Fermoy Toastmasters held their penultimate meeting of the season and the year on December 2nd in the Grand Hotel, Fermoy. There was no sense of wind-down, but rather we had – as our EVP John Sherlock had promised – a very interesting and varied programme that made for a memorably rewarding and enjoyable meeting.
On a personal level, it was indeed a very great pleasure to welcome back after an interlude of quite some time one of our most highly accomplished and esteemed former members, prominent Fermoy businessman Michael Caplice, whose kindness and encouragement was instrumental in first opening the door of membership of Fermoy Toastmasters. He set me at ease and instantly welcome among friends who were all ever so kind and supportive. Sadly, other commitments in life were to carry him away from the club, so it was indeed very gratifying and a source of great joy to see him there that night and I most warmly and sincerely hope that Michael will be back with us again very soon and am certain that he has such a tremendous contribution to the life and continuing success of our club.
Our President Mary Whelan bid all welcome to our mid-winter gathering and drew special attention to the elegant mounting of the Gold Medal Achievement Award recently granted by World Headquarters to our club which ranks as the third longest-established in the country, a worthy tribute to all those members past and present who have made our meetings such occasions of enjoyment, gaiety and personal growth. Proceedings were then passed to our toastmaster, Jerry Hennessy, bringing to his role as introducer and coordinator all those qualities of warmth, enthusiasm and his trademark relaxed genial style that set such a lovely and pleasant keynote for the entire evening. Then too a sparkling topics session makes for a highly successful meeting and this we enjoyed most profusely thanks to the dedication and zest of our topicsmaster, Johanna Hegarty, who stood by the lectern and with ease of gesture and eagerness of word reeled off a sequence of stimulating topics which swiftly got everyone thinking and contributing readily and spontaneously, bringing forward an exciting and invigorating freshness of ideas and diversity of responses. Everything from winter motoring to travel broadening the mind, from Christmas shopping to taking up a new hobby or describing your favourite job and so very much more, enabled all of us to find the very best of ourselves and to stir the well-springs of motivation that makes for outstanding meetings and for better and more rewarding lives.
Three great speeches were to follow, beginning with Fanahan Colbert who gave a fascinating and very well researched talk on how countries throughout the world have chosen chose to drive on opposite sides of the road, some 35% on the left, 65% on the right. Here in Ireland we motor on the left which is a throwback to the old days of the gentry on horseback holding the reins with their left hand keeping the right free to use pistols against rebels and highwaymen.
In France the nobility had also monopolised the left side of the road, with the great unwashed on the right, until many an aristocratic neck started falling under the Revolutionary guillotine. Then it became very expedient for the once high and mighty to discard their finery and hide among the common people, hence setting the trend of travelling on the right side of the road, a practice spread far and wide across Europe by the conquering armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and which has continued into today’s mass motorised age. Speculating on the possibility of driving on the right becoming mandatory here by the edict of the EU, Fanahan doubted it would ever happen through the likelihood of accidents and wholesale confusion, even if the motor manufacturers and car sales businesses would derive vast profits from any transition to left-hand steering vehicles.
This was an appropriate springboard for a brilliant speech from John Kelly recalling his many years as a successful car salesman, speaking of great colleagues and the different businesses where he worked throughout his very long career, bringing together his vast experience in the motor trade and in Toastmasters to give us an extraordinary presentation that could serve as the basis for a master class for today’s young sales people, not just alone of motor cars but of just about any product. He illuminated the essential steps of making the potential customer feel welcome and relaxed, having a genuine liking for people, to be true to yourself and relying on the support of family and friends to gladden the good and happy times and to carry you through the times of sadness and pain.
John was never set a sales target by his employers, but he set his own objective to sell twenty-five cars a month, and he always achieved well in excess of that target even in time of recession. He took issue with car sales reps who spend all their days in showrooms, but should venture out around the forecourt to meet someone in their working clothes who may feel uncomfortable about coming inside. He concluded by saying that to him a car should be sold and seen not as a mere machine, but a friend. This was more then just a fantastic speech about salesmanship, but a powerful and revealing insight into human psychology and a beautiful distillation of the wisdom and experience of life told with charm, humour and grace from our great and wonderful friend, John Kelly.
By one of those peculiar coincidences that can only happen in real life, Kieran Connolly also happened to give a well-crafted presentation on almost the same theme with John Sherlock taking part in a role-play depicting the sale of a coffee-making machine. In a very telling manner the essential elements of the transaction were highlighted: identifying the customer’s need, building a rapport with them, seeking to improve matters while keeping away from the thorny issue of price for as long as possible: all of this and more lies at the core of the noble art of conveying goods and services from seller to buyer. Our speakers each in turn received positive feedback from evaluators Frank O’Driscoll, David Walsh and Eddie O’Sullivan praising all that had been achieved and pointing the way to possible avenues of further improvement, with a very fine overall assessment of the meeting from Michael Sheehan.
And now as Christmas draws near we come to our annual Tall Tales competition and festive party, a time for fun and enjoyment and making merry for we are a happy club and a fun-loving group of people. This, our final gathering of the year, will be held on Tuesday next, December 16th, at 8.15 pm in the Gran Hotel. We look forward to seeing so many dear friends there for a great evening of cheer and celebration. For further information, please contact Fanahan Colbert at 086 8239007 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100