I'll start with me.
I worked at a small start up a few years ago that sold loan processing software to banks. We needed a bank on the east coast for a client we had that needed to process over a million dollars in backlogged loans. Loans equal interest, so they really wanted to start processing these. They were sitting on a goldmine of revenue they couldn't tap into until they had a bank to underwrite the portfolio. So they sent me and one other person to this banking conference, gave me the company credit card and said, "Do whatever it takes, come back with a bank."
We flew all day, rented an SUV town car to drive us there & back, ended up becoming the title sponsor of the event, comp'd anyone who crossed our paths for a conversation, opened a tab at all the bars for everyone, bought turndown service for the hotel with our logo on it, had custom spirits made for us at their hotel distillery to give away at a mixer on the final night (300+ people), sponsored the golf tournament & spent a week out there. It was at the Ritz (no joke). We ended up getting 17 NDA's, 5 banks to review their financials & we came home with one bank contracted to underwrite the loans.
When checking out, I about had a heart attack. I asked the front desk guy if he could not itemize my bill and he said he wasn't able to. I called my boss to make sure the card would clear and she said it would. We ended up heading to the airport and on the flight home me and my buddy were both updating our resume's because we were sure we were going to get fired.
The next day we unloaded at the office, handed in our expense reports and then went home. They gave us the day off for travel. We come to work the day following and my boss comes into the sales floor and asks us to both come with her to the warehouse. The warehouse was on the way to the parking lot and it was the path you walked out every day, so I thought we were both canned.
She sits us down, looks at our expense reports and says, 'why did you both expense your boogie boards to your rooms?"...there was a moment of silence and we both said, 'we are happy to pay for that if that's a problem." They were $15 a person. She said she thought she could explain it to the board and that was the only question she had.
She let us go and the CEO gave us a few wry looks a couple times in the hall but never brought it up. We ended up spending over $40,000 on top of rooms & sponsorship in five days. But we came home with a bank.
/TheEnd
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