Ahlers Middle East was a shipping company based in Antwerp with their Middle East office in Dubai. I created a sales manual to explain the company's activities and services in the Middle East. Its purpose was to explain to new employees and potential clients how their company assured their cargo was safe and how they dealt with unique difficulties associated with going through different borders i.e Saudi Arabia and difficult routes i.e Afghanistan.
I was fairly motivated as I felt that I was actually contributing to the company as they were going to use the sales manual I had created and weren't just giving me activities to pass time like at WME in my second week where I just design air conditioning systems for past projects.
I also made a few recommendations; one of them being how they should change their slogan from "Creators of opportunity" to "Logistical and Maritime Services" as it is more suitable for a shipping company and cheesy slogans don’t work when your target audience is made up of grown adults representing large corporations such as BP and Total. He agreed and told me that he had suggested that to the company’s chairman in Belgium but he disagreed. Despite that he has made the decision to change it anyways in the Middle East region. This allowed me to learn about how people in the corporate world deal with differences of opinions.
Through talking to the person who set up the work experience placement in Ahlers I learnt about the company’s past and how he decreased the company’s overheads which allowed them to be more competitive and increase profitability. Such as reducing the number of people working there among other things. I also learnt how business development in a business which doesn’t deal with the everyday consumer works as it is much more complicated and time consuming and there is no rule of thumb when contacting someone to offer them your services.
