You Didn’t Have To Say That…

The other day, one of my business peers and I were scheduled to make a sales pitch to a a potential client. I was the meeting’s facilitator so I was also in charge of synchronizing everyone’s schedule and making sure the meeting flowed well. Since we were all coming from different locations around the city to meet at this client’s office, I Googled the directions and emailed them to everyone. Only thing was, instead of putting in South…I put in North. A big oops, but recoverable. Unfortunately, one of my peers didn’t think so.

He called me on the cell phone and asked for directions clarification. He told me that he was on the North side and there wasn’t anything there. I simply said, go to the South side since I obviously made a faux pas in my directions. He did and we all arrived at the client’s office on time and a few minutes to spare. So the directions issue should have been the end of that, but thanks to my (former) business peer, it wasn’t. Guess what happened?

When we arrived at the client’s office, the client thanked us for coming and for taking time out of our schedules to make this presentation. The only thing for us to would have been to do was smile and nod. Just smile and nod. But my kudos-happy friend thought it was important to tell the clients how we had bad directions and had been driving around downtown for sometime looking for their office building. What did the client do? He just smiled and nodded. Just smiled and nodded. We all know what that means.

Whenever there is an issue that won’t make a difference to your potential client, keep it to yourself. There is no need for the client to know everything. Also, it can truly look unprofessional, as it did that day. We made the presentation, but never got to do business with the client. I wonder why?

There are some things you don’t even have to say.