At the nine o’clock meeting on Tuesday morning, Arinze gave Furo a crash course in sales. Lesson over, he handed Furo his company ID card, a pack of business cards, and a bundle of branded bookmarks that Furo was to present to clients as gifts. The business cards — a simple design of green text on a white background, with ‘Haba! Nigeria Ltd’ stamped on the flip side — bore Furo’s mobile number underneath ‘Frank Whyte’ and his email address underneath ‘Marketing Executive’. Seen in print, his name felt the more his and his title gave him purpose. His plastic ID card displayed a colour photo of an unsmiling man with a buzz of carroty hair and eyes the colour of sun-warmed seawater. It was a face that startled Furo less and less.
After the meeting ended, Furo returned to his office and summoned Headstrong to lug down the carton of sample books that Arinze had selected. To aid Furo in his sales pitch, Arinze had printed out a memo whose first three sheets had the books’ descriptions, snippets of promotional reviews, their list prices and discount ratios. On the penultimate sheet were details about the client company and its owner, Mr Ernest Umukoro; while the last sheet contained some FAQs about Haba! as well as Arinze’s answers, which were in red. Armed with this information, Furo set off for Gbagada, where the company was located. The company name was TASERS, Total Advertising Services. It employed forty-six people, the memo said.
On the drive down, Furo sat in the back seat with the carton of books beside him, and as the silent Headstrong steered the car with steady hands and a ramrod neck, Furo looked through the books. There were twelve titles, two copies of each, twenty-four books in all. He found some titles he had heard of before, even seen vendors flogging in traffic. One such was Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Another was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Furo knew The 7 Habits well, his father owned a copy whose tattered cover used to be a constant sight around the house, and over the years as Furo searched for a job he had picked it up many times with the intention to read but hadn’t ever gotten around to achieving this. Apart from the pain in his neck, his scepticism was blameworthy for his inability to dig into that marker-highlighted bible of his father’s. His highly ineffective, chicken-farming father. A man as blind to his ironies as those book vendors who sweated while wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan My money grows like grass. At least the vendors were disciplined in their execution, they got things done. More to the point, they weren’t sold on the books they were selling.
Returning The 7 Habits to the carton, Furo resolved again to read it — if only the pain in his neck would allow him. At this thought, he jolted forwards in his seat, raised his left hand to rub his neck, swung his head side to side and worked his jaws, then clamped his mouth shut and composed his face as Headstrong cast a startled look in the rear-view mirror.
The pain in his neck was gone.
TASERS was on the top floor of an eight-storey building whose elevator didn’t light up when Furo jabbed the buttons. In a far corner of the lobby the uniformed porter was playing a game of draughts with a rifle-bearing police officer, and when Headstrong, at Furo’s command, walked over to the porter to ask if the elevator was ever coming, the man raised a hand and pointed out the staircase without looking up from the draughtboard. Furo crossed to the unlit stairwell, waited some seconds for his vision to adjust to the shock of darkness, and then, as the sound of Headstrong’s footsteps approached behind him, he set off at a sprint. But five floors up he ran out of breath, staggered huffing on to the landing, then hunched over to find his wind. He was in that position when Headstrong arrived with the carton of books balanced on his head and his mobile phone held out before him, its screen lighting his path. He continued on with his light and load, the echo of his footsteps fading above Furo’s head. Furo waited for the sweat on his face to dry before he resumed his ascent, and as his heavy feet delivered him on to the last-but-one floor, Headstrong jogged past on his way down.
At the stairhead, the door marked TASERS was ajar. Through the gap Furo sighted the carton of books on the reception counter. The flaps hung open. Standing close by was a woman whose sleek black hairpiece was styled like a geisha’s hairdo. She was holding one of the books, flipping through it, but as Furo pushed past the door, her hand stilled in the splayed pages, and she turned around. Furo halted, said good morning, and after the woman returned his greeting, he said: ‘I’m here to see Mr Umukoro. I’m from Haba! Nigeria Limited. My name is Frank Whyte.’
The woman cocked her head and asked, ‘What of Mr Arinze?’ she asked.
‘He sent me,’ Furo replied. ‘I’m the new marketing executive.’
The woman’s face cleared. ‘Marketing executive,’ she said, drawling the words and nodding slowly. ‘It seems Haba! is moving up.’ She extended her hand to the open carton, placed the book in it, and after closing the flaps, she said in a tone that strove to be casual, ‘Your boss usually comes himself. You know he has been trying to sell us books since last year?’ At Furo’s silence, she gave a small smile and said, ‘I’ll tell oga you’re around.’ She strode to a glass-panelled door, buzzed it open and stepped into a long passage, and some time later, through the closed door, Furo heard another door open. He turned away from the door and swept a glance around the reception area, but his mind was elsewhere. In light of the information he’d just got from the woman, that Arinze himself had been to TASERS to sell books — a detail he neglected to mention during their meeting — Furo realised he needed a fresh strategy.
What had Arinze told him this morning? Know your strategy beforehand. Because of what he now knew, what he’d just learned, that was a fail. Convince the client that what you’re selling is what he needs. But Arinze, over several visits, hadn’t succeeded in that. Once you get the client talking, the sale is halfway made. That was it. Furo could feel the seismic tremors of an idea taking shape in his mind, and decided to plant his trust in the impromptu. He would forego any introductions other than a greeting and the handing over of his business card, following which he would spread out the sample books and then ask the client which of the titles he had read. With this new strategy, Furo thought he stood a chance of getting the client talking; and when the door swung open, after the woman announced that oga was ready to see him, he reached for the carton of books, but she said no, leave it, I insist, I’ll have someone bring it in. Without his conversation starter his plan was a non-starter. And so he told the woman not to bother, but she marched forwards and nudged his hand away from the carton, shook her head at his protestations, and said in a firm voice as she guided him by the elbow towards the door: ‘There’s no way I’m letting you carry that heavy load.’
Furo was ushered into an office whose every surface seemed laden with plaques and trophies, the walls covered with framed certificates and photographs of staff receiving framed certificates. Daylight filtered through the blue window screens and gave the room the atmosphere of a stained-glass chapel. The air was thick with the smell of dusty rug. ‘Take a seat,’ the woman whispered before withdrawing. An enormous man in white shirtsleeves, a red bow tie, and yellow-polka-dot braces was hunkered down behind the desk facing the door. When Furo halted at the desk, the man glanced up from his iMac screen and nodded at him to sit before returning his gaze to the playing video, which sounded like a sports car advert, a husky male voice waxing beatific about curves and balance. After the video reached its end, the man turned his cold eyes on Furo and said, ‘So Abu sent you.’ Furo recognised his voice from the video.