Honesty and sales should be universal!

(This is a posting from October 2009 and rings even more true for todays slow growing economic times.)

A big part of my job 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 seem to lack (not all) is integrity, my advice to anyone in sales would be "to be successful just treat everyone as you would your family not a customer." That would be the class and the rest will fall into place. Have a fun weekend and give someone a hug today!!

DAILY TRIALS

Even though we may try to plan all things and arrange everything with extreme care, we will still have a lot of opportunities to exercise the virtue of patience. We can’t eliminate the unexpected or the unavoidable. In most cases our best weapon is our intelligent patience with both ourselves as with others. We will always have daily trials that at times will even cause bodily pains. At other times it may be a simple annoyance, disappointment, or cause anxiety. We would like to be free of these trials, but that is impossible. Patience and understanding are the keys to dealing with such circumstances, the key to peace and happiness is to know that our reactions should never be surprised, resentful, or saddened when things don’t go our way. We should try to gain more control of the situations and learning to deal with the trials will teach us the most valuable lessons in this life!

Our lives will have trials every day. We are always being tested. If we live well, our acts will merit a rewarding life. But the fact is that we will face the possibilities of success or failure. In either case, the outcome of these trials is determined by our own free choice! I was told a few days ago that our sub-conscience mind will save what we write and put our writings into action quicker than if we were to simply imagine or say them aloud. This may be the case but, I feel our words that we speak to each other have much more power to change our lives. I have felt more intense pains from slaps to the face from words spoken to me than I have ever felt from a hand. We need to be careful of what we say to each other in heated moments of boiled over situations. There are no accidents. There is the law of cause and effect in every situation. Our thoughts create our words and our words create the reactions and therefore the results.

My advice for salespeople...

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!!