West Essex Neighborhoods and Homes: Does Anyone Care What I Think?

Many years ago, when I landed a coveted sales position at America's leading woman's service magazine, I was positively giddy.  Even though I was fairly young at the time I had made it to the big leagues of the media business.  Despite the challenges ahead, I was confident and maybe, just maybe, I was a little full of myself.  Well, early on, my boss invited himself into a meeting I had set up with a divisional vice president at a very important food advertiser.  The subject of the meeting was how to make more effective use of print advertising and I was ready to hit the ball out of the park.  I told him everything I knew about the subject...in all candor, I did know quite a bit...and thought the meeting was a great success.

During the ride back to NYC my boss asked me how I thought the meeting went.  I said I thought it went well.  He said that I obviously knew a good deal about the subject.  I said, yes, I do, adding that I had made a study of it.  He said, "No one cares about what you think." 

My life was over.  I was dead but my body just hadn't gotten the memo yet.  Little did I know that what he said, which was, at the time, incredibly painful, would turn out to be the most valuable sales and marketing lesson I would ever get.  What he meant was that clients don't care what sales people think.  Sales people are conduits for facts and they [the salespeople] exist to communicate those facts in the context of their [the client's] needs.  Everything else is ego-driven window dressing. 

It was time for me to rethink how I was going to conduct business for the rest of my life.

While that exchange took place many years ago I remain eternally grateful that my boss, who is long gone but hardly forgotten, cared enough to make me a better advocate for my clients' interests.  But, interestingly, his wise counsel, which I have sought to pass on to others along the way, has often been seen as an unnecessary burden.  After all, they argued, developing factual understandings takes work and, in their minds it isn't necessary because clients won't know the difference. 

Perhaps clients won't know the difference, but I will.