Chapter Forty-One: Promotion Progress (Please Recommend and Bookmark)

Seeing that things surrounding The Chronicles of the Ming Dynasty had finally settled down, Zhou Xuan began writing the remaining volumes, hoping to finish the last two before the new school term began.

As for the progress Wei Lian and the others were making in promoting the internet cafe management system, Wei Lian called Zhou Xuan every night to report how work was going.

His reports covered not only the number of internet cafes visited each day, but also company registration, hiring, and everything else besides.

Zhou Xuan trusted Wei Lian completely, though in the future the company’s finances would still need someone assigned to handle them separately, so as to avoid many potential problems. But for now everything was still in the startup stage: the business had yet to truly get off the ground, and staffing was still being arranged. There was no choice but to leave things as they were.

Wei Lian and Zhou Changxing had arrived in the provincial capital, Rongcheng, on the sixth. By the eleventh, they had already been there five days. Though it had only been a short five days, the results they had achieved were quite impressive.

On the seventh, Wei Lian first met with the two classmates he had already called in advance and explained the promotion work for the internet cafe management system in detail.

With a base salary of fifteen hundred yuan a month, plus a bonus commission calculated from monthly sales of the system, both of them accepted without hesitation.

The two resigned on the seventh, then followed Wei Lian to begin the hiring drive. One handled recruitment, the other training.

And so, starting on the seventh, Wei Lian and the others gradually recruited fifteen promoters at the talent market. On the eighth, they spent a full day training them so that the staff could become familiar with the software’s functions and configuration.

In other words, only on the ninth and tenth did Wei Lian and the others formally begin promoting the Huanyu Internet Cafe Management System. The promotion work itself was overseen by Zhou Changxing. Including Zhou Changxing himself, they split into four-person teams and began from the east, west, south, and north, spreading out across the city to promote the system.

Thus, over the course of two days, sixteen people fanned out through streets and alleys, constantly moving among computer rooms and internet cafes, tirelessly and earnestly pitching the internet cafe management system.

The smoothness of the promotion work exceeded everyone’s expectations. When most cafe owners saw Zhou Changxing and the others in suits and leather shoes, carrying briefcases and complete sets of polished brochures and user manuals, they were quickly won over by the system’s powerful functions. Of course, that was only when compared with the fact that no such software existed yet at this time. Compared with the mature systems of later years, Zhou Xuan had deliberately removed or hidden some features, planning to update them gradually in future versions.

There was not even any need for a trial period. In just two days, the four teams had already sold more than thirty sets of the Huanyu Internet Cafe Management System, averaging nearly twenty sets a day, for gross revenue of over one hundred thousand yuan. The fifteen newly hired promoters alone had earned seven or eight thousand yuan in commission, which worked out to about five hundred yuan per person.

And that was only the income from two days. It filled the salespeople who had come to the company with enthusiasm and made them work even harder. Of course, this commission would not be paid out until the tenth of the following month. Although the company had not yet been formally registered, Wei Lian, wanting everything to be properly standardized from the outset, had everyone sign formal contracts, just as Zhou Xuan had requested.

The rules set each person’s base salary at two hundred yuan, with a commission of two hundred yuan for every internet cafe management system sold. If four people went together to make a sale, then the two hundred yuan was split equally among them. The records and accounting for all this were handled by Wei Lian’s two classmates, who temporarily took care of these matters until a proper finance person could be hired.

Hearing that the promotion results were so good, Zhou Xuan finally relaxed. Watching the money in his account grow day by day brought him a quiet, indescribable satisfaction. Over the next two days, he stayed home writing, determined to finish the third volume of The Chronicles of the Ming Dynasty before school began.

Classes for the third year of junior high would start on February 16. After the Lantern Festival, with two or three days still left, Zhou Xuan planned to go to Rongcheng to take a look and settle the company registration matters at the same time.

On February 13, Zhou Xuan finally completed the third volume of The Chronicles of the Ming Dynasty. He then called Deng Cheng, bought a bus ticket to Rongcheng, and prepared for his first trip to the city since his rebirth.

Rongcheng, the capital of S Province, lay in the western plains. It could be said to be a land of fertile fields stretching for miles, a place long blessed with outstanding people and remarkable vitality. After more than five hours of the bus’s slow, jostling ride, Zhou Xuan finally arrived at the Rongcheng bus station.

Before the bus even reached the station, Zhou Xuan had already received calls from Wei Lian and Deng Cheng. Both of them were waiting outside. As soon as he stepped out of the station, Zhou Xuan saw Deng Cheng leaning against a luxurious Land Rover across the road. At the entrance, Wei Lian and his Third Uncle, Zhou Changxing, also spotted him in the crowd and kept waving and calling out to him.

"Wei Lian, Third Uncle, you’ve had a hard few days," he said, deeply moved when he saw the two of them and noticed the tired look on their faces.

"Hard?" Zhou Changxing said, grinning broadly with his pearly white teeth as he wrapped himself in a thick overcoat. "I should be thanking you for giving me such a well-paid job. Compared with before, this is nothing hard at all."

Zhou Xuan could tell that Third Uncle was sincerely grateful to him. After several days of work and training, there had also been a great change in Zhou Changxing’s demeanor. Unnoticed by himself, he was no longer the same Third Uncle who used to work for a living.

Wei Lian’s change was even more obvious. After several days managing the company, especially with more than ten or twenty people under him, the student air about him had all but vanished, replaced by a steadier, more composed bearing.

"Zhou Xuan, if you hadn’t come soon, I really wouldn’t have been able to keep this company going," Wei Lian said with a groan as soon as he saw him. During these past few days, besides recruitment, he had also been responsible for setting up Huanyu Software. But because Zhou Xuan was not yet eighteen, the industry and commerce bureau would not approve him as a legal representative, so the company had never been formally registered. As a result, the matter of dealing with the bureau had been put on hold for the time being, and Wei Lian had gone ahead and sorted out the office space and staffing first.

"Haha," Zhou Xuan laughed. "No rush. Let’s go eat first." With that, he led the two of them toward Deng Cheng. The matter of company registration would still have to be entrusted to Deng Cheng.

At the same time, Zhou Xuan also considered that Wei Lian had no experience at all in building a company, especially when it came to dealing with government departments. Perhaps he should ask Deng Cheng to recommend a few people to come over. After all, Blue Sky Group was a major enterprise in the southwest with a market value of more than a billion yuan. Borrowing a few staff members should be no trouble at all.

"Zhou Xuan, you’re finally here. We’ve all been waiting for you these past few days. It’s a pity Brother Jiang went back to the capital the day before yesterday, otherwise we could have gotten together again," Deng Cheng said with a smile, walking up and clapping Zhou Xuan on the shoulder before he had even reached him.