First impressions are tricky.  People make rapid assumptions about new acquaintances.  Oftentimes, you can be mistaken about what you see and hear from a Southwestern candidate or a recruit. 

If you’re going to be working with someone you don’t know well, you need to manage the budding relationship, not just the first impression.   

Let’s explore an example.  If you’re following up with a new Southwestern team member and they show up late for the meeting, you have several options: 

1)     ignore the fact they’re 15 minutes late and proceed

2)     when (if) they apologize, say, “Oh, it’s no big deal.”

3)     Confront them politely. 

Early on in my Southwestern recruiting career, I would have opted for #2.  I valued the team member liking me above our business relationship.  If you pursue ignoring or excusing behavior you don’t appreciate, expect more of it.  When I said, “Don’t worry, it’s no big deal,” I was teaching that person how to treat me in the future.  I was unconsciously teaching them my time was not valuable.  Once I chose this interpersonal route, I couldn’t then be upset if they showed up late for other follow-ups. 

Option 3 might sound like this: “Jennifer, it’d be great for you to be on time when we meet again.  When you show up late, I feel like you don’t value my time…. I’m meeting with a bunch of students today, and it throws everyone off.  But I still like you!  I just wanted to let you know how I felt.”  Be sure to pause and let them feel a smidge uncomfortable. 

(Use judgment! If they’re just totaled their car and they’re bleeding, or if there’s been some calamity, you can cut them some slack. If they overslept, see above.) 

If you choose to let people know how you feel when they’ve violated one of your rules (in this case, punctuality), they will normally make adjustments.  If they are tardy again, you need to amp up the message, making it more uncomfortable.   

Punctuality is one example.  Teach people how to treat you in other areas: turning in completed reports, returning calls, responding to texts—there are many ways to let new team members know what behavior you want.  Feel free to comment!  Can you give me other examples—Southwestern or not—where this would be useful?

Southwestern FORCE team with Gov. Perry

And now for a departure from my normal sales blog for a chance political encouner: I was running a Leadership Retreat for Southwestern student managers in Des Moines, IA last week.  As we wrapped up lunch and were heading into the conference room, one of the managers remarked, “Rick Perry is in the restaurant.”  Didn’t register.  I was busy getting the projector ready, messing with the PowerPoint.  Then I got a text: “Rick Perry in restaurant.”  It dawned on me that this was no joke, since there was a debate that night in town!  We suspended the meeting and I headed over to meet one of our alums, now Republican presidential candidate.

A cluster of student managers encircled Gov. Perry.  I naturally pushed them aside and shook hands.  It was a nice encounter–the restaurant had emptied–and there were a couple bodyguards on the periphery.  Perry seemed interested in the Southwestern students, and his body language gave no indication he was in a hurry to exit.  We chatted about Southwestern, who we knew, and asked him about that night’s debate.  His ”Gold Seal Gold” election schedule sounded daunting, and we were glad to be able to spend a few minutes with him.

Overall, Perry made a good impression (would you expect any less?).  He was warm, friendly, interested in us and what we were doing.  Obviously, photos were in order so we fell in and took a few shots.  As we broke up, we asked him if he would mind saying a few words about his Southwestern experience on video.  Perry told us that he could not endorse a product or company, but he did say we could quote him: “Southwestern’s the best thing I ever did.”

Dealing with stuckness during a Southwestern summer.

I travel to many weekend meetings during the summer.  On Sundays, I always meet with Southwestern students–many of whom are struggling–with their self-imposed limitations, with their belief levels in selling, with feelings of frustration because they’re not hitting their goals.  Invariably, they’re in a mental “death-loop”: their self-talk is negative, which leads to a mental image of what they don’t want, which leads to an outcome or action that confirms their self-talk!  A self-fulfilling sales prophecy that is limiting.

We’ve all done this in some way if we’ve sold with Southwestern: You look at a house and think to yourself: “I know I’m not going to get in.”  You form a mental picture of this negative outcome.  You muster up the courage anyway, knock and shock–you didn’t get in; then you tell yourself: “See! I knew that wouldn’t work.”  We don’t get what we want; we get what we picture.

So my PC (personal conference) might sound like this:

Me: “Tell me what’s happening.”

Student: “I just can’t get in doors.  People don’t let me in.  Ever.”

Me: “Really.  No one ever lets you in.”"

Student: “Well…some do.”

Me: “Tell me more.”

They go on to describe their stuckness in great detail.  Using all kinds of universal statements, like “everyone”, “no one”, “always” and “never”.  First person, present tense, with emotion.  All their assertions reinforce what they don’t want!

I finally counter with a key question: “What do you want to happen?” 

This usually brings an abrupt halt to their sad monologue.  Southwestern students who are locked into their mental morass are not often looking for solutions, and the new question interrupts their train of thought. They are wallowing in self-pity and a vicious self-defeating cycle.  After I ask, “What do you want to happen?” they typically give their right answer.  Example: “I want to get in doors so I can make a sale.”

My reply? “Great, let’s talk about how to do that.”  A how-to question allows us both to explore options and think about what the Southwestern student can do differently to reach a different outcome.  Most people who are suffering from stuckness are in the “why-question” mode: “why is this happening to me?” or “why can’t I get in doors?”  Breaking their state a bit with an entirely new question–”what do you want to happen?”–can launch the conversation into a much more useful area: the how-to-fix-this area.

If you’re selling (or studying or working out or feeling bad about yourself) and you’re mentally stuck, you don’t need me to PC you.  Ask yourself, “What do I want to happen?” or “How do I want to feel?”  Your brain will begin to give new & improved answers.  Thoughts?  Comments?  Southwestern veterans, chime in and let me know if this makes sense!

Kenny is engaging, warm, funny, self-deprecating and persistent.  He hi-fives his prospect (physical involvement), deflects questions about the price (the inquiry came during the “demo”), and closes repeatedly.  On the less admirable side, Kenny makes appeals to buying out of sympathy (a little) and not solely out of service. Yet on the positive side, he wears an ID badge!  Well done.  His entire approach/demo is performed (I chose that word carefully) at the door—quite the door demo!  Kenny does reference neighbors, but doesn’t use any names. 

Kenny says he is working to become a TV comedian, and his door to door selling is merely a “stepping stone” to greater fame and fortune.  What are your thoughts on his technique?  Would you consider him effective or off-putting?  Watch this 7:00 minute clip, and you decide whether this guy will make it big.  (Why didn’t anyone approach him for Southwestern?)

Here’s a principle of human nature that can be useful in these moments.  NLP shows us that questions are the answer.  When our brain hears a question, no matter how unthinkable, it automatically imagines an answer.  Try it for yourself — pick something you don’t think you can do, or do well.  Then, ask yourself this question: “What would it be like if I could do _________ really well?”  Example: “What would it be like if I could sell really well?”  Or “What would it be like if I were really bold when it came to building a team?”

Your brain automatically imagines what it would be like — it can’t help it.  It’s automatic.  And it moves your mind from the frozen position of “impossible” to one of, “what would it be like if…?” and that’s a much more resourceful state to be in.  Belief is a funny thing.  Our brain always looks for evidence to support our thoughts.  We must be careful what we think about our sales ability or our ability to build a Southwestern team.  When we make statements to ourselves, like “I could never sell like _________” (insert name of top producer), we tend to believe it.  To ask, “What would it be like if I could sell like ______?”  At once our brain shifts from “stuckness” to “unstuckness.”   We imagine answers rather than limits.

After you begin to imagine what it would be like if you did have that skill or ability, then it might be useful to ask, “And how would I do that?”  Hmmm.   More potential answers and useful thoughts!  You might decide to phone up that top producer and ask them how they do it.  You might ask to follow them on the field for a day and model their behavior and/or attitude.  You might ask them what they think about all day long and compare it to what you normally ponder.  Once you get unstuck with the “what would it be like if I…” question, you can switch to “how” questions.

You can use this rut-breaking question in all areas of life.  What would it be like if you could really be focused when you study?  What would it be like if you could play Call of Duty 3 really well?  How about the realm of dating: what would it be like if you were really confident about asking cool people out?  Think about it.  What works for you?  Send me a comment!  Southwestern is not the only context where this mental agility applies.

“What does it take to succeed? Apparently a whole lot of failure. Paul Tough, in the New York Times, reports educational leaders who believe that knowing how to fail is the secret to success. Dominic Randolph, who leads an expensive, top ranked private school in New York City, is concerned about students that have known nothing but success. He states:

Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southernItaly, there was this idea inAmericathat if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful. Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.

These kids don’t know how to fail because they’ve never done it. Therefore, when things get outside their comfort zone, or they first encounter people more capable than they are, they have no skills for dealing with it. We talk a lot about hard work, but school grading generally ends up being based on how well you did on the test, not about how much effort it took to get there or how persistent someone was.

But wait, don’t we want to hire those people who are naturally brilliant and don’t need a lot of hard work to be successful? Well, sure, except that if they don’t know how to fail they are going to be awfully difficult to work with. We hear this complaint from those who employ Generation Y. Many of their parents (and their schools) saw to it that failure wasn’t an option. Everything was fixed or extra credit given or forgotten lunches brought to school.

The ability to bounce back from failure is a key point. But, what if you’ve never failed? What if your parents fix every problem you ever have? What if you never gain this valuable skill? Then you’re far less likely to have true success.  If you’ve never had to try again and again, are you going to assume that the problem is unsolvable if you fail the first time?

Lots of people live charmed lives as long as their parents are pulling the strings or they put themselves in places where success is almost guaranteed. Except that anyone in the working world today knows that failure is not only a possibility it’s a high probability. Businesses fail. Entire divisions get laid off, regardless of how brilliant any individual employee was.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what the problem in the darn code is.  If you’re a one try and you’re finished type of person, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you won’t succeed.

And what happens if you’re one of those people who has never failed? Never had to face disappointment and pick yourself up by your own bootstraps? It can be disastrous. But, to succeed you must be able to fail and recover from failure.”

I think of the many college students I interviewed over the years who never sold with Southwestern–it was sad their parents ran interference for them.  Even more sad, these same students who were “protected” from Southwestern summer setbacks, were often shell-shocked when they hit their first career.  I welcome your thoughts and experiences!  I am thankful my parents allowed me the opportunity to fail that first summer with Southwestern.

“I just heard an interesting horror story from a seasoned sales professional. She was presenting to a prospect, the prospect interrupted her and said: “you must have been a real star at your Sandler training.” In other words, the customer not only knew he was being “sold” but could identify the sales training firm that had trained the sales rep to sell.

This is not a good thing to happen, but it happens more than you think.  The reason is that many sales training firms continue to be invested in the mistaken notion that successful selling behavior is as reproducible as an assembly line. As a result, they promote a set of highly ritualized behaviors that are supposed to work, but which often just make the sales rep look silly.

The concept of scripted “ritual selling” goes back to the 1930s.  Early sales training (particularly in the automobile industry) was designed to ensure that everyone on the sales team spoke, acted, looked and even moved in the exact same manner, in the mistaken belief that customers would react identically to the same stimuli.  Sales reps were even told how to hold the pen when they handed it to the customer to sign on the dotted line.

Sales rituals (i.e. sales scripts) are mostly absurd.

They’re not based upon any real research but rather upon speculation about what “ought” to work or what worked for the individual who’s selling the training.  As such, they’re a crap shoot anyway.  To make matters worse, most prospects and customer see sales rituals as fakey, manipulative, sleazy and unethical.

…One of the unintentional byproducts of these rituals is to the public at large a career in sales has often been considered futile and depressing, as in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Death of a Salesman,” which holds suicide as a better fate than being a salesman.

And, in fact, sales rituals ARE depressing, because they inevitably create massive amounts of rejection.  I suspect that primary reason that motivational training has become part of the sales training regimen is simply that sales rituals create so much failure, producing an almost infinite need to “cheer up” the sales force.

Another byproduct of sales rituals is the injection of magical thinking into the mix.

Since sales professionals are being asked, from the start, to take a leap of faith that sales rituals will work, it’s not surprising that some expect divine intervention as well. You see this tendency towards the supernatural in the motivational writings Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and Norman Vincent Peale.

Finally, sales rituals have resulted in a certain amount of employee abuse. I’ve heard sales trainers — big names, mind you — explain that the reason their rituals weren’t working was that the sales reps were “stupid” and “lazy.”  Sales managers pick up this way of thinking, needless to say.

In the 1992 movie of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, a hot-shot sales trainer (memorably played by Alec Baldwin) is brought in by top management to “motivate” the discouraged troops.

In a much-quoted speech, the character provides both the ritualized bromides (e.g. “A.B.C. – Always Be Closing”) along with crude and abusive motivational training (e.g. “Coffee is for closers!”)  The film admirably illustrates the insanity of this kind of training.

More importantly, the movie illustrates the exact tendency of customers to get wise to the ritual scripts, as when the character played by Jack Lemmon finds that his smooth patter, once effective, no longer works.

What’s the alternative to sales rituals? Well, you can start by throwing out the “sales scripts” you’ve been using. About the only time a sales script works is in cold-calling situations, where you’re playing a numbers game. The rest of the time, the scripts are probably getting in your way.

For almost all sales situations, you’re much better off entering into a real conversation and behaving like a genuine human being rather than a devotee of some sales religion who’s determined to follow a ritualized script.

This requires knowing what your selling, understanding the customer’s business model, and actually caring about them as something more than somebody who’s supposed to play their role in some weird little play that you’re trying to create.”

Well, there you have it.  Mr. James finds sales talks off-putting at their best, and destructive to sales at their worst.  What are your thoughts?  If you sold with Southwestern, is it time to change our sales strategy, or is James off the mark?  He does say, “About the only time a sales script works is in cold-calling situations, where you’re playing a numbers game.”  Southwestern seems to have done well with sales talks over the past 150+ years.

“Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story?

What do you do with people who disagree with you… do you call them names in order to shut them down?

Are you open to multiple points of view or you demand compliance and uniformity? [Bonus: Are you willing to walk away from a project or customer or employee who has values that don't match yours?]

Is it okay if someone else gets the credit?

How often are you able to change your position?

Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways?

If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them?

No textbook answers… It’s easy to get tripped up by these. In fact, most leaders I know do.”

So…how did you do?  Most of Seth’s questions revolve around ego.  Our ego is a big deal–our self-centeredness is readily apparent to other people.  Sadly, many leaders who need to experience a healthy “ego check” are blissfully unaware of their shortcomings.  They are happy to bend the truth a bit for a good story, or a good outcome–or a sale. 

Another question for salespeople: Can you let the sale go if it’s not in the best interest of the customer?  When I was selling, I sometimes let my competitiveness or my need to win (or my ego) get the best of me.  I convinced myself everyone should have my product–even if they weren’t great prospects. So with that mindset, sale made, but did I help someone who probably wasn’t going to use what I was selling?  No. 

If you can put other people’s needs before yours, it will go well for you.  At Southwestern, we call it a service-orientation: thinking of what you can do for them, not for yourself.  Hopefully, you picked up on this theme during Sales School training.  As Edwin Markham said, “There is a destiny among us that makes us brothers.  No one goes his way alone.  What we put into the lives of others, comes back into our own.”  Think: am I primarily self-centered , or am I other-centered?   If you’re not sure, ask a close friend you trust and who will be candid with you.

I confess my first few summers with Southwestern as a student manager, my focus was on myself.  I did not get “service-mindedness.”  Whether it was youthful immaturity or a heart set on self-gratification (or both), I don’t know.  What I do know is true leadership, as Stephen Covey defines it, seeks first to understand, then to be understood.  The focus is not on yourself, but on helping someone else.  These seven questions might help you become aware of some poor leadership traits you’ve developed.  Remember, awareness is half the battle in making positive changes in your life.  I welcome your comments!

• Peace of mind
• Love
• A sense of security
• Fear of loss
• Providing a good environment for their children 

Try asking feeling-oriented questions. 

All of these reasons are also feelings.  In the Southwestern introduction phase of the cycle of selling, try inserting a couple feeling-oriented questions: 

1. “Mrs. Jones, what is most important when it comes to your children and their education?”
2. “A lot of moms have told me that, by why is it important to you?” 

Ask these questions after you’ve established rapport.  To the first, prospects will likely give you “standard” answers—in the Southwestern example, she’ll probably say, “…to get a good job” or “…to help them prepare for a career.”  You want to dig deeper.  Question #2 does that.  In essence, you’re saying, “Thanks for the nice, generic answer, but really…can we talk?”  The first question opens up the topic; the follow up question goes deeper and is more personal.

If the prospect responds with a feeling level answer, you are getting somewhere.  “I didn’t finish school and it’s always bothered me.”  You have touched an emotional topic.  You can draw her out by asking, “Tell me more.”  If she responds with: “I’ve always felt the only thing that cost more than a good education is not having one.”  Hot button!  I would follow up with: “Wow, Mrs. Jones, that’s pretty profound—why do you feel that way?” Why questions help at this point. Get them talking and keep them talking.  NOTE: Learn to recognize an emotional topic when you hear it; a conversation can be emotional in nature yet be visibly unemotional, if that makes sense.  She will probably not burst into tears. 

If you have examples, please comment!  Remember, the more she discusses her situation, her children, her challenges, her feelings, the better.  With this new knowledge, you can better show how your product can help fill her needs—in the Southwestern example, her educational needs.

In order of conversational depth, here are four areas/topics people discuss: 

1.      Things

2.      People

3.      Ideas

4.      Feelings

Let’s explore these conversational levels. 

Things are easy: the weather, local events, what you do for a living—all these are “safe” conversation points.   Talking about people is slightly more volatile, especially if they are controversial, but everyone spends a lot of time talking about other people.   

Now defcon 3: Ideas.  Ideas are more complex still, since you can be venturing into emotional areas.  Remember asking a mom something innocuous, like: “So, Betty, how do you feel about the school system here?”  And Boom!  You get an earful, since you waded into the arena of ideas, specifically education. 

Finally, there is level 4—feelings.  Few people openly talk about their feelings, especially with a college student who is sitting in their living room.  BUT, it pays to address her emotions.  People buy for emotional reasons, and justify their decisions with logic.   

Why do people buy things?  Using Southwestern as an example, Mrs. Jones buys because she has 1) a loving obligation to provide for her children and 2) a sense of responsibility for her children and their lives.   These reasons are also feelings.  How you get her to tap into a “feeling level” will be discussed in the next blog.  Stay tuned and feel free to comment—it will help our other Southwestern salespeople!