Always Pack Emergency Pants…and other tips for traveling salespeople
I was meeting the VP of Procurement at a major mining customer for a quarterly stewardship review. It was a big meeting for me and my team as we’d been doing a great deal of work with his sites on improving reliability. The pressure was on to justify our relationship not just from a cost perspective but from cost avoidance and productivity improvement perspective. I walked into the boardroom full of gusto and ready to nail the presentation when my field engineering partner, who had followed me into the room, pulled me aside…
“Ummmm I don’t know how to tell you this Lindsay, but there’s a large-scale hole in the seat of your pants…”
The wind was immediately knocked out my sails and so I took a minute to regroup. Then I did what any good sales reps would do, I tied my blazer around my waist and delivered a stunning presentation. And while I’m sure the VP was wondering what new-fangled style this millennial was co-opting, at least he wasn’t wondering about entrusting his reliability program to a woman who couldn’t even dress in undamaged clothing.
Ironically later that evening while getting out of the car at dinner, my field engineering partner caught a pocket on the door and subsequently ripped the ass out of his jeans… Pants 2…oil sales team 0…
Sales reps are notorious for packing the bare essentials to ensure they can ‘carry-on’. I mean who wants to spend precious extra minutes waiting for airport baggage just to realize that your luggage has been inadvertently shipped to Rio (when you are in Toronto…)? But I always ALWAYS spare room for an extra pair of pants. Here are some of my other tried and true tips for road-weary sales reps…
- Buy extra travel-sized toiletries and keep them packed in your carry-on (instead of transferring back and forth from your regular bathroom stash).
- Sign up for every airline & hotel loyalty program (you never know when you’ll be stuck and forced to diversify from your favorite chain and members, even the new ones get benefits).
- If your home airport offers it, reserve your parking and pre-pay ahead of time (saves precious minutes when you’re cutting it close to flight time or just want to get home after a long week).
- GET TSA PRE-CHECK (whether that’s Nexus or Global Entry it’s totally worth the retina scan & fingerprint check…unless you’re a criminal mastermind I suppose).
- Designate a ‘special’ pocket in your purse/briefcase for passports & phones. Trust me…it will help avoid a lot of the lost item panic that inevitably comes with travel.
- If you’re driving plan where you’ll stop for breaks ahead of time (preferably somewhere there is gas and snacks…).
- Speaking of snacks…stock-up on healthy stuff and water when you get to your destination. That way when you realize the hotel restaurant closed at 8 pm or you wake up at 5 am starving because you’re in a different time zone you won’t be caught out.
- Be nice to the airline staff…they don’t control the weather, the flight crews’ working hour limitations or aircraft maintenance issues and being a jerk will get you a seat next to the toilet on your next flight, not an upgrade…
- Buuuuut…always ask for upgrades (politely of course)!
- And lastly…don’t forget your emergency underpants either…
