Who's Who

I got my call this morning from a very direct and professional Jeff from the Who's Who of Executives and Professionals, or some title to that effect. I'd gotten a card in the mail a week or two ago, filled it out and mailed it off. And now Jeff was following up for a "direct confirmation" of my "status" so that he could make "an immediate determination" if I were the kind of high-speed, low-drag, up and coming professional that his organization would allow into their hihgly valuable and important reference document.

I smelled a sales pitch.

So we talked a bit about my professional history and qualifications, my degrees and other educational bits, publications, memberships, awards and recommendations. Throughout, Jeff was highly congratulatory, very impressed.

Of course he was. Then he congratulated me, because, based on his "careful review" of the "highly qualifying information" that I had just provided him, he was offering to me and only me the "highly exclusive" privilege of joining his estemmed publication. You know, after all, that they screen somewhere on the order of 250,000 possible candidates each year, and each year less than 10,000 actually make the cut. So, some quick math told me that I was one in 25. Not bad. Being a member of Mensa, I'm already 1 in 50, so I wasn't quite as impressed as I guess I should've been, but that's another matter.

I was waiting for the conversation to move to the point where he would start quoting prices, and I would be asked to pay one of them. I'll give Jeff this much, he was polished and very good. He'd done this before, and a lot. He was rehearsed and smooth, delivering what was quite obviously to me completely doctrinal and standardized sales pitch dialog, but he was measured and patient, the words memorized and coming easily to him.

At the Super Premium Double-Secret Executive Platinum Exclusive level I could get a big book with my tiny name in it, an online access and some other stuff, including a very impressive plaque with "piano lacquer" telling all viewers that I'd been accepted into their book. I could get all of this for, and here came the part I was waiting for, the part that the previous ten minutes had been leading up to . . . (me, I was thinking something like $119.95, maybe $125) . . . $770.75.

God damn! Almost $800 for all of this? Jeff was still talking smoothly, now describing the Not Qute As Platinum And Likely Zinc-Plating level for all of $550 and change. I had already switched off, just being polite rather than just hanging up. Sure, it all makes sense. This is a networking book, and a massive vanity piece, so I guess they have all kinds of guys lining up to pay their hundreds of dollars to get their names and references and pictures and profiles into their "highly impressive hardback green leatherette library binding with golf-leaf priting" book, their very own copies, to put into their dopey pressboard bookcases next to the tacky lacquer plaque saying the very same thing.

The online database intrigued me, as a possible networking tool, something to use to find and acquire consultants as requirements might arise. I asked about that, and the best that Jeff could do for me was $135, this at the Mediocre Minor Executive and Implied Cheap Bastard Club Level. And my book entry would be relegated to "way in the back," and I'd still have to pay "a modest fee" for any updates to profile in outyears. Yeah, I could do that, but it wouldn't really serve my professional interests very well, now, would it?

So I mumbled some niceties, communicating subtly that I wasn't interested. Jeff has done this enough, he should know all of the noises and voice inflections by now. But he, in his graciousness and showing his largesse as a guy sitting in an office on "Wall Street, in New York City" told me he'd put me on a 24-hour hold. I have until close of business on 6 Sep to contact him to guarantee my spot in the 2006 issue. You know, of course, that they can't just wait around for answers from the over 10,000 selectees they acquire each year, so you'll have to act quickly.

Yeah, whatever, I'll get right on that. I've already got it in Outlook to remind me with a fluorish of little electronic trumpets. Yeah, whatever. Thanks, Jeff, and better luck with the next needy executive or professional.