To swing above one’s class

Apparently, my stint in America beginning with gathering intelligence on thousands of businesses, cold calling a few potentials and then visiting them landed our company with a few distributors, an acceptance rate of about 60% from in person visits, 25% acceptance of visit from cold calls and 0.3% conversion rate from the total industry. A far cry from the 1% that we are targeting, but then again, if we achieved 1%, we’d be swimming in cash wouldn’t we?

I had fun and I learned a lot. Actually I didn’t learn anything, I just improved enough in my social interaction so that I wasn’t nervous, which opened my mind to use the skills I’ve learned in the past. Body language observation, mind chess and a pseudo mentat ability to have the game theory running at the back of my mind. I am sure all CEOs have these firing on all cylinder when meeting potential business contacts. For some, it’s a gut feeling, for me it’s a separate subconscious that I had to intentionally built. These analysis doesn’t come naturally for me because conversation up until now, has always been something that’s enjoyable and used purely for the mutual exploration of intellect between friends.

Judging all comes down to that first 30 seconds though. I think by their age, these execs have met enough people that they know how to categorize you within those 30 seconds. For me, I have to play catch up the whole way, but then again. I am used to playing catch up. Just 10 years ago, I couldn’t speak much English at all. Every new job I got, I’ve always been the youngest at my equivalent position. I still remember the lesson learned from my first encounter with a CEO when he grabbed his sexy secretary to sit with us and distract me. It was then I realized why married man is probably better for negotiations.