So here’s a post that is not about cars. I was surfing the web yesterday and ran into my own website. Always a treat. But it gave me the impression I have done little else than slide cars on ice, look at cars from strange angles and driven cars on maffia turf. So I checked my weblog against my calendar and it seems there are a lot of omissions. I’ve been working on an iPad presentation tool together with web maestro Sander Tiekstra. As soon as we can we will show you some results. The visual identity of Drents Archief is also coming along nicely and will be available for a sneak preview soon. Then there’s the CBK Groningen for whom I will be an external advisor for the second time running. A project about the heart of the city needs a gifted student from Groningen. None of these involve cars. Just wanted to let you know.

DHV is a big company that does consulting and engineering for transportation, water, building, industry and so on. One of their 5500 employees rang me up to talk about their sales process. Like most firms they’ve been working with brochures, leaflets and other paperwork filled with endless stories. But unlike most they’d discovered that the people are doing the selling and the leaflets are mostly waste. And they’re right of course.

When you are about to hire someone for a multimillion euro deal, you expect them to have shiny brochures written by copywriters who aren’t engineers or consultants. So the basis of negotiating is usually:

a) trust
b) previous experiences
c) the bottom line: bang for your buck

So out with the old and in with the new. Question for now is, what should the new be? I’ll be working on that for the next couple of weeks.