TNBNT once more.
I did some consulting for a couple of years, wrote a professional book, and ran some seminars for clients about selling equipment financing and leasing services.
One day, a former competitor of mine called to hire me for an afternoon of training up in New England. It was surprising, because we'd been hostile combatants back when I was out in the field actually selling. And, there were one or two major national accounts where we vied literally every day for deals.
Nonetheless, a job was a job, so I gracefully accepted the offer and went to work preparing the agenda we'd worked out for his sales meeting.
The day of the meeting was disastrous weather-wise, causing long delays at the airport, but the flight eventually took off. However, there were huge traffic tie-ups at Logan Airport in Boston when I arrived and many roads were flooded. The net of it was, I was very, very late in reaching the meeting site.
As I walked in the door of my destination, I still had some time to spare, because I'd learned long ago to leave plenty of margin for travel delays and such when flying anywhere. But, this day turned out to be a different story. Because, within moments of my arrival, someone approached me and said something like, "Gee Mike, glad you're here. Seems we're running faster than we planned this afternoon. So, you're on right now. They're waiting for your presentation."
Now, all of my agenda and material was carefully planned in advance, but nonetheless, I had equipment to set up, overhead slides to arrange, and materials to distribute before I began my presentation, and now had no time to get that done. But worse, as I passed a mirror outside the meeting room, I realized I looked like I'd just spun around for an hour in a mangle dryer. Because, during all the scrambling around in the airports on both ends and the traffic hassle at Logan with people pushing in every direction, and hauling my luggage and equipment all over the place, I'd become a little disheveled.
Regardless of my unpreparedness, a shove in my back from the guy who'd greeted me, propelled me to "center stage" in the meeting room.
I viewed the audience, twenty or thirty folks, seated in rows, classroom style, and introduced myself. I quickly told them who I was, why I was there and then explained that the most critical aspect of any sales call is the first impression a salesperson makes on a prospective buyer, regardless of all else. Because you only get one chance at a first impression and from then on you're typecast. Consequently, the impression you make has to be a good one or your cooked.
I then went on to say something like, "Look at me for example. My suit jacket's over my arm, my hair's dishevelled, my shirts not properly tucked in, in fact, I look awful. I highly doubt anyone would ever buy anything from me, considering my appearance." I further explained that I used myself as an example because "pictures" have far more impact than words and I wanted to insure they'd not forget my message.
After my initial comments to open the meeting, I kept up chatter about the importance of preparation as I walked about the room, adjusting my clothing, then my equipment, step by step putting myself and things back together. The process took only ten minutes or so, to get what I needed on track, and then move on to the planned agenda.
I was quite pleased with the eventual outcome, especially when during a break a couple of attendees told me they thought my vivid approach to highlighting the importance of preparation was very helpful to them. All in all the whole session went quite well.
Later that evening, meeting over, I was relaxing with a refreshment when someone I knew quite well approached me and said hello. He'd been on a sales staff of mine for eight years, and was now working for my client. After a minute or two of small talk, he asked, "What happened, Mike? Miss your plane?"
After I innocently replied that "No" I hadn't missed my plane at all, I inquired as to why he thought that had happened. He replied that he'd known me for too long to ever believe that I'd walk into any business situation looking like I did when when I'd arrived that afternoon, object lesson or not. So, the only conclusion he'd reached was that I'd been railroaded into the meeting room, and scrambled an introduction to recover.
I finally acknowledged that he'd been right, I took the audience's time to set up, but it wasn't really my fault. He smiled when he told me that he certainly understood that it hadn't been unpreparedness that led to my recovery preamble, because he knew me too well. But, if it had been anyone else presenting that afternoon as I had, he'd have exposed them during the meeting.
So, looking back on it all, I guess the best compliment I ever got about my insistence on preparedness, came on the day I wasn't prepared at all.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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