I pace when I think. My team in the Wilmington office knows I’m pondering a quandary when they see me pacing back and forth behind my desk. They have been known to gently tease me about it. Even my wife has suggested that perhaps I cannot think sitting down due to the location of my brain!
It was my pacing that started a new bet at Matchmaker Logistics. You see, in September, I went on a sales call to Dallas, Texas to visit a client we had hauled for until 2008, when due to economic conditions, they made a switch to the “cheap guys”. The poor service and communication that came with that cheap price included getting service failure calls on the golf course on weekends and menacing messages like: “I have a truck for you today but I need another x-amount of dollars; otherwise I am not going to pick up the load”!
At their offices in September, we didn’t just discuss the pain they have been experiencing; we also discussed the many things we have in common–music, sports, and golf, to name a few. I left that meeting excited about the great personal connection we shared, certain that they saw the value of partnering with Matchmaker, and convinced that we would be doing business again in short order.
But, when I returned to the office, I had a really tough time getting them to respond to my calls and emails. “We’re too busy to review our trucking agreements”, I was told in one email. Cue the pacing.
One day our Office Assistant, Shelly, commented on my pacing as I thought about how to get the attention of my new friends in Texas. “I think you should give up,”, she told me. I took that as a challenge. “These clients are clearly in distress and they need us. I can’t just give up on them! I will have their business back by March 1st.”
And, so, another friendly office wager was born. If they ship by March 1st, I win the bet and Shelly has to bake me either chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies. If they don’t ship, I’ll be baking cookies for her. Except I don’t know how to bake.
I admit that I’m starting to get nervous. In January, I learned that the client in question was wrapping up some long and “bloody” negotiations with the steamship lines and that they planned to tackle their truckload agreements next. But now, March 1st is just three weeks away. Do you think I should:
A.) Stay confident and plan on enjoying Shelly’s great homemade cookies
B.) Put Mrs. Fields on speed dial since I don’t have time to learn how to bake
C.) Send cookies to Texas with a note that says: “Because we want your truckload negotiations to be sweeter than those with the steamship lines”, or
D.) All of the above?
- Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap. ~Barbara Jordan
- People have got to learn: if they don’t have cookies in the cookie jar, they can’t eat cookies. ~Suze Orman
- Today, I will live in the moment unless it is unpleasant, in which case, I will eat a cookie.~The Cookie Monster
Treat yourself to something sweet this weekend,
~Bob
