1st test - the meeting

so, after nearly 2 months of working as an account manager, today was the first real test: the meeting with my biggest client.

my boss being on holiday, my line manager came with me, but he'd warned me: he was just there to 'look pretty'. i'd be the one doing all the work, seen as it was my client. which was good, of course, but i was a bit worried they'd ask me about something i didn't know, or that i'd say something wrong. also, while we knew what we needed to discuss, there was no set agenda, so it was probably going to be a be a bit all over the place.

in the end, though, it all went fine. there were a couple of times when i was unsure i was saying the right kind of things (for example when our interlocutor threw us for a loop with a strange proposal) and others when i got a bit ahead of myself, but generally, it went all right. actually, from our perspective, it was better than all right: we'd kind of anticipated that, what with the current economic situation and all, they'd announce their budget had been cut by half or something like that, but not at all. actually, they were going to add more people to the list of participants! great news for us.

on the way back from the meeting, we talked about it a bit, and my line manager basically said that i was good to go on my own next time. and when i thanked him for his support, he pointed out he really hadn't done anything at all. as he'd said, he'd just 'looked pretty'. while that was not entirely true, it was nice of him to say so.