How to Win a Pitch and Impress Your Client

I have been reading a book called "Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life" by Eugene O'Kelly. The book has been very inspirational to me, not only because of the views on work, family, and life shared by Eugene, but also the way he handed crisis situation at work.

I have never worked in a company with a boss like him before. I think it would be great to learn from someone who values the client management and relationship building experience like he did. People just don't seem to understand that you need to INVEST to build a relationship and there is always RISK involved.

On p.21 "Back when I was the head of the firm's financial services division, its biggest arm, and we were competing to become the auditor for a major investment bank, I knew that if we were really serious about winning the account, I would need to get a face-to-face meeting with the president of the bank's Australian unit. The bank was expected to make its decision very soon. I did everything I could to schedule a meeting with him - made my calendar completely available, called his secretary repeatedly.

Sorry, I was told. His secretary said there wasn't single moment her boss was in the office that was unbooked. For weeks. If I waited until he had an opening, I knew, the business would be lost.

I called his secretary back. Given how often I'd called her, we'd developed a bit of a rapport. So I figured I'd try: Would she be so kind as to tell me her boss's upcoming travel plans? He was a man on the go, in transit much of the day - surely a pocket of that travel time was not taken up with meetings? She told me that in two days, he was flying from Sydney to Melbourne. Nothing was scheduled for the time he was in the air.

"Perfect," I said.

I asked her for his seat assignment. She told me. I called the airline and booked the shortest longest business trip of my life, reserving the first-class seat next to his. That night I packed, showered, and shaved, and the following day I flew the 22 hours from New York to Sydney, landed, boarded my 90-minute flight bound for Melbourne, sat down, and introduced myself to the banked I'd flown halfway around the world to meet, briefly. When I described what I'd done to get there, he was dumbstruck. I asked if I could explain why I believed we were the best firm to audit his bank's books. An hour and a half later, we touched down. I offered him our presentation, shook his hand, and headed to another fate for my 20-plus-hour trek home.

We won the account."

I'd love to meet a manager with such courage and vision to get the job done. If you are the one or if you know someone, let me know.

Think Twice Before Scheduling a Meeting

I just came across the above picture in Seth Godin's blog. The picture captures everything essential about the meeting.

It's a plague in many firms that they schedule so many unnecessary meetings and phone conferences without any agenda in hand. I think it's a complete waste of everyone time. To make any meeting effective, all participants should receive an agenda beforehand so that each can prepare prior to the meeting.

Where are the old good values of meeting I used to see a decade ago?

Now meetings are turning into ways for people not to do any actual work, for people to bullshit without having anything to back up.

Cut the crap. Be real and let's get to work.

Macys's Customer Service

I have had one of the best shopping experience I had at the Macys in Valley Fair today. I was browsing the men's department and had my eye on a pair of Ralph Lauren swimming trunks. I saw the sign saying that it's 50% off. I was excited to try it on and ended up getting it. When I took it at the check-out counter, it rang up at the original price. I told the store assistant that I got it from the discount rack at the RL counter.

Instead of just brushing me off and saying that the item was placed on the wrong rack, he actually went to the rack with me and saw the 50% off sign right next to it. He said he would give me the 50% discount even though the sign was probably put at the wrong place. He took the sign off from the rack and walked back to the check-out counter with me.

I thought he would just proceed with taking 50% off the original price. Instead, he took an extra $10 off for the inconvenience. When he rang up the item again, I showed him that the price on the tag ($44.99) was different from the one shown in his system ($54.99). You can guess the end of the story.... I ended up getting that pair of RL swimming trunks for around $12!

That's what I call good customer service! Instead of just following what's in the computer system, the store assistant actually rectified the error on spot by removing the 50% sign from the rack and honored the discount.

I will definitely be going back to that Macy's store in the future.