What Do You Tell Your Boss When Your Best Client Messed Up His Office
By: Brian Dickens Barrabee
Tags: Financial Planning, Boss, Business, Humor, Sales

During our meeting, I discover that Mr Jack Connelly was a wealthy man indeed.

Even better, he was ameanable to taking the advice of a 26 year old who had been plying his trade for all of 5 months

Photo by Brittany Collette on Unsplash

The new CNBC Invest in You survey determined that if you’re like 99% of other Americans, you manage your own money.

In fact, only 1% of those polled said they used a financial advisor.

Obviously, a financial advisor in his first year of constructing personalized plans for his clients faces a lot of rejection when building up his customer list.

This is about where I found myself in my initial year of planning financial futures. I had amassed 2 clients when Jack Connelly came into the firm’s offices.

Jack was a businessman who’d attended one of the company’s luncheon seminars (given along with a chicken club sandwich). I was assigned his name and number as an attendee who requested to meet with a financial planner.

Truly a qualified lead.

A hot lead. Golden — to be valued!

I sensed a rapport, when I solicited Jack on the phone. We scheduled a time for him to come in for an appointment.

He seemed to be a successful guy who owned his own business and was open to investment suggestions. He would make his own investment decisions. With any luck, he’d follow my advice.

Jack Connelly show up 5 minutes early for his appointment, a good sign.

During our meeting I discovered that Mr Jack Connelly was a weathy man indeed.

Even better, he was amenable to taking the advice of a 26 year old financial planner who was in his first 5 months of plying his trade.

Of course, he didn’t know that! It simply never came up in our appointment.

Just before our meeting ended, Jack asked if he could use my office bathroom.

I should bring up the fact that had borrowed one of the firm’s vice president’s corner office for the appointment. I put my nameplate on the desk and basically — passed it off as my office to establish a bit of credibility. This was not a rare occurrence for us beginning financial planners — no harm, no fowl — eh?

Jack was in the bathroom an inordinately long time. When he finally came out we parted amicably with the promise of getting together the following week.

By then I would have formulated just shy of $8,000,000 in retirement planning for him. As mentioned, Jack was very successful.

On the floor of the building that housed the investment firm was a room called the bullpen. The bullpen was the area where the first year guys have sales training classes and discuss women, sports and sex.

The next day, while sitting in the bullpen shooting the breeze and figuring out what to do with Jack Connelly’s money, the VP whose office I used for my appointment with Jack came bursting in.

“Barrabee, he demanded, get in here!” He stalked back to his office.

I followed him.

He threw open his office door or more explicitly, his office’s bathroom door.

He claimed in an elevated voice, “The janitor wouldn’t even clean this up!”

He pointed to what appeared to be dried nasal mucus on the wall of the stall in which the toilet was situated. Nose boggers; seemingly 100s of them.

“Did you do that?” the vice president questioned gruffly.

I hadn’t even used the bathroom when I was there with Jack Connelly.

But JACK did! The nose pixies must have been his!

I was on the horns of a dilemma. Should I tell the vice president that it was my appointment who was in the bathroom yesterday and it was HE who left the trail of puppies on the bathroom wall?

The VP may never let me use his office to see Jack again.

But Jack thinks it’s my office! I couldn’t very well give him a presentation in the bullpen. No, that would never do. Not now.

I’m gonna lose $1000s in commissions.

The rest of the story:

I took the rap with the vice president. I told him that I met my wife at the office after the appointment with Jack Connelly. We were going out to dinner in Center City and she used the bathroom to freshen up before we left.

I offered to clean the wall.

I saw Jack Connelly a number of times over the years. The VP let me use his office each time until I earned an office of my own, almost as good.

By then Jack and I were thick because my investment recommendations made him so much money we could have met on a fire hydrant and he wouldn’t have minded.

I must confess, for years I surreptitiously glanced up Jack’s nasal holes and never found even one bat in his caves.

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