Why do you do what you do?

I thought he was the hired photographer but…

At the end of my seminar for a trade association last September, the guy who’d been taking photos all morning came over and introduced himself as Hersch Wellman. He said he was the region’s past president and wondered if I’d be willing to come and speak for its larger Eastern Zone meeting a few months later.

Toward the conclusion of our in-depth and engaging 30-minute chat, Hersch asked me a question I’d never heard posed quite this way. He asked, “So, what do you want people to get from your talks? What’s the message you’re hoping to impart?” In other words, “Why are you doing this?”

Seeing as the talk he’d just heard was on Leveraging Social Media for Business and I speak mainly on the topics of customer service, sales and leadership, I asked him to clarify which topic he was referring to. “All of them,” he replied. “What’s your ‘message’? What do you want people to get out of what you’re doing? … Do you need some time to think about it?”

By the time he was done asking, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks. [Read more…]

Why is Client Loyalty So Rare?

Why is Client Loyalty So Rare?

With Maggie’s car lease maturing, we decided to visit her local dealer. This would be her third new car from the same dealership and she has been a loyal patron of their service department as well. We met with a salesperson (whom we’ll call Jake) for nearly two hours. Jake was seemingly doing many things right. He was personable and attentive, used our names often, offered the test drive and injected occasional witty humor. While his product knowledge wasn’t up to par and he admitted to being with this dealer only five months (and to working for about “twenty other local car dealers”), his outgoing personality and aptitude for client service more than made up for his deficiencies.

Much to our surprise, as we’d only planned to look, we eventually ended up in the negotiation stage of the process. When Jake presented a new lease offer, he explained it as, “A flat deal – we’re not making any money and we’re not losing any money.”

I’ll refrain from getting too deep into the details of what ensued and simply say that within five short minutes Jake’s sales manager was saying, “We haven’t [Read more…]