This one is a classic.

Years ago I was on a speaking tour for Xerox Canada. I think it was May of 1997 (I generally remember things based on the ages of my kids and my youngest was 20 months) and I was the part of a team that did 9 cities. One of those cities was London, Ontario.

The seminar on Selling Digital Printing was scheduled to begin at 7pm after a one-hour cocktail hour. Now, Canadians really like their beer and this event was one that the audience was "particularly thirsty."

The first speaker was Jeff Hayes from CAPV. His job was to lay the groundwork, show some pie charts (one of CAPV's strengths) and then step aside and let me talk about how to make money with this new (at the time) technology.

Right about the time we were in London, Xerox was busy opening up Business Centers and competing directly with the same printers they were selling digital printing equipment to. Needless to say, there was some real animosity out there.

So, here is Jeff cranking it up talking about opportunity, the beer flowing, and suddenly a question came from the back of the room. I can't remember the question, but I do know it was angry and aggressive and emanated from an intoxicated participant who did not like the answer Jeff gave and shot back "Have you ever sold a nickel's worth of printing in your life?" When Jeff pushed back a bit the tension in the room overflowed and there was open and loud complaining about how Xerox sells direct and screws the local printer and Jeff was the unfortunate recipient of that. It was ugly and getting uglier and up jumps Joe Furman from Xerox Canada. Joe is a great guy and did a good job of defusing the situation. Joe said, "Now let's calm down and remember, Jeff doesn't work for Xerox. Okay, let's quickly bring up Bill Farquharson. Bill is going to teach us how to sell digital printing."

Stop.

Enter Bill. The environment is beyond hostile. It's nasty. So, while Joe is working on the computer to bring up the next presentation, I take the mike and say, "No, I'm not" and then I sit back down. Laughter. Joe looks at me with a horror in his eyes and mouths, "What are you doing?" Then I said, "I am willing, however, to tell you all how to beat Xerox at their own game." Suddenly the room roared with approval. I then gave the exact same presentation that I was paid to give but with a different spin on it. I made the points that I was hoping to make but the audience never knew the difference.

Later that night, at the bar, we drank and laughed about how close we came to getting in a fight while trying to give a presentation.

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