This is one of my favorite “get
even” stories. When I was running my own
business development company one of my clients ran an online gaming site. The site didn’t use real money so you could
gamble legally on it. It was a loophole
to be sure but the owner was proud of it.
I came up
with the idea of connecting the website to the casino’s on the river. They had hosted events for me in the past and
the connection was a no brainer. If the
casino advertised on the site it could put a ton of cash in our pockets at the
same time.
So with
that I approached a marketing contact I had for the casino. I told him about the site and how we were a
legal gaming website in Nebraska who wanted to cross promote with their
location. At first he was excited to see
what we came up with and gave me a ton of information on how the non gaming
elements of the casino worked.
The part he
was most excited about was our ability to track emails. My client owned an email program that not
only tracked the open/read status of an email but could tell you who they
forwarded it to, when they opened it, what links they clicked on, the
associated IP addresses, and even the number of times you opened it. When it came to generating a true ROI this
program was amazing.
At the end
of our meeting he asked me to present a few ideas to them for review and then
they would get back to us. Whenever a
meeting goes this well I tend to get a little excited and had 15 to 20 ideas
within a few hours. It didn’t hurt that
I could also tie in several of my other clients into the promotions and double
down on the exposure.
After I
narrowed the ideas down to 10 or so I sent him my standard non-disclosure
email. The response I got back gave me
that horrible “pit of the stomach” feeling.
“I won’t sign this. We represent
one of the largest Casino properties in the world…if you can’t trust us then I
guess we’re done here.” I called him
shortly after my stream of profanity had ceased.
“You guys
are a Casino…you’d bleed me dry at a table and then take my home if you had the
chance…of course I don’t trust you!”
After an awkward laugh from him he restated the disheartening news. I was at an impasse with the proposal…until I
realized I had the email program.
I agreed to
forgo the NDA and sent him my proposal.
I sent it to him with a few embedded links to the other companies in the
mix. Most importantly though, I sent it
through our email tracking system.
Four weeks
go by and he’s only returned a few emails from me. Most of them said “we’ve been busy but I’ll
get to it next week…I promise”. And
finally after a month I called him.
“Just
wanted to follow up and see if you had a chance to review our proposal?”
“Ah
man…I’ve been swamped with execs in from out of town. I don’t think I’ve even had a chance to open
the original document” he told me.
“Really? I think you opened it this morning at about
9:35am from this IP address. (read him
the IP) Furthermore, that’s the 8th
time you’ve opened it since I sent it.
You’ve also forwarded the email to these 7 email addresses (read the
list). Remember when I told you we could
track emails to a scary level…this is the proof”
If you’ve
never dropped a bomb on someone like this before it’s a life changing
moment. I could almost hear him crapping
his pants as he had a heart attack. The
look of shock on his face during the dead silence on the phone must have been
epic. He hurriedly blurted out,
“um…um…we’ve already thought of most of this and want to pass…goodbye”
Now I’ll be
the first person to admit I could have handled that better, but lets face it
the guy lied to me. I approached the
meeting and subsequent proposal with the best of intentions and full
disclosure. I would have been fine if he
declined my proposal based on any number of reasons, but he lied to me for over
a month.
The lesson
learned here is to use the tools at your disposal very carefully. Had I used a little more restraint I may have
salvaged this proposal and made some money on the deal. At the same time I feel lucky to not have
done business with someone who has that little integrity and overall lack of
business ethics. From that moment on I
sent every proposal through that system and took it very seriously when I was
presented an NDA.
On a final
note I ran into this guy years later. I
have grown a full beard and lost a bunch of weight since then. He came up to me at a city run convention and
was trying to get me to stop by his booth.
After he hit me with his canned speech on the amazing things going on at
his casino I smiled and said. “Sure…will
you sign my NDA first?” The blood
drained from his face and his smile evaporated.
He happened to be shaking my hand at the time and his grip went
limp. “Justin?” he muttered. I nodded and he walked away.
No comments:
Post a Comment