If You Can Get It

by Brendan Hodge

  “Here, at least, you’ve got two more days of LeadFirst to glory in your reputation.”

  Turning away from Lincoln, Jen could see the sun breaking the horizon, the Washington Memorial a black spire silhouetted against it. The reflecting pool mirrored the fiery colors of the sky.

  “Impressive view, isn’t it?”

  Sarah turned to face the dawn as well. “Wow. Yeah. Makes the early morning worthwhile. If I lived around here, I’d run this route every morning.”

  “And yet it’s just us tourists.”

  The two of them stood looking at the view for a few moments longer. Then calls from below summoned them to a group picture with the other seminar attendees on the steps below.

  The day’s seminar ran its course, some sessions thought-provoking, others dull, like any of its kind. Dinner was at a seafood restaurant down by the piers, the whole upper floor reserved for the crowd of businesspeople, which became more boisterous as the open bar did its work on them.

  At nine o’clock, LeadFirst closed out the tab, and those not ready to open their own took the short walk back to the hotel.

  Groups of attendees gathered in the lobby to head out for a second round at one of the local hot spots. Others headed for the elevators to turn in for the night.

  It seemed early to go to bed, and an evening spent with the minibar and HBO was too dismal to contemplate, but the groups going out seemed heavy on the middle-aged party-boy type. Jen had already been cornered and talked at by several of these at the LeadFirst-sponsored dinner. Experience said it would only get worse during the course of the night, unless she could find a group to join with a critical mass of other women.

  As Jen hesitated, the lobby gradually cleared out. Perhaps the decision had been made by default. She was on the point of heading for the elevators when Sarah came in through the rotating doors, stopped, and looked around.

  It was worth a try.

  “Are you turning in or getting ready to head out?” Jen asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “I won’t get to sleep this early, but I don’t know that I’m looking for a night on the town. I was thinking maybe I’d run into a group here, but I guess everyone headed out while I was calling home. What are you doing?”

  “More or less the same.” She looked around for inspiration. “Want to step into the hotel restaurant for a bit? I noticed earlier they’ve got a big dessert menu. Drinks are at hotel prices, but for one or two, it won’t break the bank.”

  “I’m game.”

  At that hour, the hotel restaurant was nearly empty. A few recent arrivals were loading their company cards at the bar, but it was past the dinner hour and not yet to the point where late arrivals would take shelter there rather than hitting the pavements for the uncertain chance of finding a cheaper option still open. The lone server put them at a high top along the front plate-glass windows, where they could watch people walking by outside, and left them to peruse the thick, spiral-bound menus.

  “If this double-chocolate cheesecake is as big as it looks, will you help me finish it?”

  “Sure,” Jen said. “I think I’ll get the barrel-aged Manhattan.”

  “Hmmm. They have a whole tequila menu.”

  In the end, Sarah ordered an extra añejo that came at cognac-level prices and the cheesecake. “Don’t tell on the pregnant lady, okay?” she added once the server was gone. “I haven’t had a drink all night, and I seem to have gone over from the stage where I sleep twelve hours a day to the one where I get muscle twinges that keep me up all night. Do you have kids?”

  Jen shook her head.

  “I love babies, but believe me, being pregnant is the worst,” Sarah said.

  “How many kids do you have?”

  “This is number three. And not one bit planned, before you ask the next question. Having a baby on the wrong side of forty was not my idea. But hey. The best-laid plans.”

  “Wow. How old are your others?”

  “Twelve and nine. I figured I was done for good with diapers and all that stuff. Thought I was on the verge of being too old to have to worry about it. There’s a milestone I’m looking forward to. And I’d just gotten this promotion. For the first time since kids, the husband and I caught a getaway to Cabo. Five days of beaches and drinks by the pool and . . . well, here I am. I’m sorry. The drinks haven’t even come yet, and I’m in confessional mode. I’ll shut up. Tell me about you.”

  Self-consciously, Jen summarized her past year: the layoffs at AppLogix, the madness of Aspire Brands, and the challenge of getting the consumer line into the big-box home centers for Schneider and Sons.

  “Too bad they’re not sending me to negotiation training like you. Maybe a negotiation expert would be able to explain how to make Home Depot keep their prices at a decent level, or else make Wood Craft and the other niche stores accept their place in the world.”

  Their drinks and the cheesecake had come during Jen’s narration. The dessert was indeed massive, and they were slowly eating through it, one from each end, while sipping at their drinks.

  “You know, I went into the training thinking that it would be like negotiation in movies,” Sarah said. “I figured they’d teach us some badass techniques for maneuvering people into doing what we wanted, even if they didn’t want to. But it’s really not like that. One of the things they had us spend a lot of time doing in negotiation training was writing down matrices of what we want and what the other party wants, and then applying values to both. If you want the other party to do something for you, you need to figure out what you can do in return that’s of equal value to them. Negotiation isn’t about making people do things they don’t want to do. It’s about figuring out a proposal that gets both of you what you want.”

  The conversation wound on for another hour from there, but it was this point that stuck in Jen’s memory for the rest of the seminar, turning and needling at the back of her mind. If negotiation meant determining what each party really wanted and offering it to them in a way that caused them to make decisions, what did each retailer want, and how could she give it to them?

  Although LeadFirst had concluded after lunch on Friday, and the time change was with her as she returned home, it was nearly eight o’clock by the time Jen arrived at the house on Friday evening. She had texted Katie from the airport. No response had been forthcoming, but she had nonetheless allowed herself to hope that she would see the windows glowing with light as she pulled up to the bungalow and that the smell of Katie’s cooking would waft out to meet her as she opened the door. The house, however, was dark.

  She turned on the light, dragged her luggage over the threshold, and shut the door against the cold, then took a long moment to look around the kitchen. The newly finished cabinets gleamed, and the smells of wood and varnish were heavy in the air. The kitchen had that showroom quality that a room has so briefly after it has been finished and loses quickly upon use. She opened cupboards and drawers. Most of them were still empty. Paul had evidently finished the work that day, and Katie had not yet begun unpacking the kitchen wares.

  After wandering admiringly around the kitchen for some minutes, she took up her bag once more and rolled it back to her room, where she began to unpack. As she was finishing, she heard the door open and close and, returning to the kitchen, found Katie taking off her coat.

  “Sorry, I just got back,” Katie said. “I haven’t thought at all about dinner. Doesn’t the kitchen look great, though? Paul just put the hardware on the cabinets this afternoon.”

  Jen nodded. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not really. I had a late lunch with Paul, and then we were out at his farm. Sorry I didn’t respond to your text. The reception is terrible out there.”

  “Well, I’m starving,” Jen said, pulling her coat back on. “Let’s go out to dinner. And you can tell me about what’s been going on while I was gone.”

  What had been going on was, apparently, Paul. Katie told about the work on the kitchen, about what Paul had been reading, abo
ut what they had discussed, about his plans for his business and his farm. She checked her phone every few moments, and though she had said that reception at the farm was bad, this seemed not to impede Paul from sending her a half dozen texts over the course of dinner.

  Were it not so already, the weekend that followed made it clear that Katie and Paul were at the ecstatic early stage in a relationship when it is impossible to spend enough time together. Katie left the house early on Saturday and did not return until after midnight. On Sunday, Paul stopped by in his truck, on his way back from church, judging by his clothes, and Katie immediately rushed out. Jen contemplated the empty house for several minutes. It was difficult not to feel a certain bitterness. Was the home they had built together over the last half year to be cast aside so quickly? But then, what had they built? Had they built anything, or was the comfort of their situation wholly the result of Katie’s having no one else on whom to lavish her attention?

  For a moment, the house began to seem very empty and bleak. Jen could leave it that way or find some way to fill it. She contemplated the silent kitchen, then called her parents and invited them over for brunch, throwing herself into chopping and frying until they arrived and the house felt comfortably populated again.

  It was not until Jen was getting ready for bed that night that Katie returned, calling, “I’m home, Jen” and then flopping onto the couch with a contented sigh.

  Jen padded out in her bare feet. “Have a good day?”

  “Mmm hmm,” Katie responded, snuggling back into the embrace of the couch.

  “Are you hanging out with Paul again tomorrow?”

  Katie’s expression lost its glow. “No. He has to go install a furnace. Running ducts and stuff. Nothing I even know how to help with.”

  “Too bad. Will you be around for dinner?”

  Katie nodded. “Paul says he’ll work late and has to be up early again the next morning. I won’t get to see him all day.”

  “Well, maybe we can catch up over dinner, then. Do you want to cook, or would you rather we go out?”

  “Oh, I’ll cook.” Katie rolled onto her side and put an arm under her head.

  “Good night, then.”

  Jen returned to her room, hearing the TV start up back in the living room. Perhaps tomorrow they could regain some normalcy.

  11

  “So,” Brad asked as Jen sat down for their weekly one-on-one meeting on Monday afternoon. “Did you run with the SEALs or jog with the general?”

  “I ran with the SEALs. For all it gets talked about, they honestly set a pretty standard pace. I’d feel bad bragging about it.”

  “It’s grown into legend because of all the guys who have attempted it despite not having run a mile since they were in college. No need to brag, but I’d advise letting it drop every so often. So, aside from the SEALs, how was LeadFirst?”

  Jen shifted slightly in her chair. “There was some good, generally applicable stuff, but to be honest, it’s not closely related to what I’m doing right now.”

  Brad nodded. “It’s a bit like going away to camp. More a life experience than job-related training.”

  “However,” Jen said. “I was doing some thinking about my big-box problem, and I came up with an idea I want to run by you.”

  “Shoot.” Brad leaned forward, his elbows on his desk.

  “So, the big challenge, as I see it, is to move some volume through Depot and Lowe’s without disrupting our existing retail channel too much.”

  “Correct.”

  “I started thinking about means of differentiation, and here’s what I came up with. Let’s put together a couple of gift sets that include both the tool itself and all of its accessories, and place those with Depot and Lowe’s for the holiday season only. We could allow them to offer a substantial discount, which would bring the price with accessories down to slightly less than we’d normally have as the MSRP for the tool, and we’d provide a good basket of trade dollars so they can advertise the heck out of it and drive traffic from Black Friday to Christmas. We can authorize the rest of the retail channel to discount during the same period, but we’ll tell them that the gift sets are exclusive to the big-box retailers. After the holidays, we tell the big boxes that they can sell the line either in store or online (I’m betting they do online exclusively), but they have to abide by MSRP, or we’ll cut them out of next year’s holiday deal. End result: we get to move a bunch of big-box volume but do it with a differentiated product and keep it seasonal, so we don’t disrupt the channel too much.”

  Brad leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “This is good, Jen,” he said after a moment. “This is really good. It’ll take some work with the buyers to pull it off, but this actually stands a good chance of working if it’s pitched right.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” Jen said, with more relief than she allowed to show.

  “I do. Now, there’s still stuff to get past. First off, we need to get buy-in here. That’ll take some work, because anyone who’s been around the industry for a while has been bent over a barrel once or twice by Home Depot, and sometimes even by Lowe’s. People will try to tell you it can’t be done, but I think you just need to get it pitched right. Now, that may mean that you need to go out to Mooresville and Atlanta. The channel account team doesn’t have experience with the big boxes, and the last thing you want is to hear after the fact that they screwed up your pitch.”

  “I’ve never negotiated with buyers before.”

  Brad shrugged. “I can’t say it’s fun. I did it a few times when I was with the business development team for Stanley. The formula for Home Depot works like this: You go in with a great pitch. The buyer makes you do exactly what he wants instead, and then, when he’s through with you, he says, ‘Thank you for doing business with Home Depot. I’ll be happy to screw you again next year.’ But you have a solid pitch. The beauty of it is that if they won’t talk, you walk. You’ll do fine.”

  Jen did not find this prediction wholly reassuring, but there was a strong allure to making the pitch herself, and she certainly had no desire to put all the work into preparing the line review and then have the account team give it all away when she wasn’t even there.

  “If you think I can do it, I’m happy to give it a try.”

  The next few weeks saw both sisters consumed by their different concerns. Katie continued to spend as much time as possible with Paul, which, given his work schedule, usually involved rushing off each evening at around the time Jen got home from work, and on weekends resulted in Katie’s near complete absence.

  For her part, Jen was busy producing a seemingly endless series of PowerPoint presentations as she and Brad worked to convince Schneider and Sons’ leadership that pitching the holiday-gift-set idea to Home Depot and Lowe’s represented the best way to begin a presence at those retailers. By the end of January, with internal support secured, she, Brad, and the account team flew to Mooresville and received a conditional approval: Lowe’s would agree to the conditions of the holiday offer so long as Home Depot would abide by the same conditions.

  In the first week of February, a week that in Johnson, Illinois, set record lows, Jen flew to Atlanta, where the high was in the mid-fifties and even the low was still above freezing. She and Brad were instructed to meet the buyer at Rooster’s Barbeque, where he gazed at them balefully over a basket of chicken wings as Jen explained her program. When she had finished, he considered the matter for the space of four chicken wings. Then he announced, “I will take the cordless drill, the router, the circular saw, and the band saw, if you can offer eleven percent trade from Black Friday through Christmas.”

  Jen looked at Brad. Brad responded that they could.

  “Well then,” the buyer intoned. “Thank you for doing business with Home Depot. I look forward to talking with you next year.”

  He turned back to his wings, and Jen and Brad left. Before starting the rental car, Jen stopped to e-mail the buyer at Lowe’s: “HD is in for drill,
router, circular saw, and band saw. Are you in too?”

  Before she boarded the plane back to Chicago, she had received a reply: “We’re in.”

  It was almost eleven when Jen arrived home that night. Katie’s car was parked outside, and the lights throughout the house were blazing, but Jen saw no sign of her sister in the kitchen or the living room.

  “Katie?” she called. There was no response.

  She pulled out of the pantry a bottle of wine she had been saving for some appropriate occasion, uncorked it, and carried two wine glasses into the living room. She poured a glass for herself, took out her phone, and texted: “Just got back. Trip was a big success. Got a glass of wine with your name on it. Are you going to be back soon?”

  On hitting Send, she immediately heard the amplified ding ding of Katie’s phone sounding from her room. Half wondering if Katie had, uncharacteristically, left her phone behind, Jen went to her sister’s door.

  “Katie?” she called again, opening the door.

  Her sister was half sitting, half lying on the bed, looking at her phone. As Jen opened the door, Katie tossed the phone into a corner. “Oh, it was you texting,” she said, flopping back down on the mattress and pulling the pillow over her head.

  “What’s wrong?” Jen asked, stepping over the mess of clothing and shoes on the floor to sit down on the bed next to her sister.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” said the pillow in a muffled voice.

  “Is something wrong with you and Paul?”

  The pillow was pushed aside, and Katie glared at her.

  “Did you two break up?”

  “No!” Katie objected, sitting upright.

  “What’s wrong then?”

  “We were—we love each other so much . . . I thought—” Katie kneaded and twisted the pillow. “I don’t know if he doesn’t love me as much, or—up till then, he seemed to want it as much as I did—ohhh!” This last rose to a wail. “I just don’t understand Paul!”