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A Road Warrior's True Stories

#1 On a short, direct flight, the airline loses my bag. It’s 10pm by the time I’ve finished waiting to see if it is going to appear. Now I have a problem I have to attend the meeting wearing the casual clothes I’m wearing now.

But despite my worries, I’m lucky, when the others hear about it a couple of them tell me that the same thing happened to them also.

#2 A business associate will be making an important presentation to invite investors to participate in a new project. When he clicks the mouse on his laptop computer, nothing happens and he can’t make the presentation he had planned. He attempts to improvise a pitch, but the event is a total failure. It’s cost a lot of money to put on and weeks to get the investors to agree to attend and now he’s blown his opportunity.

Don’t let this happen to you. Work out how to make a presentation which can be done with no sales aids.

#3 Before I bought a digital projector, I used an OHP supplied by the venues. Frequently they didn’t work. As a result I developed the habit to travel earlier so I could have time to check the meeting room the evening before the event.

#4 Allow for the unexpected. Get to the meeting place early in case some disaster has struck.

* I’ve been in places where a pipe has burst in the ceiling above, a rugby club has had a party the night before and no one cleaned up.

* On a hot summer’s day the heating was stuck on and the windows wouldn’t open.

* The event is scheduled for 9.00 and by 9:10 the facility manager who should have unlocked the meeting room has failed to turn up.

* For a meeting scheduled to start punctually at 8.00 the delegates drift in gradually up to an hour and a half late.

* The projector bulb has blown and there is no replacement.

* The meeting room is right next to the canteen and there is a loud clattering of dishes and raucous conversation intruding into my event.

* Go for a beer the night before the meeting, and find out that a business companion is a raging alcoholic who leads you astray. Wake up the next morning with a splitting headache|thundering hangover.

* Assume that your audience has been told the wrong start time or was expecting you to talk about a different topic. And that they will have to leave early to see a customer. So check and double check.

* My bags have been lost by the airline 3 times and once someone left the airport with my suit-carrier by mistake and I picked up another one of the same type belonging to him and didn’t reaize it until later at where I was staying.

* A construction crew begins noisily outside of the meeting room.

* Following the midday break a member of your audience is obviously drunk and starts to cause an incident.

* You finish the event and go to settle up with the hotel for the use of the meeting room only to find that your credit card is declined, there is no money on your other one and you don’t have a check book with you. (This happened to me twice. On one occasion, my client helped by coming round with my fee in cash, in an envelope).

* The flight I’m waiting for is delayed, then it’s announced that when the plane leaves it will be diverted to another airport 200 miles from my destination. The only onwards transport at that time being a taxi.

* We wait for 4 hours in the terminal because all landings in the London area are cancelled because of a snowfall. Finally we embark the aircraft, and then have two more hours wait before take off. On arrival at the destination it is so late that I miss my train connection, wait all night in a railway station, eventually reaching my hotel at 6 in the morning, sleep until 7.30 and go to present my event for 9.00.

* I’ve been stuck on a busy road miles from the meeting place, no taxis available, no buses and no signal on my cellular phone.

To make a sales presentation persuasive and apparently effortless – ironically what is required is thorough preparation and practice. And a constant awareness of

Murphy’s Law. ‘If it can go wrong, it will’.