Right after I graduated from college, I went to work at a (very small) publicly held company.
Soon after I went to work there, the president of the company basically resigned and the Chairman of the board of directors put me in charge.
Right after I got put in charge, one of the biggest investors came to me and sat down in my office.
He was a 65 year old wise old sage who spoke real soft, but when he spoke, people listened.
The guy sits down with me and he says “okay, I know that your daily life is crazy, but you have to promise me one thing. You have to promise me that you will get your quarterly reports turned into the SEC on time.”
I gave him my word that it would get done.
I told our in-house accountant to tell me if our outside accounting firm wasn’t going to make the deadline a week before it was due.
A week before the deadline our in-house accountant told me he wasn’t sure they were going to make it.
I called our outside accounting firm and got the guy who was doing it on the phone. His name was Boyd.
“Boyd, are you going to have our stuff done?”
“Uh, I think so — it is looking pretty good, yeah, I should have it done I think…”
“Okay Boyd, I will follow up with you in two days.”
Two days later.
“Boyd, do you have our stuff done yet?”
“Not yet, I have been really busy. I am planning on getting to it soon though.”
“Boyd … that is not what I want to hear. You told me that you would have it done!”
“I know, I know, but the partner gave me some extra work and I have been really busy trying to get that done…”
So I hung up the phone and drove 1.5 hours away to his office.
I walked in his office, and asked the receptionist for him.
She buzzed his office.
He came out and thought he could meet me in the lobby and get me to go away.
“Hi Boyd. I came to get you whatever answers you need to get this stuff done. Which way is your office?” He pointed.
I walked right into his office and sat down.
He came in his office, cleared off his desk of the stuff he was working on and worked on our stuff.
For two days STRAIGHT (16 hours straight) I sat in his office with nothing to do but look at him punching numbers into a computer.
Needless to say, we got our quarterly report filed.
Why is this story important here? Boyd the accountant is very similar to vendors that we have — especially appraisers.
You can “hand and hope” (HAND them your deal and HOPE they do it) or you can follow up like crazy.
Call first, if you don’t get what you want, call again and again and again. Yes, do it all in the same day.
If you don’t get what you want, show up at their office. Be nice, but be realistic as to what you need.
No one cares about your deals as much as you — or in other words … never trust your job to someone else.
Never.
Note: this originally went out as an email to a group of sales people in the mid 2000’s.