[Fwd: Some incentives and changes.]

[Sean DALY]

Mel, here's a little story which I hope can be useful. My apologies if
the anecdote bores the others :-)

Many (that would be MANY) years ago I was getting started in business
selling life insurance on Wall Street to finance my music activities -
I lived in a dump and every spare nickel went to musical instruments
and recording equipment. It was intimidating meeting millionaires in
corner suites, given my youth and inexperience and lack of knowledge
of investment banking, techniques for closing a sale, etc. How could I
convince those worldly tycoons to make a monthly premium commitment
for the rest of their lives? I went to see the senior broker about it.
"Son," he said, "just get your suit on, go see people, and talk about
insurance. Buy yourself a policy and put it on the table. If they have
questions, listen carefully, write them down and answer them, even if
it's the next day. They will trust you and one out of ten people will
run out of questions and sign." I always remember that because aside
from the content of a presentation which is important of course,
people are also looking to see if you personally believe in it, if you
care about it, in the present case if you are passionate about it
(believe me, it's much harder to get passionate about insurance ;-).
And... people will watch to see if you are listening and responding to
their questions. Some questions will be hard to answer; and there will
always be people around who know more than you. The best solution to
that is to say "come see me after the talk, I'll take down your e-mail
and get back to you on that." After a few talks, your confidence will
grow... guaranteed. So... if you can, I encourage you to go and share
your passion for educating kids through Sugar. People will appreciate
the effort you made just to get in front of them... you *will* reach
people... and probably far more than one in ten!

Sean

P.S. Nearly as many years ago I was a judge at the annual Corel Draw
art contest and I thoroughly enjoyed my brief stay in Ottawa!



On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>> The Ottawa Linux Symposium is in mid July,
>>
>> I think I might make it, but but native English speakers would
>> certainly do better than me.  The OLS is probably only second to
>> the LCA for importance, so we shouldn't miss this opportunity.
>
> Hey, that's not so bad, a ~7hr drive from Boston. Plane tickets also
> seem to be available (Boston to Ontario roundtrip) for about $400.
>
> I'd love to go (I'm in my "I'm young! I want to see the world!" phase),
> and could be useful if what we want for a speech/paper at that point is
> "convince many people to become active contributors to / partners of
> SL." I'm currently free for those dates, too.
>
> However, I may not be *the* most useful person for that. People like
> Walter have much more Impressive Speech Giving Skills; I lack
> exposure/practice (...but need to get it somehow to improve, you know.)
> I also know I can't afford that plane ticket (or a hotel, but that's
> what couchsurfing is for). And there are *way* better technical
> contributors to give a technically oriented talk / work with other
> hackers on Doing Stuff With Code during OLS, if that is what we want.
> It'll be midway through the release cycle at that point.
>
> Anyway, that's my availability/likely functionality/potential
> opportunity cost/interest-flag. I'll now be passive-aggressive about
> this and work on those interview for Sean instead...
>
> --Mel
> _______________________________________________
> Marketing mailing list
> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>