An American friend has been interviewing developers of embedded software. Embedded software typically goes inside devices like mobile phones, game consoles, even washing machines now.

“These developers are easily the most capable, the most professional of any supplier I’ve ever met in China.” He’s been living and working in China eight years now. He was very excited at the find.

Of course, not all the developers were equally capable.

“The sales guys of one company had as the first point in their presentation to me that their company had just been bought and they were in the middle of restructuring the business.” My friend shrugged his shoulders in disbelief. “Can you imagine: these guys were actually proud of being in the middle of restructuring and wanted customers to know.” Apparently, the owner of the company was also proud of the fact. My friend told me the owner has several companies he has bought and sold the past ten years. The owner is so proud of the fact, he makes sure that’s included in the slide presentation, as well.

“And then they sent me a 700-word long email with all these technical questions. They were show-off questions; had nothing to do with the RFQ I had sent out.”

“But then there was one vendor that just towered above the rest: the owner personally drove here from Nanjing, spoke English beautifully. Delivered a professional and polished presentation. Had just a few questions for clarification. Then within two days sent a beautiful presentation.”

My friend passed the report on to the engineers back in headquarters, in Europe. “They were really impressed, too.” The proposal included the approach the company would take, the names of the engineers, summaries of the engineers’ backgrounds, the salaries of the engineers, references and more.

“The vendor is planning to open offices in Japan, Europe and America soon.”

Sounds like they’ve got a winning formula.