I never wear dresses — don’t even own any, except for a festive evening gown. Many years ago — I had been in the training world less than five years – I somehow got it into my head that when you are training, you have to dress as though you are going to some religious function or something. So with almost no dress-wearing experience, I found this great cream-colored wool dress and bought it, thinking that it looked very corporate and businesslike.
On this particular day, I was scheduled to deliver training to a financial organization. Their inside sales team consisted of 12 men and a couple of women. Since the client was based in San Francisco, I thought I would just walk down the street for my training. So I left my office with my training suitcase and all my gear and proceeded to walk the streets of San Francisco in my new cream-colored dress.
Not only did I underestimate how far away the client was, but one of my high-heeled shoes — had to wear them with the dress, of course — got caught in a metal sidewalk grate and the heel broke. I quickly hobbled along until I got to my client’s office. Luckily, they had thick carpeting that I could walk on. I was shown to the conference room, where I unpacked and set up. In those days, I used to bring flip chart paper for my training and write out the instructions beforehand. On this day, I prepared my flip charts and decided to lean on the paper. You know what happened, right? The wet ink stained the entire side of my dress. Still, I quickly recovered in time for the training to begin.
I delivered the training, but I had a hard time reading the group. The guys were giggly and distracted. It was just a half-day training, so I just chalked it up to us not connecting because it was such a short time. I thanked the client and packed my stuff to leave. Since I didn’t want to walk back to my office, I decided to call my husband to pick me up on his way home.
I stood outside waiting on the corner for him to pick me up. When he pulled up in the car, he had a weird look on his face. I asked him what was wrong. He told me he was so surprised to see me dressed up in such a great dress — and did I realize it was COMPLETELY SEE-THROUGH? Since I didn’t have much experience wearing slips, I didn’t think to include a slip underneath this dress. I was MORTIFIED, and I don’t think I heard from the client ever again. 
If you like this story, tune in for more Sales Training Blunders on Monday, Dec 19th at 11am PST.
No Comments Yet