Things overheard at an Iowa restaurant by a townhall.com blogger from Mike Huckabee's campaign manager, Ed Rollins:
-He distinctly talked about going negative in South Carolina and told someone on the phone to “put some good in there if you have to, with the bad. Do what you gotta do.”
-Rollins let the f-bomb fly twice and told his blonde female dining
companion a joke about flying the Confederate flag in the South Carolina state capitol.
-Rollins indicated several times their campaign was the victim of “dirty tricks” and that they were being unfairly outspent.
-Rollins also criticized another candidate as believing the Presidency was “their birthright.”
-Rollins made a phone call to Lou Dobbs and said he would ready to have drinks with him after Iowa to talk about Hillary. There also was a reference to Rollins’ recent comments about wanting to knock Romney’s teeth out, as Rollins told Dobbs “they are all porcelain.”
-Rollins also called Andrea Mitchell and predicted Obama would take Iowa tonight. He called Mitchell “sweetie” several times.
-Rollins believes Rudy Giuliani is “done,” “has no money,” and was “hurt terribly by those police cruises with his girlfriends.”
-Rollins called said Fred Thompson was “as disgrace as a candidate. Fred has been a friend a long time, but has never converted a single vote. No one is taking him seriously.”
-Rollins indicated he feels good about Iowa and that “all the sales are made, the customers just have to show up.”
-Rollins ate a tuna melt and carrot cake. His female companion picked “marbled rye” bread.
A reporter named Amanda Carpenter overheard it, logged the conversation on her computer, and then passed it to a blog.
Welcome to selling in 2008.
What does a political blog have to do with selling??? Everything, if you pull the lessons from it and apply it to business.
- Assume you will always be overheard in a public place. Thus, limit what flies out of your pie-hole (pricing, proposals, recent client meetings, etc.) It amazes me to no end, while I'm sitting in an airport, all of the information that I overhear. If I wanted to, I could make some people's lives miserable simply because they forget where they are and who could be listening.
- It's easy to burn bridges. Once information gets out, and so-and-so tells whats-her-name who mentions it to the other guy, your secret is out. If you've been trashing someone, and you're overheard, you've burned a bridge.
- It's easy to let the cat out of the bag. Strategy, insights, secrets, and your opinions...if you are careless about where you reveal them, you shouldn't be surprised when they come back to bite you.
Something tells me I'll be able to pull A LOT of sales and marketing lessons from the world of politics in the coming months...
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