The following story from Sales Gravy podcast caught my attention this week.
Why Cleopatra Got the Meeting
In 48 BCE, Cleopatra needed an audience with Julius Caesar. He was the only person powerful enough to help her, and his calendar was impossible to crack.
So, she did something no one else would think to do. She had herself rolled inside an ornate carpet and delivered to Caesar’s chambers as a gift. He unrolled it; she stepped out fully dressed as the queen she was, and she made her pitch. Caesar helped her. History changed.
The lesson for salespeople isn’t to mail yourself to a prospect. It’s that Cleopatra understood a fundamental truth about getting attention: you have to create an anomaly. Something so outside the pattern of what your buyer experiences every day that they have no choice but to stop and engage.
Most buyers sit through pitches on repeat. Same decks, same structure, same opening line about how great the company is. The bar for standing out is lower than most salespeople think. A handwritten postcard instead of an email. A phone call when everyone else sends a follow-up sequence. Walking into a room with something unexpected and relevant already waiting for them.
These aren’t gimmicks. They’re signaling that you see this buyer as a person worth the extra effort, and that changes the dynamic before you’ve said a single word about your product.
