Pre-Meeting? Awesome!

This past Friday I atttended my first ever "Pre-Meeting".

As a die-hard meeting avoider, I thought going in that I was going to hate every minute of it. As it turns out, this meeting was fairly productive and relatively short. It was a conference call with a vendor who wants to sell thier product to my company.

The main presenter from thier end was a lady with a loud voice. She seemed to be tayloring her speech for us. Not just the content, but the manorisms. For example, she never said, "Your company", or "Your IT department", or even "You guys". She said, "Y'all".

"So, if y'all want to make your site do this, ..." etc.

The thing is, this lady did not have a Southern accent. She didn't have much of an accent at all, really. It was pretty surreal. You don't expect "Y'all" from anybody without a hick accent.

She also had a facination with the word "Awesome". She'd say, "So how do y'all deal with ... ?". And we'd say, "Well, we blah blah blah." In the background, we'd hear her typing out our responses (taking notes), and she'd say, "Oh, I see... Awesome!"

It got comical pretty quick. I wrote the words "Awesome!" and "Y'all" on my notepad, and every time she'd say one of them, I'd tap the word with my pen. Once, after 3 rapid-fire "Awesome" 's, the whole room on our side was fighting to contain laughter.

At one point, she was asking questions about our web site, pointing out things, and asking us where we might like to use thier product to improve things. She tried to put down a ton of charm on us here, complimenting the site and whatnot.

If there's anybody who can see through Marketing BullSpeak, it's our guy Slim. Slim is one of our chief marketers. He knows when he's just heard a load of bull... he's full of it himself, after all.

Her: "I'm impressed; I really do like your site!"
Slim (in a voice low enough to not be picked up by the speakerphone, with a big grin): "No they don't. That's just something they have to say so we'll like them."
Me: (also in a low voice, directed at Slim): "I bet you don't believe in Santa Clause, either."

Slim nearly lost it. Thankfully, he didn't quite laugh out loud. :)