Lunch in London
1987, and Gordon Gekko came out with two of the most famous lines in film history, “lunch is for wimps” and “greed is good.” In just over a month on April 23rd we will see the release in the UK of the sequel, “Wall Street Money Never Sleeps.” Being a film buff, a must see.
The days of corporate excess may be over and having lunch not as trendy as it used to be, but the restaurant we visited yesterday in EC4 was full. I would not recommend the place mainly due to the fact that two waiters collided and poured a pint of larger down the back of the person I was having lunch with. Secondly, in trying to scrap up a small drop of spinach, they managed to smear the table cloth and change it’s colour to green. A discount, not a chance – not even an offer of a discount.
The business person I met used to have a leasing division as part of his consultancy business. I acquired his customer base early last year. He invited me out for lunch with no agenda and no real idea if there was any way we could do business together. “It’s just good to network” he said.
Over cod and spinach we discussed a number of things, one being how the younger generation feels that selling and customer communication can be undertaken by e-mail. Total rubbish was our joint reply. You have to meet people face to face – lunch, coffee or whatever your preference is, but you have got to press the flesh.
He told me about his new business going live in April, Cordoba Incentives. The idea is that a company can reward customers, salespeople etc by giving them points depending on what and how much they sell. These people who receive the points go onto the Cordoba Incentives website and redeem the points for goods such as wallets, phones, cameras etc.
It was an amazing coincidence as we are launching “Reward Success” at the end of April, a website that sells plaques that recognise success such as employee of the month. We will not be in competition and our two companies complement each other. At the very least we can have links between our sites and trade contacts.
So lunch is not always for wimps – it is a great environment to network.
p.s. the restaurant is to pay for the dry cleaning
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