The Middle-aged Salesman

A friend recently contacted me regarding her husband’s need for help finding his next job. Jerry, (not his real name) is an accomplished sales manager in his own right whose experience has been in the commercial printing industry. Now in middle age, he has become sidelined in a dead-end job. Jerry is someone I have spent time with over the years and found him to be affable and witty. I had no reason to doubt his networking abilities. He is a salesman after all. Networking is about building relationships, the most fundamental part of sales.

 So, I happily arranged a coffee meeting with Wendy, a friend who has a business helping companies find optimal solutions to their print marketing needs. Since they were both professionals from the Printing Industry I thought this meeting would be a natural. Wendy is an excellent net-worker with very strong connections in Jerry’s target market. I could not have arranged a better connection for Jerry. This meeting looked to have great potential benefit for them both. Well, at least that was my thinking.

We all know that good networking includes the productive use of time. Get to the point. Let me know what you are trying to accomplish. How I can be helpful? The 30-second elevator speech is at the heart of the process. Unfortunately, as the meeting progressed, I saw that Jerry’s goal was to tell Wendy his life story. Jerry’s single-minded intent was to follow through on that objective. Had Wendy been an Executive Recruiter, like me, learning about Jerry’s full history might have been useful. Being a potential networking contact, Wendy’s knowledge of Jerry’s life story was not only irrelevant, but it was also an unproductive use of her time. In the process, Jerry learned absolutely nothing about Wendy. Doubtless, Jerry would not be a very useful networking contact for Wendy.

Frankly, I was astonished. More than once Wendy stopped Jerry to ask him what he was looking to do and how she might be helpful. This irritated Jerry. He did not answer her question but continued on with his story. It was excruciating. Wendy politely cut the meeting short, indicating that she had another meeting to attend. Jerry and I went off to have lunch and debrief.

During our lunch, Jerry expressed his frustration with Wendy. He was completely baffled as to why she continued to interrupt him during his soliloquy. I tried to address his fundamental misunderstanding as to how networking is conducted; i.e. time is of the essence, and the process is meant to be a two-way exchange of information. I explained that Wendy had tried to get Jerry to come to the point, but he refused to budge from his script. I went on to explain that over time, in order to build relationships, it may be useful to reveal more of one’s life story. It is totally inappropriate, however, in an initial networking meeting. My final point was that the message to Wendy was; “it was all about Jerry.” I think Jerry got the message, but I cannot be sure.

 I am still unclear as to why Jerry conducted the meeting as he did. It was not only strange, but it was also a little creepy. At his age and with his experience I expected a focused and productive presentation. I had been with him in a number of social settings and always found his behavior to be appropriate. His meeting with Wendy was totally unexpected. Could it be that Jerry was just a very poor salesman? I was beginning to wonder.

Key Learning: To help facilitate a productive networking meeting I use email to introduce my contacts and exchange their information. Exchanging resumes and LinkedIn profiles is a very useful part of the process to prepare for an effective meeting. This gives the participants the opportunity to learn background information prior to the meeting so the focus of the meeting can be on the present. It puts the meeting in context. A “good networking meeting” is a productive exchange where all parties leave with clear knowledge as to how to help the other.

 In this case, I should not be too hard on myself. I had enough experience with Jerry to expect a good outcome. I did exchange biographical information in advance. Jerry, Wendy, and I are all about the same age so there are a lot of similar life experiences which made the connection easier. I was surprised that Jerry did not grasp the fundamental concepts of mutual benefit and the productive use of our time. He learned nothing about Wendy and how he might be able to help her. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions and solid preparation, things don’t go well. That’s life. Suck it up and move on. As with last week’s horror story our efforts to help Jerry ended with that meeting.


My balance sheet with Wendy is very much in the positive so there was minimal damage to my credibility. Life goes on. Fortunately, my failed networking meetings continue to be a very small percentage of the total.


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Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read. Your input is important to me so; please leave a comment.

Jim Weber, Managing Partner

ITB PARTNERS
Jim.Weber@itbpartners.com

Cigars With Eric

Anyone who’s followed my blog knows that I have a real affinity for fine cigars. I am constantly looking for opportunities to indulge my passion.  Fortunately, I was able to satisfy that interest several times this week with friends and business associates.  It was my meeting with Eric on Monday that was most enjoyable and therefore memorable.

For the past few months, we have been trying to schedule time for a cigar and a beer at his favorite neighborhood cigar bar, Highland Cigar Company.  I enjoyed our first meeting there and have been looking forward to a return visit.  I was pleased that we were able to schedule time Monday afternoon.

The first thing I noticed when I entered Highland Cigar was that it was much larger than my last visit. They’re obviously doing well as they expanded into an adjacent space, increasing their footprint by half.  Clearly, Highland Cigar is a popular place that’s doing well.

Eric arrived first and secured a couple of comfortable chairs.  After a friendly greeting, I headed for the humidor to make my cigar selection.  However, Eric stopped me and said that he brought a couple of his favorites for me to try. That was nice. One was a Rocky Patel, and the other, a Perdomo. Both featured Maduro wraps.

We did not have an agenda to discuss business issues.  It was meant to be a way to ease into the week with a relaxing conversation and to get to know one another better.  Even so, there was one issue that I wanted to discuss with Eric; a follow-up to a brief conversation from Friday’s monthly ITB Partners Members meeting. Before the meeting, I told Eric and two other colleagues about the prior days “lunch with four interesting people.”  I began our meeting by embellishing on Friday’s set-up.   I told him I was most impressed by our host and the concept of the lunch. I went on to say that I planned to refer him and our other colleagues to John, (not his real name) so that they would have an opportunity to meet him as well.

Eric, on the other hand, wanted to talk about options for a permanent office space, where we could gather more easily, even spontaneously to conduct business.  He was thinking of a virtual office, co-working space.  Our options include WeWork, Intelligent office, Regus, Industrious, Liquidspace, and Servecorp.  Having recently spent time in an Intelligent office location, I was excited about our conversation as well. I was totally engaged with Eric.  He went on to say that his son and daughter-in-law conduct their business from a WeWork office in Philadelphia.  When Eric mentioned his son and daughter-in-law, I saw an opportunity to steer the conversation away from our business interests.

At that point, I redirected the conversation toward a personal discussion beginning with Eric’s background.  You could say that I went into an executive recruiting mode.   My executive search experience has helped me refine my listening skills.  I have learned that getting to know someone requires patience to listen to them and ask follow up questions for clarification.  Asking questions serves to keep the conversation moving and demonstrates a genuine interest in the other.  It is how bonds of trust are created.

I remembered that Eric was originally from the Philadelphia area, however, I did not recall much about his education and early career experience.  I learned that Eric was a music major in college, a classical guitarist. He went on to say that by the age of 27 he was the Music Director for Hart college.  He told me how he met his wife, and his decision to change careers from music to project management, and later, earning a master’s degree from George Washington University.  I asked if he still plays the guitar.  He said he does and showed me a promotional photo of his trio.  He performs with another guitarist and a vocalist.  They had a gig scheduled for Friday night.  One question led to another and before long he was showing the work of an artist friend, Max Zorn.  Max creates incredible images using brown packing tape.  We talked about his travel through Spain with his wife: The walk of northern Spain also known as the Way of Saint James, then a more recent visit to Scotland.

The cigars and beers with Eric were enjoyable and relaxing.  Getting to know and understand Eric on a more personal level was, as the commercial goes, “priceless.”

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Your feedback helps me continue to publish articles that you want to read.  Your input is important to me so; please leave a comment.

Jim Weber, Managing Partner

ITB PARTNERS

Jim.Weber@itbpartners.com