How to lose orders....

Sometimes orders may be lost after a lot of hard work for ever so many reasons!

But we have to take it in our stride.

Years back we were driving down Egmore and saw a huge old building being razed in
a prominent location.

"Mark this" my friend told me. " This could be one place where we could sell a good
quantity of air-conditioners....".

From then on for almost eight months we watched that place. As building work commenced
we would try to meet the owners. Later we came to know that a 2 star hotel is planned.
After many visits we gave our quote for air-conditioners. Then we obtained information
on where the owners were living ( so that we could meet them in their house.)

As luck would have it from the address I saw that a good friend of mine was staying
in the same address.  When we actually went to that place we found that my friend was
staying in adjoining apartment in ground floor.

We asked him to introduce us to the owners.....  We got closer to getting the order.

Finally we had succeeded in getting an order for 50 air-conditioners. But when we
actually got the order in our hand - it was for 40 air-conditioners.

Just the previous Sunday a competitor had met them in the church and managed to get
an order for 10 air-conditioners!

Had we not put in so much of hard work, we would have lost the entire order!!

Are salesmen prepared to do such work now?