David Glickman Writing Sample – Darryl Rosen

This following are excerpts from a speech by professional speaker Darryl Rosen. It has been humorized by David Glickman and his added lines are in red.

So, let me ask you a question. By a show of hands, were any of you running late this morning (afternoon) (evening) to get here for this program? None of you? A few of you? You’re too out of breath to raise your hand?

Well, even if you were running late, you probably weren’t thinking, (with melodrama) “Oh, my God! I’m going to miss the opening of Darryl Rosen’s speech! Oh, my God, I’ve got to get in there. It’s Darryl Rosen! It’s Darryl Rosen!” No, I doubt anyone was saying that—and, if you were, you need to get on Facebook and get yourself some friends.

Now, let me ask you a much more important question. Anybody ever been really late for a sales meeting? Who’s starting to feel their palms sweat just thinking about it? Pulse quickening? Deoderant actually failing, as we speak? I can tell. I can smell! Well, you know, not everyone has that same reaction to being really late for a sales meeting.

Years ago an Australian wine supplier contacted me to set up a meeting. As you know, suppliers are not so flexible when it comes to meetings. If he wanted to see me at 5am, that was fine. 5pm, that was ok also. I mean, that’s a 12-hour window, that should give him some options. Usually I’m on the receiving end of a 12-hour window—when the cable company tells me they’ll send someone out between 7 am and 7 pm. And I’ll say, can you be more specific, and they’ll say, “Yeah. It’ll be between 7 am and 7 pm on Tuesday.”

So, here I am giving this Australian wine supplier a 12-hour window—I was willing to see him anytime, the only exception being that I really didn’t want to see him at lunchtime. Every day at lunchtime, I liked to go to Subway, get my sandwich, bring it back to the office, and eat it at my desk while reading the sports section – usually about a CUBS loss. That was my routine: go to Subway, get a sandwich, go back to my desk, and read about how the Cubs lost. There’s a certain comfort in having a routine. And the Cubs make it very easy to do that.

Well, against my better judgment, I made the meeting for noon.

The day of the meeting I was already famished by lunchtime. I had been staring at my Subway “Frequent Sandwich” card since 11 am, thinking of how hungry I was and how I was only two sandwiches away from getting a free one.

You see, the Subway I go to in Chicago punches this card every time you get a sandwich. Back then, it used to take me 20 sandwiches to get a free one. Until the day I went to Staples and bought my own hole puncher. Now I get them a whole lot faster. But that’s another story for another day.

So back to this story. Our appointment is for noon. At 12:15, he was nowhere to be found

At 12:30, he was nowhere to be found.

The same at 12:45. I called his cell, called his office, called his house. Nothing. Called his wife, called his girlfriend, called his bookie. Nothing. Sent an e-mail, sent a fax, sent up smoke signals. NOTHING.

Should I have left and met Jared over at Subway? (Jared – the Subway dude)

People usually say yes to which I respond

No, I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I’m a nice guy and his wines had really HIGH scores.

But let me ask you. You seem like a (pause) reasonably intelligent crowd….Well, at least those of you on this side of the room. (pause) No, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Although, I will tell you, this side of the room is much better looking than the other side. Why is that? Were you given assigned seats?

Usually draws a few laughs and somebody says “you don’t know us that well yet”

What do you do when you are running late?

You call

And what do we call that?

Courtesy

And what do they say about courtesy?

There is nothing common about it.

At 1:00pm he is still AWOL

Same at 1:15pm. Now I’m thinking, he had better have been rushed to a hospital for some reason. Because any excuse short of that is going to rate really high on “Darryl’s Lame-O-Meter”. That’s something I originally invented for use at home, except at home we call it “Dad’s Lame-O-Meter”. When my kids try to come up with these wild creative excuses for pretty much everything under the sun, I say, “Hey, you just scored a ten on Dad’s Lame-O-Meter.”

Finally at 1:30, I am looking out upon the sales floor from the mezzanine. And what to my wonderous eyes should appear, but an Australian wine salesman showing no fear.

The first thing he does is take his Blackberry out and start playing with it. Perhaps he’s checking the nine messages I’ve sent him since noon. Or perhaps not. Hard to tell. Maybe he’s simply looking at a funny YouTube video—you know, one of those stupid ones that your friends send you that says, “You’ve just got to see this!” And it’s a cat doing cartwheels, and you’re thinking, “Well, that’s three minutes of my life I’m never getting back again.”

FINALLY he makes his way up to my office.

(At this point I put on a Bluetooth earpiece, mirrored sunglasses and a loud peach coat.) (How about add a Blackberry in each hand. )

He started right in with his pitch. You know how you’re supposed to sell benefits and not features. He never got that memo. It started to sound like a bad infomercial, and if I ordered in the next ten minutes, they’d throw in three more cases of wine!

After a while I couldn’t take it any longer.

To group: We’ve established your intelligence already. What is the first thing you do when you are late for a meeting? Right. APOLOGIZE Elton John once said that “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” but I beg to differ.

Charades. Two words. First word. One syllable. “I’m” Ok, second word. Two syllables. “Sorry” “I’m sorry!”

I had to stop him.

I looked him square in the eye – which was made very difficult as he was wearing mirrored sunglasses. The glare from the reflection off my head nearly blinded me.

“Where were you?”

He looked at me, took off his shades and with great indignation he said, “I was running late”

“What? You were running late? That’s it?” (No apology, I thought to myself??)

I took a good look at him. He was wearing no socks. His jeans were ripped. He had one of those fancy t-shirts on. The kind you buy that already has holes in it. (At that point I usually look towards a big strong man and ask him if he has a shirt like that.) It works pretty well.

His sport coat was loud and wrinkled like this one. The kind of coat you would find in a re-sale shop or I’m guessing (choose someone from group) this guys closet. Hand coat to him. If you want this dry-cleaned let me know. Thanks for letting me use it. (Darryl, that’s very good stuff on the last two paragraphs! Good comedy!)

At this point I was nothing if not curious to see how he supported his products.

I asked him what type of marketing support he offered.

He responded, “What do you mean?”

I said – “Do you have marketing lined up, are you going to be spending any time in the market, do you have table tents and/or POS materials? Are you buying any local advertising?”

He responded, “What do you mean?”

At this point I was beginning to wonder if he supported his products so I asked – what if we buy a slug of your wine and it doesn’t sell – what will you do? Will you be around? Will you still love me tomorrow? Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m 64.” No, I didn’t really say the song titles, but here’s what he said to the other questions. He said, “Trust me. The wine will sell!”

Trust you, I thought – you made one commitment to me and you were 90 minutes late.

What else could go wrong?

Audience shouts some things out.

Right, his cell phone rang. What did he do? Come on, this is an easy one.

Of course, Right, he answered it.

It was his wife.

She was out mattress shopping. She wanted to know what sleep number he preferred.

You know sleep number is important. It takes into account your height, weight, body shape, whether you sleep on your stomach or your back….but NOT ON MY TIME.

I waited outside my office. He came out 20 minutes later. You think I’m kidding. I wish I was!

Now, if this relationship had started out on the right foot, I might have showed him our warehouse…

I might have showed him our sales floor and introduced him to Jim (point to audience member) and Jim would really get behind his wines…

I might have given him the grand tour but on the count of 3, I only showed him one place. Say it with me: THE DOOR.

I never saw him again.

This clown made many mistakes and in a moment we will identify some of those mistakes to lay the foundation for today’s program.