Up At Bat!
By Adam
Radzik
Marketing & Sales Coach
After months of effort, the marketing campaign of O’Connor, Gladstone & Melina resulted in an appointment with a sizeable prospect. Todd Flanagan was to be up at bat. He was excited and enthused. He and his cohort John were going to make a presentation to Harry Buchanan, the president of Reliable Fastener Industries, an $80 million company.
 Todd sent an e-mail to John telling him that they had an appointment to see the president of an industrial distribution company on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. out in Hauppauge. He also told John that he would be coming from New Jersey that day, so he would meet him at the company elevator at 1:00 p.m. promptly. Finally, he remarked, “I have a good feeling about this one, John. We are going to land this baby!”
As it turned out, there was quite a bit of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike that day, and he met John at 1:20 p.m. This caused them to be fifteen minutes late.
Harry Buchanan and Executive Vice President Meagan Clancy listened to the presentation in their conference room and perused the sales material Todd and John had brought. They asked about ten or eleven questions, and after twenty minutes Todd and John were thanked for their time and shown to the door.
On the way out, Todd turned to John and said, “This one is in the bag! We are number one in the industry. Where else would they take their business? Certainly not to Kendrick & Neff – they are half our size!” John was less confident but said nothing.
In the conference room, Harry sipped on his coffee and asked Meagan, “What did you think?” Meagan shook her head in disapproval. “Amateurs! They knew nothing about our business and nothing about our industry. We are, after all, a public company, and if they had spent ten minutes on the Internet before they got here, it would have been a completely different conversation.” Harry nodded. “And when you asked them, Harry, why we should use their company, that Todd fellah said they work hard. Who doesn’t work hard today? That’s why we should use them? That’s their competitive edge?” Harry dunked a glazed donut in his hot coffee, sipped some more, nodded again and said, “What about their presentation?” Meagan picked it up and said, “This thing? They must have used this with one hundred different companies. It is totally boilerplate! Whom do they think they are dealing with?” Meagan thought for a minute, and Harry eyed the raspberry jam–filled donut. “What a difference between their presentation and the one we got from Kendrick & Neff yesterday. They came out here. They took a photograph of our building. They put in on the cover of their presentation. In their proposal, they referred to our distribution centers in the Midwest and Southwest. They identified three important issues that affect our survival. They said they got them from reading recent copies of Industrial Distribution magazine.”
Harry said, smiling, “I guess you weren’t impressed.” Meagan responded, “No, I wasn’t, and neither were you. And it may be unreasonable, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to come late when you’re making a sales presentation!”
Harry nodded solemnly and muttered, “It looks as though we’re going with Kendrick & Neff.”
“Yep, Harry, and stop staring at that jelly donut! That would be your third donut this morning.”
“You know, you are no fun, Meagan.”
“Yeah, I know. I hear that from my kids every day!”
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Excerpt from New CD: Quick Advice on Improving Our Business Relationships
For a business relationship to work, people must adhere to the expressed and implicit rules of the relationship.
There are expressed rules in relationships. “Call me if you’re going to be late for the meeting” or “Don’t invite someone to our product development meeting unless you tell me first” or “At our company, a suit and tie are appropriate for meetings with clients” or “Always put the file back in the right place; otherwise the next person will be unable to find it” or “After you use the truck, make sure you fill it up with gas.”
Then there are the implied rules of a relationship. The implied rules, though they have not been specifically expressed, are easily understood and can be agreed to by any reasonable person. Not being allowed to steal from the company and being prohibited from giving key information to a competitor or ignoring the request of a supervisor are examples of implied rules in a business. There are innumerable implied rules that must be observed.
The rules, both expressed and implied, form the structure, the organization and the predictability of the business and work relationship. If an individual continually violates the rules, he/she undermines the viability of the relationship and eventually makes the relationship untenable. “We told him again that he has to be here at 9:00 a.m., and the next day he showed up at 10:30 with another excuse, as if we never had spoken!” This type of failure to observe company rules could easily be included in the epitaph of many a terminated relationship.
Comedy Corner
Seven Ways to Annoy People
- To everything that someone says, reply, “That’s what YOU think.”
- Wander around a restaurant, asking other diners for their parsley.
- Repeat as a question everything that someone says.
- Inform others that they exist only in your imagination.
- Lie obviously about trivial things such as the time of day.
- Begin all your sentences with “Ooh la la!”
- Ask people what gender they are.
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Adam Radzik has been helping businesses since 1982. His experience
lies in marketing, sales, management and conflict
resolution. He has taught thousands how to
improve their results through individual coaching.
