Blabbermouths

The car buying experience, and the car salesman, has become the stereotype of all that is wrong with sales and selling in the eyes of the American public.

As with many stereotypes, there is a basis in fact and deed.  Manipulation, high-pressure, duplicity lying are words that consumers associate with buying automobiles specifically and sales in general. 

As a result, car salespeople rank dead last in a recent survey of most trusted professionals.  They managed to beat members of Congress in this race to the bottom, which is quite a telling performance.  

Speaking of performances, the Alec Baldwin sales "training" in Glengarry, Glen Ross, and William H. Macy's salesman in Fargo are two star-turn portrayals of the prototypical noxious sales professional.

Movies, you mock?  Well, art imitates life, as my experience this weekend in a local car dealership attests. In a 15 minute conversation bludgeoning encounter, the salesman spoke for 14 of those minutes.  He was trying to build trust, by telling me stories about himself: 30 years in the business, that most of his sales were through referrals by satisfied customers, that he opens the dealership on weekends to get ahead of his colleagues, that he works all the time getting great deals for people like me because he doesn't have a family.

Maybe this approach works for him.  Maybe I don't meet the profile of his typical customer.  Maybe he thought that I wouldn't notice all of the pictures of his wife and kids (maybe they left him because he never shut up or paid attention to them.)  As a consumer, maybe I could have cared less about him.  Nah.

But, if he had just made a minimal effort to really engage me, maybe by asking just a few questions, maybe he would have learned that I had done my homework, and maybe he would have learned that I was ready to buy if my specific terms were met.  And when he lied was misinformed about the price of the car that I was interested in, and the current financing rate that was being offered by his finance company, any trust that his approach may have engendered popped like one of the helium balloons festooning the showroom. 

Pokes and provocations

I was meeting with a CEO client this week and the conversation turned to productivity and time management.  Well, sort of.

What he said was:  "I'd get a hell of a lot more done if my staff didn't drive me crazy."

Owners and employees.  Managers and staff.  CEOs and mangers. Why can't they just get along?

The CEO's lament reminded me of a phrase I had heard earlier, which also related to managing relationships:  "Don't poke the crazy."  I wasn't familiar with that one, but I was with its ursine iteration: "Don't poke the bear," which is similar to "gets your goat."

Whether you anthropomorphize your anger or not, losing your cool, or vice versa, is counterproductive to effective management.  Just ask Rutgers University basketball coach Mike Rice.  The fallout from both the bad behavior, and the condoning of it, will leave a mark.

What drives you crazy and how do you deal with provocative behavior?   Understanding personalities -- yours as well as others -- is critical to successful leadership and motivation.   

Hear, say.

At a gathering of business folks recently, we discussed the book Power Questions.  Those gathered found it to be a good, thought-provoking read, and some had already put some of the concepts and questions into practice in their organizations.

The author, Andrew Sobel, has penned several books on selling and fostering lasting client relationships.  Good questions, in his words, "light fires under people, help them see problems in new ways, and inspire them to bare their souls. The result is deep personal engagement." Power Questions offers many great examples of great questions to ask and how to ask them, and provides the reader with more than 300 questions, grouped topically.  It's a great resource for any business leader.

Is questioning enough, though?  Most modern sales "systems" are now built around the concept of questioning, of "finding the pain" of the prospective buyer.   Asking pre-programmed questions that are designed to manipulate the emotions of someone you just met doesn't seem like the recipe for success to me.  As one of the members of our book group said, "if a salesperson asks me 'what keeps you up at night?', I know they are a hack and haven't done their homework."

Reach out

Summer officially ends at 10:49 am EDT this Saturday, September 22, if you want to mark your calendar and get your eggs ready.

As the calendar turns from the lazy, hazy days into the rush of school, sweaters and falling leaves, so to does business psychology...to the coming fourth quarter, the end of the calendar year, the literal and figurative accounting of the year's progress (or lack thereof.)

Perhaps that's why so many of my discussions this month have focused on sales and selling...business owners are taking another look at their numbers, their goals for this year and next and asking themselves, their staffs and their advisors "what's next?"  This cogitation is a good thing; the time to plan is now.

At one recent TAB Board meeting, one business owner -- whose sales come predominantly through manufacturing reps and distributors -- reported increased sales to this group following face-to-face visits by company scientists (the company has no salespeople, per se.)  The results were so striking that they have begun a program of formal visits to their reps around the world.  The next step is hiring a professional to manage distributor relations.

Personal attention, interpersonal relations, human dialogue -- such a concept, as my bubby would say. In our increasingly digital virtual world, up close and personal is becoming the exception, and not just in business or selling. 

So sell me.

Last in a series...

The world of commerce has changed dramatically in the past few years. Technological, demographic, social and economic changes are raining over small businesses like a never ending series of squalls.

The processes and techniques employed by many small businesses were developed in the mid-to late-20th century and built for a “broadcast” world that for the most part no longer exists: large audiences that you can reach and motivate through traditional, one-way “tell and sell” laden with cliches and jargon.

Getting past the nose

"Buyers are liars."  How many times have you heard that phrase?

It's a pretty common aphorism in certain sales-oriented industries, such as autos, real estate and home remodeling.

I've heard it thousands of times, usually following a salesperson's failed pitch.  "They said they were interested in a two-story colonial on a cul de sac, and I showed them every one of my listings, but they ended up buying a cape on Main Street from someone else.  I could have sold them that, they just lied to me. They don't even know what they want."

Does that dialogue strike a chord?  Does it seem true to you?  Do you believe that your customers really do not know what they want, or that they lie to your face?

Among professions, only politicians are trusted less than salespeople.  Why is that?  Can it really be true that in a society where the vast majority of our Gross Domestic Product is consumer-driven, that trillions of dollars are generated on deceit or cluelessness?

Heat Burns

It's been an interesting week in damage control.

• Goldman Sachs, one of the mercenary handlers of the "animal spirits" of capitalism, found itself the subject of a lovely parting gift from departing employee Greg Smith.  (Ouch, that one will leave a mark.)

• Dollar Shave Club, whose funny, snarky introduction generated a viral sensation and tons of new customers, found that operating the business was a little trickier than creating a funny ad:  they announced that they can't ship initial orders on time because they weren't prepared for the demand. The impact: to be determined.

How well are you prepared to defend yourself in the court of public opinion?  Every organization -- whether a globe-straddling colossus or a start-up just launching itself -- will face an emergency at some point.  After all, accidents happen, things break, smart people do stupid things and sometimes good people do bad things -- occasionally on purpose. As the saying goes, "stuff" happens.

Land of the free

-->

So, how did you spend your free day on Wednesday?  You, know, February 29, aka Leap Day.

Ladies, did you channel your inner Sadie Hawkins?

Dudes, did you take it head on, mano-a-mano.

Was it a day of routines, deadlines, accomplishments, chores, sports, striving.  Just another day; one of 365 366? 

Pity if you didn't leverage this quadrennial opportunity. 

It was FREE.  What do you mean that  you didn't take advantage of it?  What's wrong with you?  Don't you love free stuff?  Doesn't everybody?  Didn't you get the memo?

It seems that there's a offer of "free" everywhere you look:  Buy One/Get One Free; Free Estimates; Free Consultation; Free Delivery.  Consumers lap it up.  And why not, it's FREEEE!

No wonder the country is broke.  We're giving it all away.  Increasingly so.  Hard to make a buck that way, isn't it?

In _____ we trust?

Trust is on the wane. 

This is probably not a big surprise to you.  Given the economic and social change occurring globally, and the stresses that change induces, a fair amount of dislocation and disconnection is natural.

But it seems deeper than that. Everywhere you turn there seems to be another poll or study showing a dramatic decline in trust and a rise in skepticism.  (Disclaimer: I worked at Edelman back in the 90s.)
 
The state of trust in the world, or rather the lack of trust in our institutions and leaders, is disturbing.  And certainly not without cause:  the breadth of bad behavior is staggering and seemingly all-encompassing.  Type "list of recent scandals" into Google, and you will relive a cascade of misdeeds by corporate, academic, media, sports and religious institutions and individuals. 

The skepticism and lack of trust is bad for business.  Marketing 101 teaches us that for a business to succeed over the long term, it must be 1) known, 2) liked, and 3) trusted.

But it's not just big business.  Some of the worst offenders are smaller enterprises, the mom and pop operations that should know better, because they need every customer.  We all have stories of local businesses that we don't frequent any more because they changed for the worse and broke a trust that had taken years to build.