The dairy farmer and the wall of moo-shots

01Lived

This experience links to the photocopier sales position I took during summer break. The pushback on my record-breaking lead generation was that the leads were of poor quality. Fair enough. So I ended up working some of my own to test the accusation, and one of them was a dairy farmer whose office was a dark corner of a barn. The ritual in that office was that you went out on your leads and then reported back on a whiteboard, a sort of presentation in front of everyone. From the moment I got the lead I could picture them falling over their desks in stitches: he went to sell a photocopier to a dairy farmer. In a barn. I went anyway. And I sold it, on his terms: the paperwork, the regulations, the record-keeping a farm actually runs on. The idea I like to think clinched it was a wall of moo-shots: portraits of the cows that misbehaved or escaped. Back at the whiteboard they still laughed. But i’d like to think it was with some respect.