At Let’s Go, I was once again benefiting others at a personal cost. Although I was helping my
clients save money, I was a pushover, losing revenues for the company and sacrificing my own
commission. But the following week, I happened to meet a new assistant manager at Let’s Go whose
position was created as a result of the advertising revenue that my predecessor generated. The job
made it possible for her to pay for school. It was the inspiration that I needed: I realized that my
colleagues were depending on me. As a student, I didn’t have a wife and children yet, but I could see
myself as an agent on behalf of college students in search of jobs that would defray the cost of tuition
and provide meaningful work experiences. I might be a doormat when lobbying solely for my own
interests, but when I was representing the interests of students, I was willing to fight to protect them.
Before a heated negotiation with a merciless French hotelier who demanded a discount, I thought
about how the revenue could support job creation, which gave me the resolve to dig in my heels. I
added a relational account: if I gave him a discount, it would only be fair to offer the same to our
other clients, and I had a responsibility to be consistent. He ended up paying the full price.
After four months, I had set company records by bringing in more than $600,000 in revenue,
nearly doubling my predecessor’s tally, and landing more than $230,000 from cold calls to new
prospects. I sold the largest advertising package in company history, and our president announced at a
banquet that I was “one of the finest advertising associates ever to come through” the company. At age
nineteen, I was promoted to director of advertising sales, which put me in charge of a budget above
$1 million and tasked me with hiring, training, and motivating my own staff.
Right after I was promoted, the Internet bubble collapsed. More than a dozen clients went out of
business before our advertising season even started, and six of our ten biggest clients informed me
that their advertising budgets had been slashed, so they wouldn’t be able to renew. When all was said
and done, Let’s Go lost twenty-two loyal clients and 43 percent of the total budget from the previous
year. The worst blow came when our largest client called. It was Michael, the vice president of the
student travel agency that had purchased the record-setting package the previous year. “I’m very sorry
to tell you this, because we love your product and value this relationship.” Michael took a deep
breath. “But due to budget constraints and a declining travel market, I’m not sure if we can afford to
advertise this year at all. To even consider it, we’ll need a major discount.”
Knowing that many jobs depended on revenue from Michael’s company, I became an advocate
and pushed back. Because his rivals were pulling their ads, I told Michael, it was an opportunity to
gain a leg up on the competition—and what better time to invest than during a recession? He said he
would check with his boss and get back to me. The following week, he called with bad news: he had
authorization to advertise in our books only if he could have the same package as the prior year, and
only with a 70 percent discount. This would slash his expenditure of just under $120,000 to below
$40,000.
While I was trying to figure out how much of a discount we could afford, I went to coach a diving
practice. Sitting on the pool deck, it dawned on me that there was a major difference between diving
and Let’s Go. Individual sports involved zero-sum contests where helping competitors win meant that
I would be more likely to lose. In business, though, win-win was possible; my clients’ interests didn’t
have to be at odds with my own. When I began to contemplate Michael’s interests, I realized that he
might value products to give away for free in his store. I learned from colleagues that our publishing
contract gave Let’s Go the rights to sell or license any content that didn’t exceed twenty pages, so I
offered him sponsorship of a new product: twenty-page Let’s Go travel booklets that he could hand
michael s
(Michael S)
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