The salesman pulled up his blue, pinstriped sleeve to uncover his Omega. Two hours till the meeting
with the CFO of ACME Enterprises. The salesman flew in that
morning, rented a car, and was now staked out in a Starbucks. He liked
to get into town early and to scope out the address with plenty of time
to spare, not one for leaving anything to chance. He remembered the
time he showed up bright and early for a meeting with a prospect. He
told the receptionist who he was meeting and stepped back to wait. The
time ticked away and finally the receptionist summoned him to the large
horse shoe shaped desk. She told him the meeting was changed, last
minute, to another facility cross town. He packed up and showed up 15
minutes late. The prospect was full up to her coke bottle glasses with
apologies about the meeting change. Yet as he surveyed the room, the IT
guy looking at his watch, the GM tapping his fingers and the head
engineer, sitting back with arms folded, that he was dead. Turned out
to be true, he was promised a next meeting, but this never happened.

So
here he sat, sipping a tall house blend, a hot, black, liquid eye
opener. He never understood de-caf coffee or low alcohol beer, what was
the point anyway? And no foo foo latte, spiced, half caf, cinnamon
sprinkled, whipped cream stuff for him.  He didn't drink anymore, for
good reasons, but could not give up his coffee habit. He was studying
the financial reports on the his prospect. His MBA helped a lot,
undergrad he majored in division one football. His 6'4 frame, lean and
mean 289 pounds of sinew and muscle was all American on  Saturday, but
his study habits were lack luster. He hit the books hard in his post
grad business classes. He wanted to pay back the lack of effort during
undergrad years performance. Now he had a good sense of a balance
sheet. He noted key income and expense ratios for the afternoon
prospect and compared with the top companies in the industry. He found
a toe hold in the share price and the PE ratio.

The top two
competitors, the top of the heap, were trading at year highs. Mr. CFO's
company was trading at year low. He looked further. He saw percentage
of sales from stores, he noted percentage of e-commerce sales. He
turned back to the annual report and re-read the CEO comments. "
Increasing our customer satisfaction utilizing state of the art
e-commerce technologies is a prime directive for the executive team."
Translated to: "We have to figure out how to sell stuff on the web or
we are dead." Good data to use, not to  jam down Mr. CFO;s throat, but
to gently mention. He wanted to hurt a little not get thrown out the
door. 

He rose from his chair, time for the meeting. As Joe Paterno used to scream, "The hay is in the barn, go get em."