Page 23 of Advanced Chemistry

“I have a hard stop at nine. I mean it. I can’t go a minute over,” he said.

“Not a problem. We only need twenty minutes to blow your mind,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, slightly amused. “Shut the door. Have a seat.”

As soon as the door shut, I clicked into sales mode. Whatever awkwardness lay between Sebastian and me waited outside of Craig’s office. Sebastian pulled out his tablet. While we had a few slides prepared, we knew that the crux of this meeting would live and die on how well we communicated. Sales guys who relied heavily on cookie-cutter slides easily lost their prospects. Nobody liked to be sold to or talked at. The biggest thing I’d learned since starting this business was that more than anything, people wanted to be heard.

In the span of sixteen minutes, Sebastian and I delivered one of our best presentations in company history. We were on fire. Sebastian hit Craig with data, which I shaded in with some WII FM (What’s In It For Me). Seb had this ability to crunch numbers and still make them sound compelling, whereas I went cross-eyed when I stared at an Excel sheet for too long. His brains and my charms worked wonders. Our hand off was seamless, our energy was contagious, and our pitch was compelling as hell. Craig was riveted. Somewhere in the middle of the meeting, our presentation became a conversation, with Craig chiming in with questions and background on Hollis’s operations.

This was why I could never have a regular, boring job. This was why the rough patches of entrepreneurship were worth it. A nine-to-fiver couldn’t make me feel this alive.

I kept looking over at Sebastian as he refuted objections and concerns with ease, his disarming smile and bright eyes brimming with fiery intelligence. My brain cut back to Saturday and the image of Sebastian throwing his head back in abandon as he came.

Sebastian glanced over at me, waiting for me to chime in.

Shit. Stupid brain.

“What Anton means to say is that Hollis can provide its tenants with a superior vending machine experience and improve the value of your rentals. It’s the little things that people remember.”

“So Craig, what do we need to do to win your business?” I asked, getting back into the groove. I loved asking this question. It was direct and caught people off guard, which was when we usually got the most honest responses.

Craig heaved out a surprised breath, then cracked a smile at the audacity. “Uh…I’ve never been asked that.”

Sebastian and I shared a glance. We didn’t interrupt or cut in. We let the silence hang in the air, forcing him to fill it. We knew that letting a prospect continue to talk rather than trying to put words in his mouth would be far more powerful.

“I like your product and your price. The real decision maker is our CEO, Jim Hollis himself. Because of ballooning costs elsewhere, he’s now more involved in granular spending. Very involved. Look, what we have works well for us.”

“Works well? What happens if your current supplier continues to raise prices on you while the quality of service declines?” I asked.

“We’ll have to cross that bridge if and when we come to it.”

“You could score points with Jim by showing initiative on ways to reduce spend,” Sebastian added.

Craig see-sawed his head. “That is true. It’s best that we bring in Jim for a conversation. He’s a straight shooter, an interesting character. I’m game to make this change. If you can win over Jim, then you’ll have a deal.”

As Craig pulled up his calendar, I tried not to have pure joy burst across my face like I was a toddler getting the lollipop he so desperately wanted.

“He has a busy schedule, let me see…” Craig clicked his tongue as he scanned his computer. “He can do this day and time on the eleventh of June.”

“June? That’s next month,” I said. The longer the gap between meetings, the quicker interest cooled.

“He’s a busy man. That’s the soonest he has open.”

Sebastian and I traded glances, knowing neither we nor Craig had the ability to reshape Jim Hollis’s calendar.

“Works for us,” I said, determined to keep momentum alive for the next month.

Sebastian and I shook his hand and thanked him for his time. We pretended to be adults all the way down the elevator and all the way through the lobby. We waited until we got into my car to scream at the top of our lungs.

“HOLY SHIT!” I yelled.

“WE HAVE A MEETING WITH THE CEO!” Sebastian yelled back.

Adrenaline had guided me through our meeting, and I was just now coming back to earth.

“You were amazing in there. The way you swatted away his objections. Brilliant,” he said.

“I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box, but I have my moments.”

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