In which we are reminded that, without clear purpose or focus, it’s easy to flounder and feel overwhelmed by the number and variety of potential clients in our territories.

I love books. My relationship with books is well-captured in J. B. Priestly’s thought:

“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.”

Swap “book” for “day” and that’d be me. “I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new book”, each with perhaps a bit of magic somewhere behind the cover.

Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Last Friday morning, a free morning following a Thursday evening dance performance in nearby Beckett in the Berkshire Mountains. Sunny, humid, and breathless… not a whisp of breeze through the tents covering the Stockbridge Library’s annual book sale boxes, books, and browsers. The tent stood in front of the library on Main Street. In plain sight. Couldn’t miss it. I love books. Having no other agenda, I stopped to look.

To the left, a large tent under which they’d arranged books for adults. To the right, a smaller tent for children’s books. I headed to the left to see…

… maybe, eight rows of banquet-sized tables, four 60´x 30” tables per row. On each table, two rows of boxes, four across by two deep. Under many tables, two additional rows of boxes, one row on each side. And, while pink signs overhead indicated the general focus of books thereunder – photography, biography, self-help, entertainment, politics, world history, American history, religion, hobbies, cooking, books signed by author, and so on, there were thousands of books arranged not by title, not by author, not by age, and not by shape. Not organized. THOUSANDS!!!!

I love books! I felt my head exploding.

And then, on account of where I was standing at that particular moment, I heard in my head the opening words to Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 talking blues about Alice’s Restaurant, the site of which original Alice’s (which was really called The Main Street Café) being just a short distance to my right down Main Street toward the Red Lion Inn: “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.”

I looked at the pink signs. My head exploded again. What do you want?

After a deep breath, I walked past “Ancient Lit”, “Gardening”, “Cooking”, “Religion”, “Self Help”, “Entertainment”, “Photography”, and a browser carrying a stack of books as long as her arm and headed toward “Biography”, “History”, and “Politics” and, box by box, I surveyed the contents. Box by box by box by box. One pass wasn’t enough… I had to go back… three more times.

90 minutes later (who said this was efficient?), I bought four books I didn’t know I wanted. One as a gift for a friend and three that I might read – one history, one on community organizing, and one that I can’t remember at this point.

Arlo’s renditions of “Alice’s Restaurant” could wander on for between 18 and 35 minutes, depending on the night, before he really got to the point or until we, listening, got the point.

I’ll save you 15 minutes: Even when browsing, it helps to know what you’re open to or looking for.

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.