It looked and tasted like Lucozade mixed with nuclear waste.

The neon orange Vitamin C drink that my mum forced down my brother and me before our annual holiday was truly vile.

Determined that none of us would get ill on or before this hard-won trip, Mum didn’t leave anything to chance.

(But it was totally understandable – my Mum worked hard. She juggled a full-time job with running the household and spent weekends and Easter getting up at 4am to help with the lambing on the farm my dad managed. She’s quite a woman, my mum.)

This vacation was her lifeline.

But inevitably, two days into the holiday, whilst my brother, dad and I would be right as rain, mum would be laid up in bed with food poisoning from some dodgy mussels or flu.

There was so much burden on this holiday to be perfect that someone or something would always crack under the pressure.

Has that ever happened to you, Sarah? Have you ever attached so much focus and energy to one thing that it could never live up to expectations?

Maybe it was Christmas Day….

Or a play you’d heard so much about…

Or maybe….a prospect.

A prospect so juicy, so impressive, so darn right for you, that you poured all your heart and soul into turning them into a client (whilst the rest of your pipeline shrivelled up like bacon in a frying pan).

Sound familiar?

It’s easily done, but so dangerous. Because when we put all our eggs in one basket we can start give out what I call…’The Whiff Of Desperation’.

We start to hound our prospects and send increasingly anxious emails like:

‘As per my last email of the 25th, did you have a chance to review my proposal yet?’

‘Sorry to bother you again – I don’t know if you got my voicemail – but…’

‘Hi – me again – just checking in to see if you’ve made a decision’

We try to move everything according to our own timeline and not our clients’. To push things forward fast because we know our other leads are drier than a box of crackers.

The Whiff Of Desperation isn’t a scent you want to wear, believe me.

It certainly isn’t going to get snapped up anytime soon by Hugo Boss or Calvin Klein.

And it’s a massive turn off for clients and prospects who might wonder why no-one else is snapping you up.

So how do you avoid the Whiff Of Desperation?

Well, always work hard to generate a range of leads and treat each one with care and attention. Yes, focus on the big opportunities but never at the expensive of everything else.

You’ll look and feel calmer, more confident and more in control AND you’ll be more likely to convert the big ones when they do come along.

So stick to Chanel No. 5 this Christmas and ditch the desperation if you want a have a scent-ational New Year. Ahem.