During my onboarding period, a number of people had said to me to never underestimate the power of a donut, a sandwich delivery, a lunch, a free meal — anything that feeds a customer is likely to make her happy, so just do it to get potential better results. I’ve had one customer who has been hard to get a hold of, but finally she was in town this week, and I offered to take her out to lunch. She was working at Chelsea Market, so I offered to take her out for lobster rolls. Someone who was once tight-lipped and guarded suddenly had f-bombs exploding out of her mouth and was spilling the beans about everything I asked her. This lunch meeting was turning out to be a success.

That lobster roll was really good, too. They said it was mayoed, but the mayonnaise was so light that I barely noticed it was there.