I wrote yesterday about how my stories of the Toppled Bollard gained attention. So much so that one reader, wrote in with his own Bollard story. It just shows what a great approach this is to developing customer relations.

A traveller’s tale

Half way through a recent sales trip through Northamptonshire, I was initially dismayed when my old VW finally gave up the ghost somewhere in the environs of Corby. Casting around for the nearest source of succour, the loom of a disreputable looking hovel caught my eye. Any port in a storm, I thought and, leaving the car with a few well directed kicks, I crossed the cratered tarmac of a car park and blundered in through the back door of the shabby hostelry.

The effect of my entrance, somewhat spoiled as I tripped lightly over a disused trouser press, could not have been more marked. The strident discussion I’d heard as I approached, stopped as if choked in the collective windpipe of the crowd who, as one, now regarded the intruder with an equal mix of suspicion and loathing. My dismay increased as a threatening figure stooped over me. “You’ve broken our darts trophy” it snarled, “that’ll be a fiver.” Glancing at the object of my downfall, I noticed, with a shiver of recognition, that it bore a small chrome plaque emblazoned with the words “Corby Finals – 1992 – Fecund Place – The Toppled Bollard”

As I proffered an apologetic twenty pound note, the lowering visage softened and a hand, extended by its owner, helped me to my feet. I retrieved my brief case and, picking up the contents liberally strewn about by my maladroit entrance, sat heavily upon a bar stool. “Any change?” I asked hopefully, ” or maybe a pint or two? – I won’t be driving anywhere for a while.” With a look of supreme unconcern, the barman, for such he was, slid a consolingly foaming pot across the bar. “Salesman?” he asked suspiciously.

“What?” I spluttered, inadvertently spraying him with foam, “Oh, the leaflets? Yes, sort of. I sell toilet cubicles and washroom vanities to Schools and Colleges.” Unfazed by the sniggers from the nearest of his customers and snide remarks about U-Tube, he brushed the spray over most of his sweatshirt and leaned forward confidentially. “Lucky you dropped in,” he said, “we know a bit about selling to schools here.”

“Really?” I said, my doubt evidenced by more flying foam.

“Really” came the assured reply.

“Fantastic!” I said, “I’m desperate.”

“So are most of this lot.” my interlocutor opined with a jerk of his head towards his clientele.

“No,” I protested, sliding the bit more firmly between my teeth, “What I mean is, our lot produce some damn good products but not enough of the school and college decision makers know about us. You’ll have heard of BSF?” I continued, “PFI, Public – Private partnership, consultation between local authorities,architects and main contractors, that sort of thing? Well, getting in front of those decision makers at the right time is a serious problem, let me tell you!”

Shaking the increasingly glazed look from his face with a considerable effort, he leaned suddenly closer – any nearer and I would have suffered from his shaving rash. “Bit difficult for me perhaps if I’m honest,” he breathed, “but there’s a bloke comes in here from time to time. likes a beer, tells a good story, does a lot of ‘mailings’, he calls ‘em.”

As he stared insistently into my eyes, I realised he was pressing something into my hand. I looked down at a comprehensively soiled piece of pasteboard. “Tell him Billy “The Dog” sent you.”

Simon Rosser
Decra Ltd