I'm not planning on blogging about every lunch meeting that I have with clients, but a conversation that I had with a prospective client the other day proved too good to pass up.
I sat down with my client around noonish on Wednesday excited about partnering his organization with our services. We spoke a bit about the Christmas season, the hustle and bustle of not having enough time and what our respective families were planning on doing over the next week.
After asking a series of pointed questions about his business operations over our delicious lunch, my client opened up further about the sectors and clients that they serve, their internal operations and their sales staff. As a smaller subsidiary organization, their sales staff was small, but tenured. He described his top sales guy as thus: This man lived and breathed his job. He worked long hours, saw his family very little, yet made a healthy living. I asked, prying a little, what kind of 'healthy living' did he make. He said with a straight face: "upwards of $500,000 per year." "Really," I said and instantly the cogs in my head started to churn...even hum a little. "Yeah...He's been with the company for over 30 years and is looking to retire soon." My face may have gotten a little red, white or green (who can tell, it's Christmas!) For some reason, the movie Tommy Boy started playing in my head. I started thinking further about what a move like that would entail, what sacrifice it may demand, what benefits, long-term and short-term, a move like that would make in my life.
That got me to thinking today. What would you be willing to do if someone offered you a job that paid upwards of $500,000/year?
