EMPATHY: A SALES ESSENTIAL?

By Hank Trisler

I was watching Billy Mays on his program, The Pitchmen, on the Discovery channel last night and found myself thinking, What an egotistical jerk. How can he possibly sell anything?

The obvious answer is, "Quite well, thank you." He displays all the empathy and caring of an Uzi, yet he's made millions just irritating the hell out of me and thousands of others.

A couple of fellows named Herbert Greenberg and Ronald Bern wrote a seminal volume called "The Successful Salesman, Man and His Manager" a lot of years ago. They set forth the concept that high levels of Ego Drive (the desire to win) and Empathy (understanding how another person feels) were essential to sales success. The Ego Drive, the fuel that powers the rocket and Empathy, the mechanism that steers the rocket to the target. They even developed an assement tool (read: test) to determine an applicant's level of Empathy and Ego Drive. It was a forerunner of many subsequent assessment tools.

I loved ideas that promised me a new and better way to do things, so I bought right into this deal with both feet. The General Sales Manager at Courtesy Chevrolet, in Seattle was Al Lizotte, a good friend to this day. He pooh-poohed the whole idea saying, "You can pack all that Empathy where the sun don't shine. Give me a guy with massive ego drive and he'll sell rings around all those bleeding hearts." It has been a source of nearly endless argument and enjoyment for us to this day.

Of late I've become less sure of my position, which is true in myriad instances. I see more and more salespeople with the empathy of a cod rolling over obstacles and market conditions and succeeding in spite of my belief system.

Is it remotely possible that I have been misinformed? Have I spent the past fifty years laboring under the delusion that Empathy is essential for sales success? I welcome your thoughts to either relieve me of my childlike belief, or reinforce it, whichever the case may be. Lay on.

WHAT'S NEW?

By Hank Trisler

"So what's new?" asked a customer of mine at a recent lunch.

"You mean aside from Swine Flu?" I responded.

"No, like what's new in the world of selling? My guys have heard all your old stuff and want something new."

"Are they doing the old stuff?" I asked.

"Not particularly well," he answered.

"Then why would you want to teach them new stuff when they aren't doing what we already taught them?"

"Well, they said they wanted some of that new stuff, like that NLP I've read about."

Let me step out of this conversation to discuss with you a couple of issues I consider important at this moment.

1. There is nothing particularly new about NLP. Neuro Linguistic Programming was dreamed up thirty years ago by a couple of guys named Richard Bandler and John Grinder sitting up in the Santa Cruz mountains smoking God only knows what. They took the works of an old hypnotist named Milton Erickson and wrote a book titled Frogs into Princes. They threw around words like "representational systems" and "accessing cues" and purported a new system of selling. The greatest benefit to this system is that you could spend time watching the eye movements of your customers and trying to determine whether they were remembering, imagining or lying. This kept you from selling them and having to go out and find other customers.
   
   
2. Even if it were new, that doesn't make it good. The "Old Stuff" got to be the old stuff, because it was developed over time and has been proven even as it has been refined and distilled.

Let's face it, the selling business is very much the same as it was fifty years ago. Oh, vastly changed, but much the same.

The trappings have changed. We have the internet to get information we could only dream about having even ten years ago. We have e-mail and texting and cell phones and laptops and wondrous CRM systems in the cloud. The average salesperson carries far more horsepower with them than I had in a string of real estate offices years ago.

So how are things the same? It's still the same blocking and tackling. You have to go find people who might need what you're selling. You need to develop a rapport with those people. You have to ask a lot of questions to find out why they might want/need what you're selling. You have to show them how what you're selling will scratch where they itch. You have to ask for, and receive, a commitment. You have to follow up to assure customer satisfaction, get referrals and stimulate repeat business. Hell, pardner it's the same game I learned how to play in the fifties.

Gussying up selling with "new processes" is like putting stockings on a pig. The simple fact of the matter is if people do the basics and do them well, they will succeed. If they employ all manner of "systems" and spend their time watching people's eye movements, rather than selling them, they're going to fail.

I'm going to suggest to you that when you hear about new "systems" and "methods of persuasion," you avoid drinking your own bath water and take a good look. If we as salespeople, sales managers and sales trainers remain focused on the basics of selling and avoid the frills and the "new," we're all going to be a lot better off.

What do you think?

CONFRONTATION

By Hank Trisler

Dr. Gilbert Amelio, the man who spearheaded the turnaround at National Semiconductor and, more recently, got the rubber key at Apple, wrote a book a while back, My 500 Days at Apple. It was reviewed in our local rag and it appeared to be the standard whine about what a duplicitous weenie Steve Jobs is and how everyone treated him badly and prevented his success. I consigned it to my "Don't Read" list.

There was, however, one extremely telling quote. When asked what his single biggest mistake was at Apple, Dr. Amelio said: "I let the board hammer me into a commitment as to when I would have the company profitable. That was the beginning of the end."

One of the great enemies of people, whether or not they are in selling, is allowing other people to make us commit to things that are not within our complete control. This includes most things, as control is merely an illusion.

I know, your business is different. You have to make commitments. Your customers demand it. No commitment, no order. BULL! If you make commitments you can't fulfill, you're only building trouble for yourself down the road. Unless you're prepared to go into the factory and make and deliver them, you'd better not guarantee delivery. You might even tell your customer, "The only way I can firmly commit that delivery date to you is if I were to go and make them myself, with my pink little hands and, believe me, you don't want that."

If you're going to blow a sale and irritate a customer, you might as well do it at the outset by confronting reality, rather than investing time and emotion in a sale that was doomed from the start.

SELLING TO GEEZERS

By Hank Trisler

Friend and long-time TRISLER TIMES subscriber, Charlie Runion, of Roswell, GA, left a message on our website, www.nobullselling.com, asking for some information about selling insurance to senior citizens. I have no idea why he would think me expert in these matters, save the fact that I, myself, have achieved codgerhood by a considerable margin, but lack of knowledge has never stopped me in the past, so here goes.

We geezers are not all that much different from the rest of you. You still need to ask a lot of questions, find out what we want and show us how to get it. All the basic stuff, just like you civilians.

Having said that, there are some differences. Most of my friends are also codgers. We seem to run in groups. I play golf and tennis with geezers and seldom find myself in close proximity with twenty-something individuals. This tells me that those wishing to sell something to me would be well advised to find out what I read and advertise there. To find out where I hang out and spend some time there. To find out what I hold dear and support that cause. Build affinity by proximity.

We look a little different from some of you younger folks. I have a distrust of people wearing goatees and shaved heads. I have a great deal of difficulty buying from those with jewelry piercing visible body parts. Green and purple hair puts me off.

Though our common language may be English, we seem to speak differently than some of you. Phrases such as, "You know?" "I'm all. . ." and "Like. . ." are not only foreign, but mildly offensive to me.

Rightly or wrongly, I think that merely having lived long enough to have achieved codgerhood garners me a modicum of respect. I bristle when a young waiter says to us, "What'll you guys have?" I know they mean no ill, but Barbara and I are not guys, we're geezers, with all the attendant respect that title deserves. I am drawn to people who respect my views and solicit my opinion.

The further I progress into geezerdom, the less mobile I become. I'm told that this is a trend likely to continue. People who make it easy for me to buy will probably get my business. Home delivery, websites, meetings at places I frequent and the like are of benefit to me and mine.

Though I am getting progressively less mobile, I'm not getting more stupid. I don't want people to talk loud and slow to me, predicated on the assumption that I am dim and hearing impaired. I think I've learned a few things over the years and dislike people who condescend to me.

This is by no means a complete guide to selling to geezers, but merely a starting point. I solicit your stories, theories, experiences and strategies of separating we codgers from our money.

ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS THIEVES?

By Hank Trisler

There is a wondrous little place on the California North Coast, about five miles above Gualala, called the Whale Watch Inn. They have but eighteen beautifully decorated rooms hanging on a high cliff overlooking the Pacific. There are no telephones, no television sets, no faxes and no e-mail. They serve a simply grand breakfast to you, in your room, at a time of your choosing. It may be as close to heaven as you can get without donning wings.

Though our spacious room had two decks and a commanding view of the ocean, we decided to play some Gin Rummy in the huge community room. There was a roaring fire in the central fireplace and fresh coffee in thermos bottles on the sideboard. There was Scrabble, Clue, Chess, Trivial Pursuit and even Monopoly, but we couldn't find any cards, so we asked the innkeeper for a deck.

"We don't have any," she said, "They seem to grow legs and walk off even quicker than our binoculars."

We got in the car and drove to the General Store in Anchor Bay to get cards, for $3.40 a deck.

What's wrong with this picture? First, the innkeeper implied that her guests who pay $385, and up, per night were a bunch of kleptomaniacs. We felt vague discomfort by association. Lesson: Never speak ill of a customer to another customer. You just can't win that game.

Second, the lodging business is one of condoned pilferage. There were boxes of wooden matches, bottles of shampoo, conditioner, bath gel and the like, all emblazoned with the stylish Whale Watch logo. These are clearly put there for the guests to steal. Question: How much can playing cards, with the logo, cost? If we paid $3.40 retail, I have to believe they could get them for less than a buck, about the cost of matches and shampoo. We didn't want matches and were up to our collective butt in shampoo. What we wanted was playing cards. If you're going to put something out for your guests to steal, why not something they want to steal? We would have thought fondly of Whale Watch each time we played and friends of ours would have seen the cards and referrals would surely result. Isn't this just another case of finding out what your customers want and giving it to them?

Speaking of Cards

Barbara beat me like a cheap gong in Gin Rummy. No real surprise there, it happens a lot. It wasn't really that she got so much better cards than I did (though I'd like to believe that was the case), but she played the cards she got just a little bit better. She remembered the cards that were played and was able to have a pretty good idea what I had and what I needed, so she could keep it away from me. Possibly most important, she knew a bad hand when she saw it and was able to minimize her losses by knocking on high numbers.

It struck me how much the business of selling is like playing cards. We all tend to draw about the same kind of customers, but some of us seem to play them just a little bit better. The best players are often those who know a bad deal when they see one and cut and run, minimizing their losses.

I think that's what effective sales training can do for a team. We can't teach them to get better cards, but we can help our people play the cards they get just a little better, giving them a competitive edge. It amounts to an unfair advantage over our competitors.

If you would like to develop an unfair advantage, please call me at (408) 978-6000 to discuss a sales training package for your team.

HI TECH -- HI TOUCH

By Hank Trisler

John Nesbitt, in his ground-breaking, but old book Megatrends put forth the idea that as technology advanced and caused us to become more separated from one another, the need for courtesy and caring would be ever more important. What John feared most has come upon us.

A prime example of alienation would be Twitter, where we not only cannot see one another, our ability to converse with one another is restricted to 140 characters. This makes communication real tough.

A couple of days ago a very nice man posted something odd on Twitter. He said that thanking someone for a retweet was the same as spam and if someone did that to him, he would unfollow them. I've watched this fellow's tweets for a few months and find him to be a thoughtful, articulate and considerate individual. Why, then, would he engage in such boorish behavior? In subsequent tweets he explained that it was merely the pressure of time. He had built his following to the point that he had 500 retweets a DAY. If he thanked all those people, there would be no time for other business. Oh, there were other reasons, but the central issue was he was just too busy to be polite.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. There be demons out yonder. People tend to repeat those acts which are appreciated and ignore those acts which are not. If I retweet you a couple of times and you fail to mention it, I'll find other things to do with my time. My response to discourteous behavior, is to avoid the offending party and I'm not alone in this regard. If someone does something nice for you, you thank them. It's just good, common sense and courtesy.

A very bright lady with the moniker of @mediaphyter tweeted this morning that someone who had guested on her blog had sent her a HAND-WRITTEN thank you note. She was very favorably impressed, as well she might be. Hand-written notes are as frequently encountered as buggy whips. The higher postage prices go and the more ubiquitous electronic communication becomes, the more rare the hand-written note is. If you send notes to people who do things for you, you will stand out from the crowd.

In this increasingly competitive marketplace, I'm going to suggest you can gain a substantial advantage over your competition by merely being grateful and expressing that gratitude at every opportunity.

THE TOUR

by Hank Trisler

So I belong to Courtside, this really terrific tennis club in Los Gatos. I've been a member for thirty-two years and you get sort of attached to a place after that long. A few years ago the ownership changed and they virtually reinvented the whole club, changing it from a pure tennis club to a total family fitness club that also has tennis. The new facility is truly first rate and makes it the finest fitness/tennis club in the area.

Naturally, to finance all this construction and refurbishing, they've had to jack the dues up precipitously. That, in turn, has caused a lot of us moss-backed old fossils to blow out and create an on-going need for new members with fat wallets and wee kiddies in need of tennis instruction and hot dogs from the cafe. They need a slug of new members just to keep pace with attrition. I want to help them, not because they're paying me, but because I want my club to do well. I have been thinking about what I'd do if I were given the job of increasing membership sales and I keep coming back to

THE TOUR

All prospective members are given the tour. I've seen them trudging around the club while our excellent sales staff tell them about the amenities. "This is the children's pool (the tipoff was it's full of kids), there are fifteen outdoor and three indoor tennis courts, and a gymnasium (peopled with grunting, sweating people). Over here we have the children's daycare center and here are several large rooms full of gleaming chrome machines being attacked by more sweating, grunting people."

See what's happening? They're being shown things. Very nice things, I grant you, but nevertheless things. I submit that folks don't join a club for access to things, but for the people with whom they will interact. Now there's where Courtside really shines. Their staff is second to none. The young ladies at the front desk make you feel like you're returning home every time you enter. The folks in the cafe really care about you and want you to be happy with what you eat. The instructors of the myriad athletic endeavors are second to none. They want you to shape up and enjoy the process. And the tennis staff? The head pro has been there longer than I have, since the club first opened. His team of tennis pros simply don't turn over. They know youre game and they know how to improve it. This is what people will buy, other people, not things.

I submit that the way to get sales up is to "move the prospective members in." To act "as if" they had already made the decision to join. When waltzing them around the club, don't mention any of the amenities. They're adults, they know what they're looking at and if they have any questions, they'll ask. Instead, introduce them to the people with a phrase like this: "This is Carlene and Maria Elena who will be here to greet you in the morning. Ladies, this is Mr. & Ms. Phatass who are going to be joining us." See? We're just moving them in and they get to see the big smiles on the front desk ladies and everybody feels warm and together.

I submit the tour should consist of as many introductions as possible, with variations on the theme "they're going to be joining us." The employees love it and will be eager to show off and be a part of the welcoming process. The prospective members will love it, too and when fully "moved in," will be hard to move out.

Do any of them ever object to the phrase "They're going to be joining us?" Sure, some clod will say, "You know we really haven't made the decision to join, yet." You can respond, "Well, I'm betting you will join us when you see the sort of staff and members we have."

What about the member? They're the best part of the equation. Introduce the prospective members to the existing members with the same phrase, "they're going to be joining us." The members will proudly extoll the virtues of the club and feel better for having been asked. Everyone wins. The prospects get to hear about the club from the people with whom they will be associating. The old members feel a part of the welcoming process and will gladly show off how smart they are for belonging to such a fine club.

Oh, it might be a real good idea to speak with a selection of members before you introduce them to see how they feel about the club at the moment. But even if they gave you some negative input, you can always say, "Well, you don't win them all. I'll not ask him soon again." Some giggles will ensue and the touchy situation will have been diffused.

If you buy into the proposition that people buy on emotion and justify with fact, doesn't it just make good sense to spend your time talking about people, rather than things?

If this is a good idea, and I'm convinced it is, how could you use a variation of it to improve your business?