I’m working out a new marketing strategy for my software consulting business. It’s so obvious that I don’t know why I haven’t done it before, but, y’know, you live and learn. Here’s an excerpt from a pre-sales meeting I just had:
Cust.: “We basically need a way to link our existing order database to our new software and not lose any continuity.”
Me: “Well, y’know, when I was a kid, I’d play my NES quite a bit, so I know my way around this sort of maze, with a Visual Basic, there’s probably a terabyte that you’d have to, and when you denormalize, some of those would be hard, but we’re ready, because it’s all about continuity, of.”
Cust.: “Great! Do you have a plan in mind of how you’d implement this?”
Me: “Y’know, I’m just like you, I don’t know a for loop from a read head…”
Cust. (laughing): “Yeah, yeah!”
Me: “… so, I’ve read all the manuals [winks] and there are a lot of ways to do this, like when our sons were playing each other in that soccer game, wasn’t that a hoot, you just have to keep scorin’ goals.”
Cust.: “OK.”
I read that “OK” as “I feel like we’re really connecting here, and by extension, I’m sure that you’re quite capable of executing the complex technical requirements of this job in a timely and efficient manner”. I’m pretty sure I’ll close the sale…