#16 - The Power of Knowing

Day #16 - The Power of Knowing

by Bob Oros

IS IT POSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE A PLACE YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN?

I was driving down highway 75 in Florida and pulled off at a Long John Silver seafood restaurant for lunch. As I was entering the front door a ‘pan handler’ was sitting on the curb asking everyone for their spare change. As I was eating lunch I could see him through the window and I thought how distracting it was to the customers. I wondered why the manager didn’t ask him to leave. He had a can in front of him and one out of every five people dropped some change in it. 
I got to thinking that one out of every five is a pretty good closing ratio.  One more confirmation of the 2 out of every 10 law.

After I finished eating I walked out the door and was thinking about how I was going to avoid him. I was dressed extremely casual as my whole day consisted of simply driving from point A to point B. I have special cloths for these occasions as I don’t want to travel with a whole lot of luggage. So I have some old jeans and a special sweat shirt that my wife keeps telling me to throw away. As we made eye contact I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. I sat on the curb next to him. For the next 30 minutes I learned five lessons that will stay with me for a long time. Because of those 30 minutes I am not only a better sales person and a better speaker, I am a better person.



The first lesson I learned was how it feels when someone thinks you are a bum asking for a handout. It was a strange feeling. I wanted to tell these folks who were walking by that I was not with this guy. I was just talking with him. I am not a beggar. I work for a living. Some of them looked disgusted. It was as if they were silently telling us to get a job. One irate man said that he would give us a couple of bucks but he rudely accused us of being a couple of drunks and the money would just be wasted. Some people avoided eye contact with us all together. I guess they felt that if they locked eyes with either of us they would feel an obligation to put some money in the can. After the first five minutes the concern about what people thought left me. They don’t know who I am. They will never see me again. I wondered what they would think when they see me walk over to my rental car and put the top down on my convertible! It is hard to put into words the transformation I went through after I told myself; “so what if they think I’m a bum – that’s their problem, not mine!” I may have made this adjustment a lot quicker than the average person because I had sales experience I could draw on.  One of the most difficult obstacles a beginning sales person has to overcome is the concern he or she has about what people will think of them. If you are not making the calls because you are worried about what someone will think about you, here is some important insight. They are not thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves. Do you think the people who walked by me went in the restaurant and thought about me during their entire meal? The amount of time they spent thinking about me could be measured in fractions of a second. Yet, most of the reason many sales people do not reach their full selling potential is because they are dominated by this concern about what people will think.

The second lesson was that one out of every five people dropped some change in the can. I thought that was really interesting. He didn’t even have to say anything, the can was the presentation! The can did the job for him. He completely set the stage for the sale. He was appropriately dressed to look like a street person. There was no question about it. His old sneakers, his faded shirt which was covered by his sleeveless sweater, his baseball hat, his unshaven face, all creating the perfect appearance of what the ideal homeless person looked like in the eyes of his “customer.” And because of this carefully designed “theater” he set up, one out of five were convinced that the right thing to do was to help him (us) out. This was an interesting observation. In my experience if you look like a sales person, the sale is harder to make. If you look like someone who is there to help solve a problem, you have successfully set the stage for a sale, and it comes much easier. Try changing your image from a stereotype sales person to a problem solver and see how much more receptive your customers will be. When you go to the gatekeeper and ask to see the manager don’t introduce yourself as a sales person. Instead introduce yourself as a problem solver. When you are asked what is this about, answer by telling them you don’t know until you ask them 3 simple questions and it takes less that three minutes.

The third lesson was that he said thanks to everyone. Not just the words thank you, but a sincere - I really appreciate it - thank you.  He made them feel good about putting money in his can. People like to help other people, or at least one out of five do, as my research proved.  Did you ever wonder what people think about after they buy something from you? They don’t really expect any gratitude on the surface. But deep down inside they’re screaming to be appreciated. It is very rare for us to get the red carpet treatment from anyone. I recently visited a store and was shocked by the excellent service. Someone met us at the door, escorted us through the isles, answered our questions, gave us snacks to eat while we were shopping, and when we checked-out, you won’t believe what happened! They wrote down our name, address and birthday. Two days later we got a thank you card in the mail and a birthday card followed a few days before the big day. Now, the thing that made this so special was “we” were my dog and I. It was a pet store and that’s how they treated my DOG! Do you really appreciate your customers? I mean REALLY?

The forth lesson. Here is his story. His name is Ralph and he lived in South Carolina. He lost his job and on the very same day his wife left him. She cleaned out their apartment, their bank accounts and maxed all the credit cards by taking cash advances. He was left with the cloths he had in the apartment closet and about $20 in his pocket. He had no family so he packed a small suit case and went to the local truck stop where he hitched a ride to Florida. He had been there a month when I ran into him. I asked him all the questions you would ask. Have you looked for a job? “I can’t even get a job as a day laborer without a Florida address. I have no transportation, no place to live, no friends, no credit and no money. All I can do is find some place to set up for the day and see if enough folks will help me so I can buy a meal.” He spends every night trying to find a place to unroll his sleeping bag. The lesson that Ralph taught me was this: I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Nothing! I stood up to leave, opened my wallet and gave Ralph fifty dollars. That was by far the best sales, marketing and motivation training I have ever received in my entire life.

The fifth lesson. Even though I talked with Ralph for 30 minutes, and for a moment knew the feeling of what it was like to be perceived as a street person, I couldn’t begin to describe what it must be like to live on the street.

Why?

Because it is impossible to describe a place you have never been.  Before someone assumes the role of teacher or trainer they have to know – really know – what they are talking about. They cannot spend 30 minutes next to a client or customer on a curb asking questions and think they know what it is like to have the problems they are dealing with.

You see, a consultant really has to KNOW. Let me give you an example of KNOWING.

The manager of a school cafeteria has to KNOW this. Let’s say the holidays are approaching and the manager is going to cook turkeys for the school kids. The turkeys are stuffed the night before and put in the refrigerator over night. The result: putting warm stuffing in a cold turkey overnight will cause botulism spores to grow which will create a toxin that cannot be killed by cooking. If there are onions in the stuffing they will accelerate the growth of the spores. The turkeys are cooked the next day and the school kids get sick. If they are not rushed to the hospital the toxin will cause the children to die with botulism poisoning.

Anything less than this type of KNOWING is the same as trying to tell someone how it feels to live on the street based on a chance conversation with a person who IS living on the street.

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