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70 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

interface ones are the ones that can get you into trouble. It is very important for the
responsible manager to be present at significant moments in the life of an invest-
ment project. Professional salespeople make it a practice, for example, to be there
when significant deliveries of products occur.

I was once involved in the delivery of a large computer to an old Victorian
building. The only method of getting the machine in was to remove a part of the
roof and lower the machine in by crane. The mobile crane had a journey of some
100 miles to get to the building. I had not done business with the crane company
before and we had put a lot of effort into ensuring that it was there on time and did
not let us down.

When it came to the day, the crane arrived absolutely on the dot and the engi-
neers and others who were there for the installation were in their appointed places.
The customer's IT director had come to watch the event as had I, the account
manager. The only thing that failed to make it was the computer itself, which had
unaccountably rescheduled itself for delivery the following day.

The embarrassment of sending the crane back along with the engineers and, of
course, the IT director was bad enough. The only mitigating factor was that I was
there to handle the feelings of the customer, reorganise all the activities and prepare
for the actual delivery date. It was a very uncomfortable moment made slightly
better by the knowledge that my absence would have resulted in an even worse
situation.

Idea 45 - Whoneeds training? Your customer
needs training

If you are selling complex products and services, the customer needs your training
services to make sure that they can use the product, get the most out of it, without
using an inordinate amount of your support people's time in follow-up work and
become satisfied customers. Selling such training services may not be simple. You