Masters Evening, Part II

The Masters of Sales book is a compendium of short articles written by those who have something to say about sales and selling. At our celebration last week, three of the authors presented to the audience.

Now, I've been to a few events where the keynote presenter bored the heck out of me or gave me so much fluff, that the minute I walked out, I didn't remember any of it.

In my opinion, these talks were different.

Each of us (yes, I am included in this) gave three stories about our sales career where the incident taught us a lesson, as we told stories about how we were shy, stupid or boring, I saw heads shaking in the audience. I think that because we were "real" we allowed the guests to be there with us. I had several people come up to me later to tell me that they couldn't believe how much we were describing something they had done in their sales career.

Linda Macedonio, Executive Director of BNI, Rhode Island, SE Massachusetts and Maine; Deanna Tucci Schmitt, Executive Director of BNI Western Pennsylvania and I had planned for several weeks via conference calls what we were going to say. We tried to come up with a central theme, but just couldn't seem to do that. Magically, it happened that evening as Linda first talked about being shy, then Deanna talked about a stupid move on her part and then I bragged about how boring I was when I made presentations to prospects. So there we had it on the fly, shy, stupid and boring.

We had fun and I think our audience did too.

What story would you like to tell an audience about your career?