The Sixteen-Hour Day That Won a Client

The meeting was outside Chicago, IL. I was in Detroit, MI.

It was February, which in that corridor means weather you don't argue with, and the flight I'd been counting on, didn’t let me carry the sample we had formulated for the trials.

The commercial logic said: reschedule. The client would understand. Weather cancellations are force majeure. No reasonable person would hold it against us.

The actual logic said: we were not the only vendor in consideration, and the reasonable option was probably what the reasonable vendors were doing.

I got in the car.

Six Hours in Both Directions

Six hours down, through weather that made the second hour interesting and the fourth hour genuinely unpleasant.

Four hours in the client's facility, a working session, not a presentation.

Six hours back, arriving home at a time I won't specify because my wife has a sense of humor about these things.

The client's procurement team had three vendors shortlisted. We were the only one who showed up that day.

I am not saying the drive won the contract. I'm saying it was the moment that changed the nature of the conversation, from "vendor pitching for business" to "partner who will show up."

That is a different kind of conversation, and it leads to different outcomes.

"Showing up when it's inconvenient tells a client something no presentation ever can: that they are worth the inconvenience."

What Relentlessness Actually Looks Like

It is not dramatic. It rarely looks like a highlight reel moment. It looks like getting in a car in February when the flight is out of the equation.

It looks like the follow-up call you make at 7 PM because you said you'd have an answer by end of day.

It looks like the extra preparation you do for the client who might not convert, because that's not how you decide to prepare.

Bob Peaslee, my first real mentor, used to say that grit is a follow-up email on a Friday at 9 PM.

The principle is the same: the visible-to-the-client effort that isn't logistically required is exactly the effort that builds the relationship that the logistically-required effort can't.

The Broader Principle

Every significant client relationship I've built over 28 years has a specific moment, one I can usually identify, where the nature of the relationship changed.

Where it stopped being transactional and became something more durable. Almost none of those moments happened in a scheduled meeting or a formal proposal.

They happened in the moments where staying comfortable was the obvious option, and I chose something else. The visit that wasn't required. The problem I engaged with before being asked.

The call I made to say "I've been thinking about what you told me last month."

Service is not the department that answers complaints. It is the posture that defines how you show up before anyone asks.

We got the contract. We kept the client for years. And every time I've told this story in a coaching context, I've been asked the same question: "Was it worth it?" Every time, the answer is the same.

It was never a question.

What's one client relationship where showing up differently — not better, just differently — could change the nature of the conversation?

Service and Perseverance are two of the twenty traits in Half & Half.

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