A CEO Poker Face…

May 15th, 2008

A CEO Poker FaceOne of the things I have had to learn the most and am still learning is the importance of a poker face in executive management. You can’t get overly excited or disappointed - EVER. I’ll give you a perfect example…

Let’s say you’re on a sales call and it seems to be going well, the other side says “they’re excited and ready, just a few steps left and let’s get this deal sealed.”

Your reaction?  WOO HOO!!! BIG one, I gotta go and tell EVERYONE, this is huge. Ok, let me start planning around this, I can hire 10 people, I can do this and that and this and that and I can go around bragging about this to everyone.

Guess what? If I had a nickle for every sales call that went well and I thought I was going to close but ultimately led to ZILCH revenue, well, I wouldn’t need to be in business right now :)

Bottom line is a CEO needs to be stable (something I admit I’m still working on). The best example is a cooooool poker face. Take good news at strides. The rule that I made 2 years ago and am getting better at day by day is to NOT get excited or even think about a sale until the check arrives, cashes and clears - NOW, I have a sale and can start spending the money!

No worries, when anyone is new at this it’s only human nature - but eventually after years of getting slapped around, it grows out of you.

Again, I start to understand why CEOs always look so serious, resolved, calm and well they look like good poker players!

Oh, by the way, a good poker face really helps in sales too.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:17 am and is filed under Building A Company, Selling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “A CEO Poker Face…”

  1. Daniel Says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm

    I guess the blog went all poerface too :)

    Great post btw, but even though they look like good pokerplayers it’s not always the case :)

    Oh btw a little heads up, adobe have launched a beta you should check out.

    http://www.acrobat.com

    It’s basically a package just like google docs 100% online based.

    But here there’s a some other usefull stuff such as a small conferrence room, pdf converter and editor plus some stuff google docs got too like share docs and what not.

    Worth a peak :)

    Take care,
    Daniel.

  2. Jon Says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm

    You use checks? Wow… you need to learn about either paypal or direct deposit… some CEOs are very good at poker faces as well and let you invest in their company without your knowledge (ei: they ain’t got the money).

    I do agree, poker face has it’s place but I prefer to share in the excitement (ups and downs) then to always be that ho-hum kind of leader.

    Jon
    http://dreamclue.com …get the message!

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