Rainmaking and Food: Not Perfect Together

Getting new clients and solidifying and expanding relationships with current clients often involves sales calls, presentations, food, and drink. How to Become a Rainmaker, by Jeffrey Fox, provides some rules for these occasions. Here are three of my favorites.

Don’t drink coffee during a sales call. The duration of the average sales call is eighteen to twenty minutes. You do not have time to accept the coffee, stir in the cream, or drink the coffee. You have to maximize time and concentrate on your objectives. Drinking coffee wastes time and interferes with your presentation. You can’t take note with a coffee cup in your hand. And heaven forbid you should spill the coffee.

A luncheon meeting is a sales call with tableware. You are not there to sample the food. You are there to ask questions, make a presentation, and get a commitment to use your services. Don’t waste time concentrating on the food. It is all right if you do not eat anything. It is impolite to survey your dish while your client is talking and you can’t talk notes with a fork in your hands or food in your mouth.

Always take the best seat in a restaurant. You should take the seat that looks out onto the restaurant or the one that places your back to a wall. You don’t want your client’s attention to wander or to be interrupted by something more interesting that your presentation. Your client has invested some of his precious time by meeting with you. You don’t want to squander that by providing an opportunity for him to be distracted.

For more information, see Fox, Jeffrey, How to Become a Rainmaker, Hyperion, 2000.

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