Is Yellow Gold?

My beginning in the Yellow Pages business

After working for over 30 years in the Yellow Pages industry in Asia environment, I thought it would be a good idea to just pen what I have gone through, the peaks and valleys of yellow pages business.

I started off by coincidence, meeting with a chance meeting of an old friend, Mr Emmanuel Joseph from the then General Telephone Directory Co; Ltd in 1978. At which time, I was not working having not been able to successfully run my own business. He told me that there was an opening for some management trainee positions in his company and would I be interested to join in? I gingerly said, "Well, I am not too sure what yellow pages is all about as I last used it was when I was a salesman at Ford Motors and used it to as my leads to call on customers." Emmanuel was a patient person explained to me from the publishing perspective and in a gist it is another powerful form of advertising and which I came to know later - the Directional medium.

When I left him, I went to ask my friend, Mr Tay Tatt Cheng who was then the Managing Director of CAM Associates, a local advertising agency. His advice was its a once a year book and looked interesting because the entire businesses in Singapore was in that book. I certainly was delighted to know that whatever it is, its a resource rich book and one can use this book to look for information. It was used by sales persons to look for customers as I did before, c0nsumers can certainly used to check on availability of products and emergency buyers to call for their plumbers before the kitchen is flooded. Well, a lot of potential then.

If I do not make it, at least, I would be able to know the market quite well to move on to the next job... I smiled.

I applied for the position of a management trainee and it was not about 3 months later that I joined the General Telephone Directory Co; Ltd. There were about 6 of us in this group of trainees. All graduates - Mr. Chua and myself were educated in United Kingdom, the rest were from local universities. One of them dropped out on the first day, and we were down to 5 persons.

The training in those days were done by the managers themselves who rotated to give their time off to teach us the ropes of selling. Therefore, it was actually a hands-on approach after going through the theoritical parts. The entire sales training took 2 weeks. During that time, I was literally poor! Well, although the title is that of Management Trainees, I was to start off at the bottom rung - a sales representative.

Well, biting my pride and all the prejudices, I persevered and stayed on the entire training sessions, participating in the selling process and taking part in all their little tests with good grades. Just imagine, being paid S$180.00! because there was not commission and transport allowance while one was on training. As the locals would say at that time, "Aiyoh! so chum" meaning to say, so little, how to survive?

Luckily, I had an elder brother, Ron, his name was who believed in me. He helped me with my living expenses when I was studying in the UK. Now he was to help once again because my 2 years since my return from UK was a unsuccessful venture into the business side that left me high and dry.

Well, I had something to prove right? Yes, you bet! From what I was taught in class and the role play, I practiced very hard at every opportunity when time allowed it. During that time, I literally stood in front of the mirror to say aloud the canned scripts. Luckily, I was a trained actor and a relatively good singer. I was able to memorize those lines. As a visualiser, I was able to practice drawing artwork and did many kinds of planning in a sales process. In order not to make it too hard and stressed me out, I created fun around it.

Not only were the Sales Managers like Robert, Henry, Edward and Dominic helpful in the training but the production people were involved as well. So the entire front and back end people were on hand to give us the headstart that is important. We had the right foundation. The then GM, Mr. Ramasamy and production Manager, Mr. Khoo and publishing manager, Mr. Emmanuel Joseph were there for us. The operations level was next, Messers Goh Boon Sim, Koh Fuei Fang, Seow Chin How, Mrs Ang and others were there to provide us the finer points of the sales and production process from a manual system perspective.

Today, we would see the IT people, art directors with their computer tools making up the advertisements so different from the old days where every display adverisement is hand drawn and the entire book is paged by manual - its hands job! All hands on deck!

I was lucky that with this type of interpersonal relationships training which is missing in this day and age because we cared about streamlining and productivity. We had the support of the back end and there was no other ways but to move forward and do our best.

Our then MD was Mr. Whiteman. I remembered that a few days after graduation, we were invited to his residence up in Ardmore Drive, off Orchard Road. His unit no kind of got stuck in my mind for that 1706 is the same no as the price of a 1/8 page advertisement in the Singapore Yellow Pages. His invitation to us to see him was important factor to allow that we support the Management Trainees and asked for the feedback whether we did have the support of the entire company, for which we all readily approved of.

Soon after this, 2 of them dropped out leaving only 3 of us behind. Mr. Wong, Mr. Chua and myself to continue the renewal process of the company.

From all these, I can draw that to be successful in the business and also helping the new recruits to stay on, the top people must be involved in the training too. This gives the freshies the bonding that even the MD in his busiest schedule still made it a point to give me the attention. There are many in the then GTDC company that stayed on for more than 30 years and some of them were their first job.

A syllabus which provides the trainee with the breadth of knowledge - esp. the basic knowledge is important. That is is the building blocks of the understanding of Yellow Pages selling and publishing taught in the class and adequately too? With complete understanding especially for Management trainees, it would allow them to make their own forays into areas that would help the company later.