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Guest post by: James Chan Become an Author

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When you~{!/~}re trying to generate business, there are plenty of times when nothing seems to work. You have a prospective client who seems really to need what you do. You prepare yourself for the meeting, and you feel that you~{!/~}re incisive, and eloquent, and worth every penny you~{!/~}re asking. You even feel that you have established a rapport with the prospective client. Yet, even though you~{!/~}ve done everything right, nothing happens.

On those occasions when it feels like you can~{!/~}t win, it~{!/~}s worth remembering those times when everything went right~{!*~}despite what you did.

I hope that I~{!/~}ll never mess up worse than I did one morning when I had been in business for less than a year. One of the companies that responded to a mailing was a company located in Connecticut, about three hours by train from my base in Philadelphia. I didn~{!/~}t entirely understand what they did, but I heard the enthusiasm in the caller~{!/~}s voice, and I arranged a mid-morning appointment the following week. As long as I could make the 6:40 am train from Thirtieth Street Station, everything would be fine.

The day before I was to go, I received a very welcome call. A good friend with whom I had worked in New York was in the Philadelphia area, interviewing for a job. She had been out of work for a while, so this was really great news. I invited her to come to dinner and to stay the night. By the time she arrived, the news was even better. She had been offered the job. That called for a celebration. We opened a bottle of something, then a bottle of something else. We chattered on about old times, gossiped about our old co-workers, speculated about where she might live. We went on for hours and hours and then even more hours. By the time I finally went to bed, it was clear I was going to get only about four hours~{!/~} sleep, at best.
Fortunately I was able to catnap on the train, but when I arrived in Greenwich I was still in a fog. The president of the company greeted me personally, and took me back to headquarters, where he seated me in front of a computer monitor and demonstrated his product. I stared at the monitor uncomprehendingly as he droned on.

Then I did something that terrified me: I woke up. As I was suddenly startled into consciousness, and figured out where I was, I realized that I had actually drifted off to sleep as the company president was talking to me. Things like this happen to me in nightmares, but usually I can escape them by waking up. Not this time. To this day, I don~{!/~}t know how long I had dozed. I assume I didn~{!/~}t snore.

Yet, as I shocked myself into alertness, I realized that the president seemed not to have noticed, or at least chose to ignore, that I had been sleeping through his pronouncements. Indeed, he seemed more to be selling me on doing work for his company than evaluating whether I was the right person to do the job. I stayed awake long enough to let him know I~{!/~}d be happy to do the project he had in mind. This led in turn to a year~{!/~}s retainer, and a trip to China with the president. I never asked him whether he had noticed that I had missed most of our first meeting.

This is not a success story I ever hope to repeat, and I~{!/~}ve made sure that I have never done so. I am still embarrassed at my behavior that morning. Still, it offers a lesson that took me many years to learn: When people want you, they~{!/~}ll find a reason to value you. But when you~{!/~}re trying to sell your services to people who are not ready to use it, you~{!/~}ll never win regardless of how logical, useful, valuable, or perfect you are. I had proved to myself that the clich~{(&~} is true: Nothing beats being at the right place at the right time~{!*~}even if you~{!/~}re asleep when you get there.

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