I have been lucky enough to have had a very varied career, everything from a farm lad to a Calor Gas cooker and heater service engineer through to a truck driver and then a service and export manager for a machinery manufacturer. It was my exploits of the latter as you can imagine that made me smile on more than one occasion.
One such occasion saw me fly over to Schipol airport and then jump on to a hovercraft across to Malmo for a trip to a Swedish dealer who was very well known and did an excellent job for us with the quantity of machines they sold. I should have had the alarm bells ringing when half way across to Malmo as we sped along in the noisiest hovercraft ever, the venerable machine suddenly came to a halt, yes a halt.
Now, of course hovercrafts do actually float on water even with their skirts deflated, but I for one was not too keen to test that theory at that exact time. As the engines died down to a tick over there was the sound of footsteps from above as the "pilot" came nonchalantly whistling down the steps from his cabin, opened up the big front door and give it a huge "slam". With that he turned around, smiled at us all and still whistling jogged up the stairs and within minutes we were on our way, obviously now with the hovercraft door well and truly shut!.
On arrival at Malmo we were met by a very nice tall slender gent who picked us up in what was then the very latest Land Rover Discovery and off we went. We drove for about 40 odd miles through Sweden and I remember it was a rather beautiful place, very clean, neat but also very very cold, more of which later.
On arrival at the dealership we were greeted by the company's MD who was also a very tall elegant man who spoke wonderful English, I was very impressed with the whole outfit, everything was so wonderfully ergomatic in it's layout, the welcome was second to none we had ever had before and myself and the MD who accompanied me on this trip were made to feel very welcome.
The idea of the visit was for me to present a slide show to the area managers working for the company throughout Sweden, a task I admit i was relishing. We sat around a huge of table on which stood a stainless steel flask with a plethora of small stainless steel "over sized" thimbles or similar even to small egg cups.
I stood up and immediately fired in to my sales pitch, I was very young but i knew the machinery very well, having spent 3 months with our manufacturers building the equipment on the shop floor to give me a better idea of how it all worked. I answered a plethora of questions and soon it was made clear to me that i was to do a live demonstration of the machines after each explanation, something I had done many many times before, so no problem. Well, actually there was a little bit of a problem, you see in Sweden before you step outside into what turned out to be -17 degrees you have a little tipple which came courtesy of the flask set in the middle of the table. So, before we headed outside we were all handed this stainless thimble like container and all said "Schol" and tipped it straight back. Perhaps I should explain right here and now that at 24 I wasn't a drinker or a smoker in fact i was a very good boy, but all the same I drank it and off we walked outside.
The cold chill air took my poor Anglo Saxon breath away, I was frozen and had to demonstrate a machine to the waiting crowd. Of course being the professional I was I carried out my task without question and we were soon once again climbing the stairs to the huge sales area where we were presenting the equipment.
This all went on for an hour or so as we had quite a range of machinery, but after each presentation we again drank from the stainless flask....
Now, I sense you are ahead of me a little here, we were getting towards the end of the presentation and after yet another sip from the cup "schol" we were heading back out into the freezing temperatures. This steady mixture of warm buildings quickly followed by -17 degrees outside demonstrating equipment had started to take its toll, i was in effect becoming slightly "tiddly" much to my hosts amusement. I had a permanent stupid grin that i couldn't get rid off, I started cracking one liners that would empty a graveyard and even worse my MD was stood frowning in the back ground.
By the time the presentation had ended I had warmed the room up to almost fever pitch and had the whole Swedish sales team rolling around the room in fits of laughter, most humor of which was aimed squarely at the machinery we were actually trying to sell!.
The end of the session arrived with yet another sip from the cup and all i can remember then was how warm it felt going all the way down, it was some very good stuff !.
We were thanked very warmly for our presentation and were soon on our way back to our hotel, we dined that night with the MD and he was as courteous as ever, despite me being obviously worse for wear after the days proceedings. Soon the evening was over and we caught the last ferry back to the "Magnus Steinbock" hotel in Amsterdam, feeling very weary and also because of the delicacy of Swedish food to our English palates also very very hungry.
We dumped our bags in the hotel and walked out on to the harbour streets of Copenhagen in search of some food, both of us by now quite desperate for some good old fashioned home cooking. Then before our very eyes on the high st by the harbour there it was, like an oasis in a dust filled desert, "The Hereford Steak Bar".
I can tell you we went in and filled our boots to the hilt whilst sat on authentic old oak benches and gorging on the most succulent sirloin steak i had ever tasted and even home made chips!.. heaven.
On arrival back into the UK myself and the MD said our goodbyes and said we would meet first thing in the MD's office to discuss the visit. I have to admit I was not looking forward to listening to the report as getting potential customers to laugh along with you whilst describing the company's pride and joy isn't exactly what my MD had in mind when he initially sent me the job description, I did however think it had gone reasonably well despite the unorthodox nature of the presentation.
I walked into the offices on the Tuesday and was greeted with a few smirks from the commercial manager, he was always trying to score points so my guess was i was in for a bit of an ear roasting. Two of the UK area mangers for the company were there too and they were pretending to lie flat out across the desk in a drunk like manner. Just at the moment where i was starting to regret even turning up that morning the MD's door flung wide open and the gaffer was stood there with a cigar in his mouth and a big smile across his face, "how is my star salesman today? is your head better?" he shouted,
"errrr... well actually no" i quipped back
"It's damned sore".
"Well" said the MD "it's going to be even worse by the time we finish celebrating!"
and with that he gave me the fax document he had been holding and said
"read!"
I glanced down and there was this lovely "thank you" paragraph from the Swedish company we visited, followed by a long list of our machines and a figure at the very bottom of the paper... £30,000 ... an awfully big order in 1990
It seems our presentation had done the trick after all. I was promoted from zero to hero in seconds.
But... to this day I still do NOT know what I was drinking. It did however do the trick!.
One such occasion saw me fly over to Schipol airport and then jump on to a hovercraft across to Malmo for a trip to a Swedish dealer who was very well known and did an excellent job for us with the quantity of machines they sold. I should have had the alarm bells ringing when half way across to Malmo as we sped along in the noisiest hovercraft ever, the venerable machine suddenly came to a halt, yes a halt.
Now, of course hovercrafts do actually float on water even with their skirts deflated, but I for one was not too keen to test that theory at that exact time. As the engines died down to a tick over there was the sound of footsteps from above as the "pilot" came nonchalantly whistling down the steps from his cabin, opened up the big front door and give it a huge "slam". With that he turned around, smiled at us all and still whistling jogged up the stairs and within minutes we were on our way, obviously now with the hovercraft door well and truly shut!.
On arrival at Malmo we were met by a very nice tall slender gent who picked us up in what was then the very latest Land Rover Discovery and off we went. We drove for about 40 odd miles through Sweden and I remember it was a rather beautiful place, very clean, neat but also very very cold, more of which later.
On arrival at the dealership we were greeted by the company's MD who was also a very tall elegant man who spoke wonderful English, I was very impressed with the whole outfit, everything was so wonderfully ergomatic in it's layout, the welcome was second to none we had ever had before and myself and the MD who accompanied me on this trip were made to feel very welcome.
The idea of the visit was for me to present a slide show to the area managers working for the company throughout Sweden, a task I admit i was relishing. We sat around a huge of table on which stood a stainless steel flask with a plethora of small stainless steel "over sized" thimbles or similar even to small egg cups.
I stood up and immediately fired in to my sales pitch, I was very young but i knew the machinery very well, having spent 3 months with our manufacturers building the equipment on the shop floor to give me a better idea of how it all worked. I answered a plethora of questions and soon it was made clear to me that i was to do a live demonstration of the machines after each explanation, something I had done many many times before, so no problem. Well, actually there was a little bit of a problem, you see in Sweden before you step outside into what turned out to be -17 degrees you have a little tipple which came courtesy of the flask set in the middle of the table. So, before we headed outside we were all handed this stainless thimble like container and all said "Schol" and tipped it straight back. Perhaps I should explain right here and now that at 24 I wasn't a drinker or a smoker in fact i was a very good boy, but all the same I drank it and off we walked outside.
The cold chill air took my poor Anglo Saxon breath away, I was frozen and had to demonstrate a machine to the waiting crowd. Of course being the professional I was I carried out my task without question and we were soon once again climbing the stairs to the huge sales area where we were presenting the equipment.
This all went on for an hour or so as we had quite a range of machinery, but after each presentation we again drank from the stainless flask....
Now, I sense you are ahead of me a little here, we were getting towards the end of the presentation and after yet another sip from the cup "schol" we were heading back out into the freezing temperatures. This steady mixture of warm buildings quickly followed by -17 degrees outside demonstrating equipment had started to take its toll, i was in effect becoming slightly "tiddly" much to my hosts amusement. I had a permanent stupid grin that i couldn't get rid off, I started cracking one liners that would empty a graveyard and even worse my MD was stood frowning in the back ground.
By the time the presentation had ended I had warmed the room up to almost fever pitch and had the whole Swedish sales team rolling around the room in fits of laughter, most humor of which was aimed squarely at the machinery we were actually trying to sell!.
The end of the session arrived with yet another sip from the cup and all i can remember then was how warm it felt going all the way down, it was some very good stuff !.
We were thanked very warmly for our presentation and were soon on our way back to our hotel, we dined that night with the MD and he was as courteous as ever, despite me being obviously worse for wear after the days proceedings. Soon the evening was over and we caught the last ferry back to the "Magnus Steinbock" hotel in Amsterdam, feeling very weary and also because of the delicacy of Swedish food to our English palates also very very hungry.
We dumped our bags in the hotel and walked out on to the harbour streets of Copenhagen in search of some food, both of us by now quite desperate for some good old fashioned home cooking. Then before our very eyes on the high st by the harbour there it was, like an oasis in a dust filled desert, "The Hereford Steak Bar".
I can tell you we went in and filled our boots to the hilt whilst sat on authentic old oak benches and gorging on the most succulent sirloin steak i had ever tasted and even home made chips!.. heaven.
On arrival back into the UK myself and the MD said our goodbyes and said we would meet first thing in the MD's office to discuss the visit. I have to admit I was not looking forward to listening to the report as getting potential customers to laugh along with you whilst describing the company's pride and joy isn't exactly what my MD had in mind when he initially sent me the job description, I did however think it had gone reasonably well despite the unorthodox nature of the presentation.
I walked into the offices on the Tuesday and was greeted with a few smirks from the commercial manager, he was always trying to score points so my guess was i was in for a bit of an ear roasting. Two of the UK area mangers for the company were there too and they were pretending to lie flat out across the desk in a drunk like manner. Just at the moment where i was starting to regret even turning up that morning the MD's door flung wide open and the gaffer was stood there with a cigar in his mouth and a big smile across his face, "how is my star salesman today? is your head better?" he shouted,
"errrr... well actually no" i quipped back
"It's damned sore".
"Well" said the MD "it's going to be even worse by the time we finish celebrating!"
and with that he gave me the fax document he had been holding and said
"read!"
I glanced down and there was this lovely "thank you" paragraph from the Swedish company we visited, followed by a long list of our machines and a figure at the very bottom of the paper... £30,000 ... an awfully big order in 1990
It seems our presentation had done the trick after all. I was promoted from zero to hero in seconds.
But... to this day I still do NOT know what I was drinking. It did however do the trick!.
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