Love Is Tough and Gutsy

This is my last installment using Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s book “Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success” as a spring board. I whole heartedly recommend buying the book. It’s available in the Servant Selling Bookstore and usually good in stock at your local Borders, Barnes and Noble, or Books-A-Million.

Genuine love does have a tough side. The Freibergs tell about the toughness of Southwest founder Herb Kelleher and current President Colleen Barret. The two concur on real love when they say, “I will tell you what you need to know to become a bigger, more authentic person because I want you to succeed in life. At this time I’m willing to trade popularity for the truth because my love for you demands that I tell you the truth.”

If you are a sales manager, this tough side of love may entail telling a direct report where and how they need to get better. It may mean sharing with them how a behavior is unacceptable. It may even mean terminating the employment relationship.

As a sales representative from the Servant Selling mold, it may mean refusing to sell a customer something that is genuinely not in their best interest. During the 1980’s I was self employed as a wall covering contractor installing wood veneer, fabric, paper, and vinyl on walls and other surfaces in homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, apartments, and the like. Once I was called out to look at a project that another installer was in the middle of screwing up royally. I could have told the general contractor that the installer was at fault and taken over the job. Instead I delivered a message that very few installers were willing to deliver. I explained that the selected paper was extraordinarily difficult and that because a company sold a paper didn’t mean that it was fit to be installed. I went on to educate him about wall preparation. I showed him how to use a florescent light wand to check the wall for a level of smoothness that wouldn’t show flaws from underneath the wall covering. It wasn’t exactly the message he wanted to hear because he wanted someone to just come in and take over the current job and finish it right. I recommended starting over with a new material and correct wall preparation. I told the truth and in that sense was loving. I didn’t get that project, but he called back several months later and I became his primary installer until I retired from the business.

In outside selling, love must sometimes be extremely tough. Your job is to go out and expose a potential customer to a new solution that may help them, their family, or organization. You will certainly endure coldness if not outright rudeness on occasion. If you represent a life insurance product that may mean having an uncomfortable conversation with your potential client about the fact of their eventual impending death. Whatever you represent, it may mean coming back with a different approach after you have been told no on the previous one. Some of my best customers were ones that had told me they would never do business with our company or even our industry. That requires tough love, to keep coming back. Of course it also requires sensitivity and creativity to do it in a way that isn’t so offensive that the customer moves even further from your solution.