A big part of my job at work is to do the sales end of the work that we do and today was a typical Friday where we are pretty busy because we do not do estimates on the weekends. I had a quote in New Canaan, Connecticut (we do air duct cleaning for heating and air conditioning) and walked into a beautiful castle where I was met by a wonderful older woman who thought she needed our services. I did my evaluation and found that her ducts were in mint condition and did not need our service (probably for another 5 years). I let her know of my findings and she was shocked and could not believe what I was telling her! So, I took her to the basement and opened up her system to show her with my camara system, to prove to her that I wasn't trying to talk myself or her out of a great job at her home. She asked me to come back upstairs and continued to show me two estimates that she had recieved in the past two weeks.In both estimates, the blower motors and return ducts (which we just visibly looked at and scoped with a camara system and found spotless) were heavily contaminated with dirt and debris.Thousands of dollars would be the cost of such a cleaning. We laughed and she thanked me for being such an honest business man. My point of this long, drawn out story is that when we are completely honest in everything that we do, we will never need to worry about being caught in a lie and your honesty will come back to you tenfold. Within the hour I recieved a phone call from her heating and air conditioning company thanking me for my honesty and two nieghbors want quotes for our services next week!
Being truthful with everyone in life will only be contagious and will help everyone involved. You are helping others and yourself at the same time and will gain a reputation that you are proud of! I took many classes in sales and marketing and the one thing that they lack is integrity, my advice to anyone in sales would be "to be successful just treat everyone as you would your family." That would be the class and the rest will fall into place. Have a fun weekend and give someone a hug today!!
Wow Michael. I am impressed with your complete honesty and totally agree with your concept of integrity.
ReplyDeleteA year or so ago I did Avon and was quite successful. If someone wanted to order something that I knew would be cheaper in the next campaign I would try to convince them to wait. Or if I could wrangle it, I would see that they got something for free by joining up their order with mine. Just a couple of little things that my customers appreciated and helped to form a trusting relationship between us.
Well done and enjoy your weekend.
Sensational post Michael.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're honest with the universe, the universe rewards you. It's so important to see people as people, not customers. Customers are numbers, people are valued.
Great thoughts over here -- good reminders :D
ReplyDelete