If the key to sales is making yourself memorable, it seems that stories play an important role. Think of it like a job interview, except the prospect is interviewing you and is trying to determine whether they want to purchase your product or service. To that end, let me share a true personal story.
Balloons. Most people think of celebrations like birthdays and baby showers. They should evoke feelings of happiness and glee. Now what if I told you that when I think of helium-filled balloons, my first thought is about fire alarms.
Well, maybe not my first thought, but certainly one of my most memorable balloon-happenings. Let me set the stage. I was working an event at a convention hotel. In fact, we’d decorated this same space with balloons previously and hadn’t had any trouble. Earlier in the day, the fire alarms had gone off 2 or 3 times The hotel staff kept saying it was our zone that kept tripping them, but noone could figure out why so we didn’t know how to fix it and went about our business of preparing for the evening’s events.
All was quiet for an hour or 2 before our event. Of course, that didn’t last. About an hour into our event as the point-of-contact for our group, I was summoned by the convention manager and told that the fire marshall needed to speak with me. GULP! You guessed it. The fire alarms had been tripped again, but this time at least we had a reason.
All of our helium-filled ballons were anchored down and tied with curling ribbon. Roughly 10-12 feet in the air, they danced with the heat when it kicked on and the air flowed. Well, that was enough to break a laser beam that projected across the room, designed to detect smoke in the case of a fire. Apparently, it was also really good at detecting moving curling ribbons anchoring our dancing balloons! All we had to do was relocate them. Problem solved!
It only took all day and the arrival of the fire chief to solve the riddle. Now there’s a new box on my checklist when decorating with balloons in a large venue. Who’d have thought balloons could cause such grief?
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