The phone rang, I picked it up.  The voice on the other end went into it’s pitch, “Hi, I’m so and so.  Would you be interested if you could invest in a stock that could give you a cud-jillion-billions return in 60 days?”

Yes, it was one of those pointless boiler-room calls.  But is was a slow day, I was a little bored, so I decided to have fun.

“Yes, I’d actually be very interested in getting that kind of return.  However, before you go further, would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?”

I could hear the excitement in his voice, you could almost hear his thought process, “Caught another sucker, now I just have to reel him in.”  But he said, “Sure, I’d be glad to answer your questions.”

So, I responded, “My business is to help sales people close more business faster.  I can imagine, that you have to make hundreds of calls to get someone like me who is interested in talking to you and investing in your stock recommendations.  We happen to have a guaranteed method where I can actually reduce the number of calls you have to make by 75% and triple your personal income at the same time.  Surely that has to be something you are interested in.”

Silence……

“What do you mean, are you trying to sell me something?”  came the confused response.

“Absolutely not, I’m just want to show you a way to triple your income doing 25% of the work.  Surely, it would be foolish to pass up that opportunity.  Think of it, if you put in the same amount of work, your income could go up 12 times!”

“Wait a minute,” he said, getting a little impatient and frustrated, “Let’s talk about how you can make money with this stock!”

I interrupted, “I’m glad to talk about that, but would you please answer my question, wouldn’t you want to learn how you can increase your income by 12 times doing the same amount of work?”

He was clearly getting upset.  I guess my response wasn’t on his script.  “You can’t be selling me something — I don’t know you, why should I believe you!  Let’s get back to this stock!”

“Wait a second,” I replied, “I’m confused, you won’t talk to me, because you don’t know me and you are skeptical about my claim, is that correct?”

“Absolutely, now let’s…….” he continued.

“No, hang on, you won’t listen to me or buy from me.  But I’m confused, why should I listen to you?” I replied–trying to sound very sincere and very concerned.

Click…..

The line went dead……

He was probably busy dialing someone else, making one fo the 500 or so calls he has to make every day.

I’ve been chuckling to myself since then.  It was a fun call.  Sometimes, I just can’t help myself

To be fair to my readers, this is a rant, if you aren’t prepared for my whining, you may want to forego this post.

It seems everything these days has to be a “collaboration.”  Rather selling our customers something, we look to collaborate or partner.  When we want something from someone else, it’s a collaboration.  In establishing a new relationship, we immediately want to collaborate.

I must field at least a dozen emails or phone calls, each week, with someone or some organization that wants to collaborate with my company.  When I respond to the call, I come to learn collaboration generally means:

• You are in a business that can really help me, it looks like your clients would be great for us, can you please give me leads and introductions to your clients.
• As you are out talking to people, would you please look for opportunities for us, and where appropriate give us an introduction.
• I have a great product I want that I think you will want to buy!

Not long ago, out of curiosity, I invested 30 minutes in a call with someone who saw great opportunity in a collaboration.  I looked at the website, I saw absolutely no connection between our organizations–what we did, what they did, our target markets–however, I decided to take the call.  (To be honest, I’d been mulling this post for some time, this call appeared to provide great fodder for the post).

Here’s some analysis of the call:

• The call lasted 28 minutes.
• During the call, I spoke a total of just less than 2 minutes.
• I was able to make 1 statement at the beginning of the call and able to ask 2 questions through the call, and make one observation 3/4 of the way through the call.
• During the remaining 26 minutes, the caller didn’t ask a single question.
• The caller spent time talking about what they did, wandered about key issues facing their prospects and why their services were important, and discussed what I could do to help his company (I guess this was the collaboration part).

At the end of the call, I politely thanked the person for the call, wished him luck and hung up.  You can guess what might happen in the “collaboration.”  Not only was this a terrible discussion for collaboration, it was one of the worst sales calls I have experienced.

I wish this call was the exception, unfortunately it isn’t.  Every collaboration email or phone call goes exactly like this.  (The calls don’t last longer than 90 seconds, I guess I had a bit of a sadistic motive in listening to this call for 30 minutes.)

Collaboration is something very different.  Collaboration involves deep alignment of goals, values, priorities and outcomes.  Successful collaboration requires Shared Vision, Shared Values, Shared Risks, Shared Resources, and Shared Rewards.  Each partner must be aligned across these dimensions for collaboration to  succeed.

Collaboration is tough.  Morten Hansen writes of internal collaborations, stating “bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration.”  He goes on to discuss the high failure rate of internal collaborations because the initiatives were not collaboration worthy.  In our research (and others) on external collaborations (partnering), we find 72% fail!

Collaboration can be very powerful, but it has to be right and purposeful to be successful.

If you want to collaborate (at least if you want to collaborate with my company):

• Make sure it is the BEST way for each of us to achieve our objectives.  Oh by the way, to make this assessment, it’s useful to know what my objectives are.  You have to ask me, you have to explore them with me, you have to develop a relationship with me.  Likewise, I have to do the same with you.
• Make sure we are aligned in our vision of what we are trying to achieve and our value system.  The former is obvious, the latter is critical because it reflects directly on the customer experience we want to create.  To do this, we have to invest time in each other, we have to develop a relationship, we have to understand each other’s vision, dreams, goals, and value systems.
• Be clear that we both have to invest and we both have to get a return.  Explore that explicitly; what are you going to invest, what do you expect me to invest–both in resources, people, funding, etc.  Make sure we are aligned in these investments.  Explore what each of us will get as a result of this collaboration.  Does the return meet my objectives?  Does it meet yours?  We don’t know unless we talk about it.
• Be clear about the risks, are they acceptable to each of us?  Do we understand them?  Do we have a process to manage them?
• Be clear about what might derail the relationship, talk about these explicitly, talk about the show stoppers, talk about how we will handle conflict, disagreement.
• Make sure we have a well defined process for managing the collaboration, keeping focused and on target.
• Make sure it’s important to each of us.  If it’s not important to me, I won’t invest in making it successful–not because I’m a bad guy, but because I focus on what’s important to me.  Likewise, I expect you to behave in a similar way.

If you want to sell me, then sell me.  Don’t mask your intentions in the collaboration cloak.  I know what your job is, I respect it, if it’s something that I think we may be interested in, something that creates value for me, then I welcome your efforts to sell me.  And, if you are successful, I may buy.  If you want to sell me, it’s always useful to know a little about me, what I want to do, what my problems are, so that you can position your solution in a context that means something to me.  You won’t sell me by not asking me a question.  You won’t sell me by not understanding what I do–or presuming you understand what we do without having asked.  You won’t sell me by pitching me.

I’m open to collaboration.  I’m open to being sold.  Make sure you know what you are trying to achieve if you want to engage me.  Be clear about this when you try to engage me.

Consider this—this approach not only works for me, it works for most other people and organizations, as well.  Try the same thing with them.  It might improve results.

Thanks for your patience with my rant.

The phone rings.  I pick it up, it’s a sales person from a supplier of Sales Intelligence solutions.

“Hi Dave, I’d noticed you were on our site, I’d like to talk to you about how your company can use Sales Intelligence to improve your impact,” he says.

“We’ve found the more knowledgeable you are about the people you call, the better the result.”

I respond, confused, “I’m not sure why you are calling, I know your solution, I’ve used your solution, I am a past customer.”

“Oh,” responds the sales person, “I didn’t know.”

Hmmm………..

There are the twice a day “drip” emails from the marketing tools company that advocates meaningful, appropriate, and relevant content.  I’m having difficulty opting out, it seems I have to opt out of each type of email stream.

Hmmm……..

There’s the sales training company whose weekly calls are about their process and programs, but not creating new ideas for me and what I face.

Hmmm……

Wonder what would change if they practiced what they preached?

I’ve been tracking some discussions about old school approaches to engaging customers.  There are a number people talking about the power of handwritten thank you cards and notes (I’m a real fan of this myself).  One of my clients has done a study and has found brief handwritten introductory prospecting notes, with hand addressed envelopes are very effective.  For select prospects, they send well researched and handwritten notes–unique to each individual.  These are never more than a few paragraphs.  They seem to have high impact and generate good responses.

Leave it to some clever direct marketer to take this to an extreme, now taking something that had roots in authenticity, using the approach to manipulate and deceive the targets.  The other day, I picked up the mail, I opened an envelope and saw this handwritten letter.

I have to admit, they achieved one objective–they got me to read the letter–not only once but 4 times.  While I read it 4 times, mostly in sheer amazement, each time, it made me angrier because I recognized I was being manipulated.  The letter appeared to be from a frustrated small business owner, doing whatever he could to generate business.  “When times are tough, you’ve got to do some pretty drastic things!”  His impulsive idea was to send this “handwritten letter.”  He was so excited, he had to “hand write a note”  He clearly wanted me to know it was handwritten, because he reminded me of the fact at least 3 times in the 4 page diatribe.  He also managed to tell me the name of all his employees, who would appreciate my business to keep them employed, and the names and ages of his granddaughters.

He kept reinforcing the excitement, urgency, and his unique approach with notes in the margin, liberal cross through’s on words misused (purposefully), red ink arrows pointing me to his “bribes.” 

The first time, I read the letter, I was amazed–I only read it out of professional curiosity, it seemed incredible.  Then in re-reading, the manipulations started popping out.  It became obvious that it was professionally printed, not handwritten (I think the font is Copperplate Sloppy Unreadable Bold).  I’m trying to find the download site.  The pages had gone through a folding machine, the envelope had presorted bulk mail postage.  I called my neighbors, they had gotten the same letter.

So what’s the bottom line?

If the objective was to get me to read the letter, they achieved it.  This is the first time I ‘ve received a note like this, I won’t be so easily fooled the next time–I might even accidentally ignore a real letter.

If their hope was to elicit my sympathy for a struggling local business person and take advantage of a deal, not only would I not respond, but I would never consider this company as a supplier (I was actually interested in what he was offering, but now he is not on my list of companies I am getting bids from).  The entire premise of his very first letter to me was a deception.  I guess I must expect the same from everything else he might do.  In the very first business encounter, he has proven himself totally untrustworthy.

I continue to be amazed.  It doesn’t take a lot of scrutiny to see the manipulations, they leap off the page.  But I get at least half a dozen of these every week.  I respect someone trying a clever approach to catch my attention.  But lying and manipulating?  I guess there are enough stupid people that make these techniques have some sort of pay off.

All these manipulations create greater difficulty for legitimate direct marketers that want to stand out. As consumers, we become more numb, so marketers crank up the volume, crank up the manipulations, create a bigger lie.

I’m longing for a kinder, simpler approach.  Perhaps a simple letter:  “I noticed the windows in your house are getting a little old.  I have an idea on replacing those, while saving you a lot of money.  Would you be willing to talk for a few minutes?”

I’ve given up, we deserve all the jokes people tell about us.  Stupid sales behaviors—the source of endless jokes, the reason people hate sales people, the reason we have such difficulty in meeting with customers.

The tricks and manipulation……

A client sent me a note about one.  A sales person calls, leaves a voicemail, but doesn’t leave his name.  Curious, my client calls back, the sales person is totally unprepared, did not recall the message (left 45 minutes earlier), didn’t ask my client about their business, but starts pitching a meeting.

My friend, Anthony Iannarino, has another similar one:  “Should I leave a message with just my name and number, not why I am calling?”  The subtext to this is—let me trick someone into returning my call.

My own experience, just yesterday.  I get a voicemail, I return the call, the sales person answers—sounds like I woke him up from his afternoon nap.  Doesn’t remember why he called, then wanders through an aimless conversation—after 45 seconds, I didn’t get it, I understood he wanted to sell me something, but didn’t know what, so I thanked him and hung up.

Or the one, “We met at this conference, I wanted to follow up with you….”  When I reply, “I registered for the conference, but ended up not attending, so how did we meet?”

Then there’s the variant of the conference one — “We met at this conference two years ago….”  Wow, I think, they must have had so many leads, they are just now getting to me……

I could go on, I’ll stop here, but ask you to share your own stories in comments on this blog.  But the real reason for writing is:  Do we ever stop to listen to what we are saying?  Do we ever stop to think?  If we called ourselves and used the same approach, what would our response be?

Is thinking about what we are doing so difficult?  Is there some reason we spend lots of time looking for the latest trick, that hook, the way to “get our foot in the door,” rather than focus on “Why would this person want to talk/meet with me?  What could I do that would be meaningful to this individual?”  Both take about the same amount of time, but we seem to opt to sleight of hand, rather than the value we can create.

The goal isn’t about the number of calls–managers setting these goals take note–the goal is, how many value based conversations do we have?

When are we going to realize that buying–and selling has shifted?  It’s not about the pitch, it’s not about broadcasting a meaningless message, it’s about establishing a meaningful dialogue or conversation.  When do we start realizing that we don’t build trust through deception and manipulation?

Why do we continue to choose circuitous, confusing approaches to a prospect or customer, instead of being direct?

Sales is difficult enough, it requires real talent.  It requires real thoughtfulness.  Stop wasting your time on tricks and manipulation.  Stop wasting your time looking for or reading, “The 7 tricky ways to get your customer to say yes,” or “The 11 ways you can get your customer to answer the phone,” or “Master the ambush call.”

Invest your time in thinking–why would the customer want to talk to me?  What could I do that would create value for the customer?  How do I communicate that to the customer?  How do I make sure it’s a good investment of the customer”s time.  Think about what you are doing, research, plan, prepare.  You’d be amazed at how well it works.

Did you hear the one about, “What do you say about 200 sales people at the bottom of the sea….”

Today, I get this email, it’s addressed to “undisclosed recipients,” which is really email-speak for “Dear Occupant or Current Resident.”  Here’s the text of the email, minus the signature block:

Hey,  ( I really love the personal touch)

Just wanted to take a quick second to see how you are doing and make sure if you had any needs before July 4^th that we get them moving now.  I notice that as we approach that holiday, many times things fall off the table, and the best way we can avoid that is getting quotes etc taken care of ahead of time.

We are also running a buy 2 get 1 free sale on select servers right now.  I have a little bit of flexibility with that promotion as well in case you do not need 3 servers…

Call me or email me for more information

Thank you!!

Now before I go further, I need to step back about 2 weeks.  I’m at a client location, just finishing a meeting and my mobile phone rings.  The sales person introduces himself by thanking me for all the business we’ve given his company for a number of years.  He goes further to explain, that he is my newly assigned account sales person.  I thank him, replying, “I appreciate your call, but our requirements are very small and I prefer to buy through the web site.  After all we only order a small number of computers a year, it is much easier for me to go in and configure and order a system on line.”

He replies, “While you can do that, we really want you to be leveraging us to serve your requirements and get you the best deal (code word for cheapest prices).  We’re here to serve you and want you to buy through us rather than the web site.  Do you mind verifying your email information so I can send you an introduction email and package?”

To which I respond, “No, I really don’t have the time to deal with a sales person.  I prefer ordering through the web, I don’t want to give you my email and I really don’t want you sending me information.  Thank you, Good bye!”

I had barely hung up, when my phone pinged, indicating a new email.  It’s an email from this sales person thanking me for the call and providing me the introduction package–ignoring everything I said.  Mildly annoyed, I file it in my folder of “examples of bad practice.”

I’d forgotten about it until I got the email above.

I hate to bash Dell–I really like the company and have loved their products.  But they’ve decided not only to stop listening to me, but that they know better about what I need and how I should buy.

I prefer the web channel with Dell.  It’s efficient, and somehow I always manage to load the systems up with all sorts of cool things, so I never order a base system.  My average purchase is usually more than twice the base configuration–an I never buy a pre-configured system.  Somehow it seems to be the ideal situation, I am the proof that well executed upsell/cross sell really works–even in a web delivered experience.

Even though we don’t buy that many computers every year, and we always tend to buy Dell, but they want to direct me to a more expensive channel.  I have to believe that dealing with a sales person over the telephone is more expensive (and less profitable), than having me order through the web.  Why are they trying to force me to shift from my preferred channel?  It’s common for organizations to try to shift their customers to a more efficient or cheaper channel to reduce their cost of selling.  This transition is always difficult, you tend to lose customers if you don’t do it right.  But I’ve never seen an organization try to shift it’s buyers to a more expensive channel!  Given our purchase needs and past behavior–it doesn’t make sense to shift us from a web based channel to a more expensive people based channel.

I have over a 20 year history of buying primarily Dell products. (I said I liked them).  We have always ordered only Desktops and Laptops/Notebooks.  It seems to me if Dell was using the “intelligence” they might have gleaned from our purchase history, that they would have known that we would probably not be interested in a server promotion–regardless of how good the price deal they might offer.

Why is the sales person making this communication all about price?  Not only by two, get one free, but the implication I can get a deep discount for fewer than 3.  He’s initiated this sales cycle and he has made it all about price–so if I were at all inclined to buy–I would make it even more about price, leveraging the best deal from whatever vendor I could find.  We always train people to focus on value and to minimize discounting, but Dell apparently believes it best to lead with price instead.

Why do they have their sales people ignore my requests to not email me–not only once, but now I am on a distribution list with no ability to “opt-out.”

But wait, things get worse, below the signature block, there is a “How am I doing?  Please email my manager [Name_Withheld] with any feedback.”  Well, I’m slightly pissed off, so I click on what looks like a link–turns out it’s not a link–the font color was changed to make it look “link-like.”  Funny, that was the only “link” that wasn’t real in the entire email, the 4 others worked perfectly.  What kind of sleazy practice is this–my sales person and Dell really doesn’t want my feedback, but wants to mislead me?  They taunt me with the request for feedback, but don’t enable the link.

Whats’ up? This is probably not just a case of bad execution by a sales person.  The sales person is executing a program designed by someone else.  In reality, I don’t think it’s a reflection of Dell, but probably some overzealous manager.  It’s a program that is probably being inflicted on thousands of other small business owners, many probably have the same reaction as me.

It’s not that uncommon.  I see too many (particularly large) organizations doing stupid things like this.   A well intended market manager, a product manager, a sales manager has a mission and will execute it, possibly thinking they are doing the right thing, but so focused on their mission, they don’t understand what they are really doing.  Senior managers are supposed to help avoid this–making sure all programs and initiatives hang together and make sense. But too often, they fail to do the proper review or get involved in the details.

Despite this being more common than one would like, it is real cause for concern.  Strategies and programs executed blindly can have devastating impacts.

I’m really worried about Dell, my experience is that companies tend to adopt these types of misleading and shoddy practices when they are in trouble.

I wonder, should I contact Michael and offer my assistance?  Clearly, some thing’s way off in terms of their sales strategies and the customer experience they are creating.  The fixes are obvious, and actually could both save a lot of  expense and retain/increase revenue.

I still like Dell products.  I’ll try to buy, in spite of the way they are treating me.  I hope they don’t make it too difficult to buy–it might cause me to rethink things.

Why do executives, marketers, and sales people continue this insane behavior?! Why do they invest their time and precious budgets in creating meaningless SPAM which, at best is ignored, at worst creates people who are hostile to their brands and companies? A week ago, I wrote about insane telemarketing calls, “Can I Have 15 Minutes Of Your Time?”

Companies (in this case a global 50 technology company) waste millions in dollars and people hours, diminishing their brand value with mindless marketing and sales drivel.

Here’s the latest piece that sneaked through my SPAM filters:

TO: info@excellenc.com

FROM: Sunny@some nameless recruiting company dot com

CC: webmaster@excellenc.com

SUBJECT: Doing Business With You – Your IT staffing company-Application for Supplier Registration

Hi

My name is Sunny and I am seeking some advice about an introduction of our
company Some Nameless Recruiting Company, Inc., a provider of IT professionals on a contract or
executive search basis.

Candidly, I am at a crossroads about how to further an introduction at your
company, can you point me in the right direction about I.T. staffing needs?

I request you to consider Some Nameless Recruiting Company Inc as your Vendor for all your IT Staffing
requirements

Thanks & regards

There is NOTHING right about this email, so I won’t bother to critique it.

But why do sales people and managers persist in this–buy a list, send mindless drivel, out of 10,000 names, 5,000 bounce backs, you get one response that says: Stop bothering me!. From that “success” go and buy another 100,ooo names, get 50,ooo bounce backs, and now get 9 responses—Please leave me alone, and 1 that says, I’m looking for a job, can you hire or place me? Wow, 10 x the response, lets go buy some more…… and the death spiral continues.

Now if this were just a small number of companies doing this, but every week I look through my SPAM filter and see dozens of these from companies large and small. The biggest offenders are insurance companies—because my name pops up on “sales” queries, I get every mindless piece of “make millions while screwing your customer” offers to sell various forms of insurance—all with the big name insurance companies behind it (OK, I added the screwing your customer piece). Financial services companies, and recruiting organizations are close behind.

Then there are the companies that force their marketing and sales promotions on you because you subscribe to their service. For example, a major supply chain management service provider has managed to get a very large client of mine to outsource their procurement, invoicing, payables process to them. It’s a great service and very convenient. However, since I have to use this service to invoice my client, I also get daily feeds of “opportunities.” If I try to stop those feeds, I also stop communications my client might send me through this channel. In order to communicate with my customer on invoicing and payable issues, I have to accept these mindless promotions, but it makes me think less of this company and their services.

I subscribe to a number of local news feeds to keep informed about things happening in business around the country. Now, this company uses this subscription list to send daily ads to buy something. So I get the newsfeeds with their embedded ads–which I don’t mind, and I get these direct mail pieces on buying something. Since I subscribe to the feeds for about 15 cities around the US, I get the same direct mail 15 times—every day. If I change my subscription options, I can only stop the news feed. Is this the customer experience they want to create? What do they tell their advertisers, when people like me start unsubscribing to their entire service?

Many experts talk about targeting, about tailoring your messages, about smart, meaningful, and timely content. I respond to programs that engage me in things important to me. I buy from people who do this. Quality always wins over quantity.

Sales and marketing is difficult. Catching customers’ attentions is increasingly challenging. Massive quantities of mindless drivel magnifies the problem. Smart, focused, well executed programs stand out and produce results. Which do you choose to invest your time and funding into?

I’m at my desk, the phone rings, I answer, “Hello, this is Dave Brock.”

At the other end of the line, in a pleasant voice, “Hi this is So and So.  I’m an account manager at Such and Such Business Banking.  I’m sure you have your banking needs covered, but…..”

“Yes we do,” I answer, “thank you for calling, good bye.”

As I hung up, I wondered, why would anyone ever plan a call this way?  The probability of the same outcome as his call on me is probably 99.99%.  But, based on his tone and wording, he was doing what he had been trained to do, and what his script said.

Which caused me to think, why do we train our people to do the wrong things?  Why do we provide scripts designed to produce the wrong outcomes?

Oh well, I’ve probably put more thought into this post than this company did in their training, scripting, and call preparation.  I’ll stop here.

Go figure!

I received an intriguing invitation to “connect” today.  Best described, I was asked to connect with a “Thing,”  Not a person.  This thing had a relatively normal first name, but then a very gimmicky “phrase” as a last name. 

Curious, I looked the person up at LinkedIn.  He went by the same name.  I went to his website, likewise, he identified himself the same way.  I had no sense of the person I was connecting with.  I felt I was connecting with a “phrase,” not a real human being.  Nothing in his site or profile gave me any indication of who he was or what he stood for.  Nothing indicated, in fact, that he was real.

I started thinking, how do I address this person?  “Mr. ‘Phrase,’”  I thought, would his wife be “Mrs. ‘Phrase,’”  are there a bunch of little “Phrases” running around at home.  If they are little “Phrases,” perhaps it would be more appropriate to address them as “Words.”

I wonder what this person was trying to achieve?  I really like to get to know people.  I think relationships are about people—though I am fond of my bicycle—I spent a lot of time riding it.

I’ve noticed a lot of this recently.  People tend to be referring to themselves as inanimate objects, perhaps a collection of adjectives and verbs, a provocative phrase.  Is that supposed to be who they are, what they value, what they stand for?

I don’t know if this is a trend is a misguided attempt at personal branding.  But I don’t get it.  I still believe in connecting with people, getting to know them.  I believe in looking people in the eye, when I have the chance.  I believe in shaking hands—both as a form of greeting and as a form of agreement.  I believe in talking to people, hearing their voices.  I believe in social networking, but with people.  In social networking, I am constantly amazed at how, over time, one can really get a sense of an individual.

I understand the value of establishing a personal brand, but ultimately, people buy from people.  I don’t know how to buy from a brand, frankly, I have no desire to buy from a brand.

Many of my most valued relationships are with people I initially met through social networking.  I’ve established a new business with my friend Anthony Iannarino, I first met him when I disagreed with him in a blog post.  We’ve become close friends and business partners.  I can name dozens of others—friends, business partners, professional colleagues, customers, and clients who I’ve first met through social networking.

Social networking was the means by which we were introduced.  But I know each of them as people—who they are, where they’ve come from, what their dreams and goals are, what they value.  Maybe that’s old fashioned, but people are important.

Am I missing something?

While you consider this, I have a meeting with Mr. Specialized Roubaix.  We’re off for an hour of hill climbing.  Guess I’ll ask him how the family of little bikes are doing, wonder if they’ve outgrown their training wheels?

Reminder:  Our Friday Office Hours at Future Selling Institute are becoming very exciting with great discussions on issues critical to sales leaders.  This Friday, February 18, 2011, at 1:00 EST,  we will be tackling the conroversial  topic of “Coaching Approaches and Communications Styles.”  Make sure you reserve your space in the discussion, “seats” are limited, so Enroll Today!

Yesterday afternoon, I was in JFK waiting to board a plane.  I’d had a long day, nothing to eat, and a 6 hour flight with only the prospects for a bag of peanuts in front of me.  Even though it was only about 20 minutes until boarding, I decided to stop in the restaurant next to the gate.  I asked the hostess if 20 minutes was enough time to order, get served and eat.  She reassured me that I could and seated me. 

I was near the kitchen, 10 feet away from me, the manager stood with a huddle of all 8 of the wait staff.  Quickly I decided what to order, put my menu down and looked, expectantly, at the group of waiters (and manager).  They looked right back,  a few with eye to eye contact, most looking just over my head.  I waited a minute or so, then started looking at my watch, tapping the menu and looking back at them.  They, along with the manager, just kept looking.  They were laughing and joking among themselves.

A few tables away, I noticed another road warrior doing the same thing.  His body language could have been read by a blind person, “I need to order and get going!”  He and I were looking at each other, looking at the manager and wait staff, getting increasingly nervous. 

Five minutes passes, the hostess comes to me, looking a little surprised, “Has anyone taken your order?”  “No,” I respond, “I’m a little worried about making my plane.”  I said this loudly enough for the group 10 feet away to hear.  No response.

My new friend at the other table overheard that, piping up, “I need to order too!”  I could hear him clearly, and assumed the crowd 10 feet from me could hear as well.

The hostess goes to the assembled group, clearly asking,”Who’s handling these tables?”  Lot’s of shrugging shoulders, manager says nothing, just peruses the nearly empty dining room.

I look at my watch, it’s now 12 minutes to boarding time–I see the sandwich stand down the corridor, perhaps I can get something there.  As I stand up, a waiter starts to take a step forward.  I say in a loud voice (I can be such a jerk at times), just loud enough for the group and the tables around me to hear, “Apparently, all of you are too busy talking to pay attention to your customers.  I’ll find someone who wants to be helpful!” I walk out.  My new friend, stands up and joins me, we turn around and notice people at two other tables also standing and walking out.

What did the manager do?  He just turned, walked back into the kitchen.  The rest of the wait staff were just looking at each other, shrugging their shoulders.

Clearly, there were a lot of problems in the restaurant.  They started with the manager and his attitude.  He didn’t care about his customers, probably didn’t care about the business.  He didn’t take the opportunity to show leadership, either directing someone to the tables where people were waiting to order, or coming up and apologizing as 4 customers were walking out.

As managers and leaders, if you don’t care about your customers, if you don’t care about your people, if you don’t demonstrate some leadership, why should you expect anything better from your people?  Each of us, as leaders, set an example for our people.  Let’s make sure we set the right example!

Oh, by the way, if you happen to be in JFK, Terminal 2, good luck finding good service in anything other than the snack stands!

Exciting News:  Next Friday, January 28, at Future Selling Institute, during our Office Hours at 1:00 EST, we will be focusing the discussion on Coaching.  We will be debating issues on the importance of coaching, critical success factors in coaching, what happens if we don’t coach, and more.  It is certain to be a lively discussion.   No presentations, just discussion and a healthy exchange of ideas—and I’m certain a few fireworks!  It’s open to everyone, just register at:  Coaching:  The Highest Leverage Use Of A Sales Manager’s Time!