Quote of the Day: The Watchmen

Near the end of Allan Moore's graphic novel The Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan says, "Nothing ever ends." That's how I felt this morning when I woke up and the snow falling to the ground. Big snowflakes. Big movie snowflakes. Melodramatic snowflakes. Needless to say, I am quite tired of this whole having a climate thing.



Speaking of weather, I thought I should recap the business trip I took to beautiful, sunny Orlando last week to attend the National Collections and Credit Risk conference. The software company I work for sells lots of solutions to the collections industry so this was a major event for us. A few weeks ago after I bought my ticket through my company's travel agency, one of the higher-up's assistants sent my VP an email asking what the purpose of the trip was so she could approve it. (Like most companies nowadays we actually have to justify all business expenses. Thanks, recession.) He replied back and said it was to reward me for being the number one corporate sales rep and to give me a chance to practice my face-to-face selling skills so I can be an even greater asset to the company.



So how did I do in the world of face-to-face sales? Actually, not too bad. It was very similar and very different from the world of phone and e-mail sales. I feel quite comfortable talking on the on the phone to strangers because that's my element. I've been talking on the phone for a living for over eight years now. However; approaching complete strangers out of the blue in public is something I was not a hundred percent comfortable with.


Since we didn't have a booth at a trade show, I just walked around reading name tags looking for a company we wanted to do business with. The hard part came after I identified my potential target. I would watch them while I circled around them looking for an in, kind of like a vulture looking for a carcass. The hardest part was thinking of an opening line. Finally, I would get tired of thinking and just go ahead do it. (The only thing I can liken the whole nerve-racking experience to is hitting on strange woman which is something I don't have a whole lot of experience doing. Don't get me wrong. I hit on the occasional strange girl, in fact, you could say they're my type. Those are strange girls I know though not complete strangers which makes a huge difference.) I got the hang of it after the first day though. It's all about not letting your fear stand in the way of you doing a good job. Man, Hemingway would be so proud of me. Here's one of my typical pick-ups:

I step in front of a man's path and stick my hand out.
Collin: "John Smith? Hi, I'm Collin with Varolii."
Prospect: "John Smith. Good to meet you."
Collin: "We actually had a meeting set up today for 10AM that never happened."
Prospect: "Did we? Let me check my Blackberry." He checks. "What do you know? You're right."
Collin: "When do you want to reschedule?"
Prospect: "Let's just do it now."

We had three of our four meetings fall through but I was able to track them down and meet with them anyway. I was quite proud of myself. I tracked down every person I was supposed to find and scheduled on-site visits with all of them. There is a huge potential upside for my company with some of the deals too.


My biggest accomplishment was convincing a certain Mid-west bank to re-engage with us. We working on a deal with them a few months ago that fell through in a most acrimonious manner. I probably talked to their collections manager for about five hours total in the space of two days. We became great friends but he just would not commit to letting us come back on-site. Finally as we were leaving the last party, he said he wanted to meet with us again. My whole office was pretty pumped.


My second biggest accomplishment was showing a hot chick the light-saber application on my iPhone. Even though all she said was, "That's kind of nerdy," I could tell she was impressed. The VP of a major East Coast bank was also quite blown away by it.


I did enjoy my time even if most of the presentations were all pretty much downers. We are, after all, talking about the financial services industry. I made quite a few friends that I am looking forward to seeing again since I was all alone for four days and really had no choice but to make new friends if I wanted to talk to somebody.


In a nutshell, I swam not sank in the this potentially very awkward situation. I am sure I can do the same thing when I travel to the Europe this summer so I am no longer as worried about finding someone to go with me as I was before. However, if you want to tag along this summer, just let me know. I should warn you though that I can't promise you anything other than an "interesting" time and a few good stories.