Why I Couldn't Sell The 787 Dream

Great Expectations destroys the heart. When you have in your hand the rarest and the best object and another turns and decides on objects of less value. It becomes a tortuous moment coming from another's under appreciation. They chose the knock-off copy because they liked the look of a big bus.

The second most destructive nature emerges called "lack of patience". Selling 30 787-9 at $7.7 billion to Hainan Airlines takes immense patience.  The airlines must check it twice, which takes time, and its rightly so for any investment in its future. Due diligence is a wheel stone turning "oh so slowly and grinding oh so fine". The grist of the deal is turning into powder while I stand-by waiting to fill a spreadsheet. Patience is not my strong suit when billions are at stake. By now you should know the inner turmoil going on, is like what a waiting father has for a first born to cry. Knowing the mother's pain and experiencing the helplessness to do anything at the same time. A salesman's agony is silent and private. A suit can go limp and falls to floor with nothing to support it. The person inside evaporates before your eyes when all this waiting creates an inextinguishable void. Impatience has claimed another victim. A salesperson's passion would be my undoing.

The remedy for having Great Expectations with having a lack of patience comes from silly thoughts.

A number is just a number and nothing more, is a great remedy?

However, we all know numbers destroys the heart when they fail to exist during a sale. Having no number becomes the most important item of discontent. The expectation is now set. The order book is set at five 787's in 2015 , and with applied patience it will swell to 35 787's. The suit picks itself off the floor while standing up on that promise. Patience returns fueling its expectation. Hainan will save the Boeing sales team from a collective suit collapse, while it further spurs on more 787 expectation. Even though I can't suffer the damage of my resolve in a loss, I celebrate completed expectation in a win. Concluding, patience is the great motivator of expectation of which I have little of.