculate the cost of each project separately, so I made three discounted package options for you.”

“The Experience Package is 30,000, it includes 12 videos shot by a streamer with 100,000 followers, posted 4 per week, that is one month’s worth; the Performance Package is 50,000, it includes 24 videos shot by an education industry streamer, and can be posted for 2 months; the Brand Package is 80,000, it includes 36 videos shot by a well-known education industry streamer, and can be posted for one quarter. In addition, it also includes publicity board shooting worth 20,000 yuan, which is beneficial for cultivating customer loyalty and generating brand stickiness.”

“We’re working together for the first time, so I don’t know what it’ll turn out like, so I want to try an Experience Package first.” The lady said, “See if you can give me something extra too. If this goes well this time, next time I’ll buy the Brand Package.”

“For normal clients, I always sell the items separately. It’s just because of the relationship with Mr. Shen that I gave you the package price right away.” I showed a troubled expression. “How about this, for our first cooperation, I’ll also give you 3,000 yuan worth of short video traffic boost. I won’t earn any sales commission on this order, just as a way to make a friend.”

The lady beamed with joy, “Young man, you’re really honest. Don’t worry, if you do a good job, I’ll definitely introduce clients to you.”

After signing a client, I felt relaxed and happy, and hummed a little tune while going downstairs.

No matter how good the content video was, without traffic boost it couldn’t get off the ground. Even if the lady didn’t say it, I was planning to take part of the gross profit and use it for traffic boost.

They said it was no profit, how could there be no profit? What I did was sales, not volunteer work.

The gross profit on the three package options was all 50 percent. This order gave up 3,000 for traffic boost, and there was also 1湳枫2000, which was more than double the repayment and gross profit from the socks lady. If I kept carrying out the strategy of improving gross profit per unit, and signed the same number of clients as last quarter, then this quarter I could complete the assessment!

I struck while the iron was hot and quickly sent messages to the client group I had added at the summit. In just a moment,

「卓越艺术：赵经理好，我下午有时间，您可以来」

「品尚培训：您好，明天上午方便吗」

「飞跃艺考：这周在外地，下周约哈」

For the first time, mass messaging had such a significant effect. I stomped on the gas and drove the Wuling Hongguang up to 140 miles per hour, hurrying to the appointment.

Over the next half month, I met more than 20 principals one after another. I was busy until my feet barely touched the ground, and I ate lunch in the car every day.

Signing orders was ninety percent hard work and ten percent luck. People in sales were all a little superstitious. Lin Yiran wore a fortune-turning bead, Chen Xi often checked horoscope fortunes, and Zhang Yuanji kept goldfish at his workstation in order to improve feng shui…

Today I imitated the big shots, tore off a sheet of paper, stuck it on the center console, wrote the three big characters “沈月生” on it, and put my hands together as I bowed devoutly.

“Thank you, Xiao Shen, for blessing me to finish my performance. This quarter, you’re my food and clothing parent, Xiao Shen, I love you!”

On May Day Labor Day, my colleagues went traveling, and I worked overtime.

The principal took my business card and said thoughtfully, “Your name, it’s both wisdom and courage, isn’t it a little too full?”

I forced out a smile. “Isn’t being both wise and brave pretty good?”

The principal stroked his beard and said in an old-man voice, “Without indifference and detachment, one cannot make one’s ambitions clear.”

What kind of decent person was signing deals while working overtime on May Day?

They were already about to not have enough to eat, and they still wanted to maintain dignity, waiting for pie to fall from the sky?

I also wanted to be detached and ambitious, but my living conditions only allowed me to be a bootlicker.

“Since you don’t like this name…” I said shamelessly, “then I’ll change my name to Zhao Wu.”

The principal laughed loudly, “This kid has something interesting about him.”

I was smiling on the surface, while cursing him eight hundred times in my heart.

You think I’m interesting, but why don’t you sign the order with me and make it interesting?

After doing sales for so long, you were the first person to say this name was bad.

Even when Shen Yuesheng asked me out, it was because my name sounded like a migrant laborer with great stamina!

Now, I no longer restrained my fantasies about Shen Yuesheng, so he would pop into my head every few days.

During the day, he urged me to sign orders. At night, he helped me fall asleep.

Fine, I admitted it, I really did want to do him.

*

KA leadership managed things loosely. We often drifted around outside when meeting clients, but once we signed the order and moved to execution, we had to go back to the company.

After May Day, I carried a stack of contracts and returned to Lanhai full of energy. I walked toward my workstation with full confidence, my steps brisk like the wind.

“Wow, Brother Zhiyong signed an order, and his spirit is totally different now!” Zhang Yuanji made a salute gesture.

I said modestly, “It was all luck.”

Last quarter I had no money to drink tea, so every now and then I borrowed tea leaves from Zhang Yuanji. This quarter I had money, so I bought two boxes of pre-Qingming Longjing tea, one box for myself to drink, and one box for him.

“Brother Zhang, thank you for taking care of me all this time.”

Chen Xi interrupted, “I took care of you too, why didn’t you give me tea!”

“You don’t drink tea, you drink coffee!”

Chen Xi raised his neck. “Then you can give me some coffee too.”

In the past half year at KA, Chen Xi had helped me the most. Logically, I should have given him something, but whenever I thought of his man being Lin Yiran, I didn’t want to give it.

“Ah, I thought about it and forgot.” I scratched my head. “Would you rather have latte or Americano, I’ll order it for you in a bit.”

Chen Xi gave a soft snort and didn’t pick on me anymore.

After handling the contracts, it was almost noon. Just thinking that I still had to coordinate execution in the afternoon made me feel a bit unmotivated. There were still 10 minutes until lunch break, so I closed my eyes at my workstation to rest. Chen Xi deliberately slapped the chair to scare me. “It’s work time, why are you sleeping?”

I opened my eyes and rubbed my temples, weakly saying, “I’ve really been exhausted lately.”

“Has that skinflint Shen been tormenting you?”

Because in our previous cooperation Shen Yuesheng had pushed the gross profit down very low, Chen Xi called him Shen the Skinflint.

“He’s alright, not that tormenting, really.”

Although he would make unreasonable requests, they were still not impossible to accept, and besides, he had proactively introduced clients to me, he was actually pretty nice.

I thought about it and asked, “Why didn’t you cooperate with Pinsheng before?”

Pinsheng had advertising needs all year round. As long as you kept following up, there would be gross profit, and Shen Yuesheng also had favorable feelings toward Chen Xi, so why did Chen Xi give up following up?

I couldn’t figure it out.

“Didn’t I tell you before? Because Shen the Skinflint tormented people, every repayment had to be dragged all the way to the end. I didn’t want to waste time on him.” Chen Xi said, “And also, before, Gu Zheng said he wanted to sign Pinsheng, so I stopped following up.”

“Gu Zheng?” This name sounded a bit familiar. I thought carefully, “The KA hotshot who got a million in repayment right after coming to Lanhai?”

Chen Xi nodded. “He used to sit where you are now. The first time I won the KA hotshot award, I was also sitting in this seat.”

“Since this seat has such good luck, why didn’t you keep sitting here later?”

Chen Xi spread his hands. “Because Brother Lin didn’t want me sitting next to Brother Zhang.”

Caught off guard, I got hit in the face with a mouthful of dog food.

So the old man was actually a vinegar jar.

I very stiffly changed the subject. “Gu Zheng said he wanted to sign Pinsheng, so why didn’t he sign later?”

“Because he quit, ah.”

“He did well and still quit?”

“Gu Zheng wasn’t from the same path as us.” Chen Xi sighed. “His dad was the director of the Culture and Tourism Bureau. The orders he signed before were all relationship-based deals. Coming here to work was just to experience life.”

I had thought it was exaggeration in some videos, but it turned out that in real life there really were this kind of boring people.

Chen Xi looked around and saw that no one was nearby, then leaned closer and said in a low voice, “I’ll tell you a secret, I heard this from Brother Lin, don’t tell anyone else.”

Usually secrets that started with “don’t tell anyone else” had already spread all over the system, but I hadn’t been in the KA system before, so I couldn’t help being a little curious.

“Mm-hmm, go on.”

Chen Xi said, “Gu Zheng very likely dated Shen the Skinflint before.”

“What, what?”

“Hey, keep your voice down!”

I covered my mouth, and my brain automatically connected all the information into a strange logic.

Gu Zheng came to work in Lanhai to chase Shen Yuesheng, saying it was to sign Pinsheng, but in reality it was to get more chances to interact with him;

Gu Zheng and Shen Yuesheng had equivalent status and position, and as long as he wasn’t especially ugly, by Shen Yuesheng’s habit of sleeping with anyone he caught, they probably had already slept together, so Lin Yiran guessed they had dated;

Shen Yuesheng thought Gu Zheng was bad in bed, gave him 200,000 as breakup money, Gu Zheng slept with him and, once his goal was achieved, quit his job.

Shen Yuesheng treated everyone indiscriminately, even the son of the Culture and Tourism Bureau director could be slept with and then tossed aside; if he had a momentary urge and wanted to ask someone out, he asked them out, and if he was in a good mood he introduced clients, free and easy, moody and unpredictable; he specifically targeted the KA people of Lanhai to torment, he was really eating from the grass by the nest, and he truly had character, huh!

Wait, Shen Yuesheng had said he wanted to sleep with Chen Xi, and had slept with Gu Zheng, and they had both sat in this seat.

Then was it my turn next…!?