Day 7–500 Words
Sat in my office, rain falling outside, the phone rings, no name just a number..
I’ve been prospecting for over 3 weeks now and I have literally had no one return a single call or e mail. So when the phone rang I was like a cheetah on weakened gazelle. Faster than lighting, I call out my name and ask who’se calling. It’s Amy Briers at ABX inc. You were mailing our CEO Peter Drover recently and he liked your message and would you to come in and see him next week on Thursday at 2pm.
So ordinarily I’d have said, that’s perfect and get the location details and then hang up, exceopt on this occasion I said, let me check, oh, Thursday I’m already booked to meet another lomg standing client on the other side of town. Can Peter meet at another time that day? No he can’t, he’s in town for 2 days and after your meeting, he’s heading out to the airfield and catching a flight to Zurich. Well I said, I can make that work, when does he head back?
He’ll be in Zurich for 1 night and the heads back to the UK for a series of meetings starting at 10:00. I replied that works perfectly, can we schedule that?
Now I’ll level with you, I fully expected a resounding no to that request. She said wait one minute please. On her return she said Peter has OK’s the meeting and can you make your way to Farnborough for 5pm flight. Peter said that he has a number of things to on the flight, but now that you and he are meeting on the flight, he can clear the afternoon and get on top of most things and he looks forward to meeting you on the plane.
Well you could have knocked me over with a small puff of breath. I’m now booked on a private plane with the CEO and I’ll be having a night in Zurich an dthen flying back the next day. What a result.
The flight took and after 30 mins watching Peter jockey files and calls from his MacBook, we begun our conversation over some in flight food and drinks. What a way to conduct business I thought. I laid out my pitch and showed him my rationale for why BH could help him and the company to achieve their growth goals and reduce some of the burn rate they were experiencing.
It was a win — win offer and one he took to heart. I said I was happy to sit at the front of the aircraft iof he wanted to carry on with his work. To my surprise and delight, he declined the offer and we spoke for the entire flight.
He mentioned my somewhat cheeky rtequest and said he’d never had anyone come back with such sound and impressive request that it made no sense at all to decline it. After all, he’d be in the air and alone both ways.
On joining the return flight I noticed we were not in fact alone and he had a few other executives in tow. After a short briefing, he asked me to present my pitch to his exec team. Again a resounding, this makes absolut sense and we all agreed that we should get a team assembled soonest to validate my hypothesis and to get a change team geared uo in advance to be ready with the required planning should the statements hold true.
So why am I telling you this?
Well you get 100 of everything you don’t ask for, thats a given. But when the opportunity presents itself to be bold, jump and be ready for the change. The parachute won’t open up straight away but it will open and when it does, you enjoy the fall, safe in the knowledge that you have a parachute and will be well.
