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Do 37: Tracking on Trains

If you ride commuter trains, offerors instantly are everywhere!

Train riding is a wondrous experience anyway. It takes people back to their childhood and a simpler time. They think of the amusement park. And it’s predictable travel. This is a mindset found in no other place.

Couple that with the constant vibration that lulls passengers into a receptive state like a lullaby, and it’s instantime.

Now for your train training. There’s a specific way to sit and say in those seats.

Stagger Your Schedule

Pick times that businesspeople commute. Follow the briefcases and laptops like the undercover (job) security sleuth you are.

Take trips at different times so you find different offerors. Instant interviews require instant exits—no more than 15 minutes from hello to goodbye (Do 1).

Sitting next to someone (even if there are other passengers in the row) works fine. A little contorted because you’re side by side, but you can adjust.

Avoid seats that face each other (Do 56).

Review the airplane techniques (Do 38) for side-by-side interviewing.

Go from One Car to Another

This is a great advantage in train riding. Seat, meet, greet, tweet, retreat, and repeat! It’s like going to airport gates.

Three quality instants in a one-hour commute is easy, fun, and a sure way to shift your automatic offermobile into overdrive.

Stop at Stations along the Way

Try the ones in highly populated areas. Either ones where business travelers work or ones where they live.

That’s where they’ll be waiting and wishing for wonderwoman or wonderman.

The approach is basic airport gate (Do 35).

Stop at Stations Where People Are Getting On Rather than Off

Of all the predictability of train travel, nothing is more predictable than passengers rushing out of the cars. It’s due to their energized state from the relaxing ride and anticipation of getting to work or home.

So unless you want to run and ramble simultaneously, find offerors waiting to board.

Make friends with the conductors.

Like all transpo people, they see all, speak all, and hear all. So they make the rounds collecting, selling, and punching tickets. They see the same commuters daily.

Friendliness is a railroad tradition. Don’t be surprised if a conductor points out overactive offerors just by your asking. The words are usually deposited standing up: “Who on the train is a corporate executive?”

Don’t wait for him to pass your seat.

We’ve got major moves of our own to do.

All aboard! Next stop, Interview!

Do 38: Taking Off in Business Class

Airplanes provide an unusually good opportunity for instant interviews with quality offerors.

You have a captive audience. You just need to captivate, then incubate. Capture, then release.

Why does every unpretzeled carrier have a fancy business traveler magazine stuffed in that pouch in front of your seat? Undoubtedly more business is conducted in front of airplane seat pouches than anywhere else.

So let’s analyze, maximize, and intervise.

Fly with the Flock

The rush hours are weekdays from 6 A.M. to 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. to 8 P.M. Any earlier and you get world vacationers. Later, you’re trying to interview in the dark. Other times are like weekends and holidays. You couldn’t get an interview as a babysitter.

Call a Travel Agent

I use someone in Cleveland. It’s as though she’s right in my office in Los Angeles. One call to her is like a dozen calls to carriers, if I can even find out who flies where.

A dozen calls to carriers can waste several hours (time is money) and have me speaking with call-center agents who neither speak English very well nor hear very well.

Book Early

Thirty days before any flight usually will get you a refundable ticket and better seat selection. You want any aisle seat so you can move around. Early booking also allows you flexibility to change flights as the departure dates arrives.

I recently tried to change a flight from Shreveport to stop in St. Louis when