I sat next to an account manager for Coca Cola on a plane ride to Phoenix who shared an interesting story with me. She had been trying for many years to get the soft drink syrup account for one of the larger convenience store chains in Phoenix. The problem, however, was that the competition had a “lock” on the business. Rather than give up, this woman continued to call on the convenience store chain. But every year, the competition continued to be awarded the business.
One day her window of opportunity opened. On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, the competition’s dispensing machine broke down in one of the chain’s larger stores. One of the managers of this chain phoned her competition and asked them to come out and fix their machine. The competition’s response was, “We’ll have someone out there on Tuesday” which was the next business day. This store stood to lose a lot of sales if this machine wasn’t fixed. And since both Coca Cola and its competition used the same machine, this manager decided to call this woman at her home and ask if she would come in and fix her competition’s dispensing machine.
Seizing the opportunity, this woman was on the scene in very quick order to fix the competition’s machine. When finished, she told everyone in the store to have a nice day. Several months later, when the current contract expired, she was awarded the business and was not the lowest price. The reason she got the business was that the local management of the convenience store chain knew they could count on her.
So, when a particular situation looks hopeless, don’t give up. Be patient and wait for your window of opportunity to open–knowing full well that sooner or later it will. And, when it does, don’t hesitate; go for it!
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Recommended Reading
Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Transform Your Workplace!
Imagine a company where people are excited about coming to work and giving their best efforts every day. In this innovative and engrossing business parable, Harry Paul and Ross Reck show managers at all levels how they can immediately and easily increase productivity by tapping into the discretionary effort of the people who work for them. Starting from the most basic aspect of business reality—that people intentionally regulate the amount of effort they put into their jobs based upon how they feel they’re being treated—the authors point out that the most important part of the job of every manager, team leader, supervisor, and executive is to treat people in such a way that they become excited about applying all their discretionary effort toward performing their jobs.
At the book’s center is the story of Nancy Kim, a human resources director at a magazine that is struggling with all the problems associated with unhappy employees—low productivity and morale along with high absenteeism and turnover. After she openly challenges the CEO’s new management-by-the-numbers system, she’s charged with turning the situation around immediately. Filled with real-world studies, Instant Turnaround! shows anyone how to turn the workplace into a destination—a place where working hard feels like hardly working because it’s engaging, enjoyable, and fulfilling.
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