Thank you Apple, for maintaining your stellar reputation in customer service. I knew you could do it! A couple of weeks ago I shared a rambling tale about how my local laundromat had taken Apple to the cleaners in the customer service department. While my laundromat’s sterling reputation remains intact, I’m happy to say that Apple has reversed their temporary shortfall, at least in my world. And in the process done something I’m always talking about regarding service.

I’ve always argued that simply “doing it right” is not actually the way to build the strongest customer engagement. Most of us EXPECT it to be done right; after all, if someone goes into business to do something, why would they do anything else? I learned this while in restaurant management years ago. Most happy customers say little more than hello and goodbye, and even when you leave comment cards on the table, the most detailed feedback comes from those who had a PROBLEM, not those who had a reliable and positive experience.

The pro-active and positive strategy obviously then is to try to make things EXCEPTIONAL for the customer. Kind of a no-brainer, but also a real challenge to maintain on a day-to-day basis. But if you’ve been in business awhile, you know that the most devoted customers you have are those who actually had a BAD experience, but then had it resolved. It’s a huge trust-builder, and the customer really develops emotional anchors around the experience that make them more like an ally than a customer. This isn’t mere speculation; the idea is backed up by research.

Apple seems to focus very well on that “exceptional” notion from the get-go, by creating remarkable, must-have products that people didn’t even know they needed. And their products are so darn reliable that you really don’t hear much about how they handle problem resolution, you just assume that the one-to-one “genius to customer” ratio you see at any random Apple Store just means it’s all being taken care of. Which is why my little problem was such a shocker, and why – after our little bump – Apple has a new long-term convert.

The short version of the story is that I was slowly becoming an Apple convert thanks to my beloved black MacBook, and just as I was preparing to make some major hardware purchases – which probably all would have been Apple products – I had a major snag with the most basic level of customer service surrounding a known issue with the battery in my MacBook. The service failure was simple in one way, but frankly epic in another. I already outlined it in the previous piece.

But Apple fixed it. How? Well, first I emailed the Apple Store team, Cc-ing Tim Cook, the CEO. I didn’t get a heartfelt response from Mr. Cook or anything, in fact I didn’t get ANYTHING for nearly a week. But then I got an email from the store’s team leader, asking for my phone number so he could call to address the problem. And then we spoke the next day. I joked about not hearing back from the CEO, but he quipped “well I sure did”, and from there he did a fantastic job of addressing my concerns in a genuine, non-patronizing fashion. Which happened to involve replacing the problem battery, and offering to do some quick diagnostics to make sure it hadn’t caused any damage.

Suddenly, this cold and cocky corporation that I loathed was HUMAN again, and I was happy as a clam. How hard was that? Not very, and Apple did it just right. So right that I’m preparing to make nearly ten grand in hardware purchases with them, purchases which could just as easily have gone to the less-expensive, and less prestigious competitor. And almost did. What do I mean by “doing it right”? They addressed the problem thoroughly and directly, with people-driven earnestness, and without making the frustrated customer jump through hoops.

How many times have you had the experience of a waitperson or clerk feeling compelled to make excuses, elaborate explanations, or perhaps even questioning your honesty when you have a simple, legitimate gripe? Probably a lot. What a lot of business owners overlook is the short term cost of making one customer happy vs making that customer unhappy. Maybe you’ve heard of Pete Blackshaw’s book Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Or maybe not, but those in the know realize that the one giveaway that seems like a losing move is actually the WINNINGEST move you can make. The damage that can be done by that one negative voice has a much more tremendous ripple effect than any positive voice, mostly because that angry person screams and rants, and often STAYS angry,

That’s where Apple came through; they acknowledged the problem, and FIXED it, with no fuss, and no platitudes. In this case giving me a free replacement battery for a device that was well out of warranty. A very generous gesture on one hand, but at the probable cost of about 60 bucks versus the outcome of losing thousands in revenue later, a sensible “investment”.

Apple gets the added benefit that I’m not the kind of person who only rants about negative stuff, I rant even MORE about positive stuff.

Thank you Apple, you rock.

UPDATE: Apple completely turned this experience around, and turned me into a new loyal customer. See the followup HERE

Last week, I happened to be perusing the book 212 Service: The 10 Rules for Creating a Service Culture, when I coincidentally had back-to-back service experiences that highlighted one of the most crucial aspects of service. Which aspect am I referring to? Concern. You can write books, attend seminars, create training programs, and share theories about customer service ’til the cows come home (which they will, if you show them enough concern) but if – at that magic brief moment of contact you don’t have a human or at least a mechanism in place that says “we care, and we’re going to try to help you”, you’re screwed. You may as well ignore customer service altogether. Let me use my recent personal experience to demonstrate what I mean.

My Gran Prix du Laundry

I use this local laundromat to do my laundry. It’s pricier than doing it at home, but way cheaper than sending it out. Being able to do six loads at once saves me about 8 hours every time I do laundry, so it’s well worth it. And I’m lucky, because the local laundromat I use – Mr. Stadium, for the record – is clean, well maintained, and HUGE. They also have wi-fi if I need to squeeze in some work! So this past week I’m jamming on my laundry routine (I have this down to a precise science, like a precision racing team) and about halfway through, I pull a black comforter out of the industrial size wash to move it to the dryer. I notice a slight soap smudge on one corner, but it easily wipes off, so I continue with my assembly-line-like process. As I start shifting all the other loads to the dryer, I go the dryer that the comforter is in to rotate it so that it will dry faster, and am a little flustered to find that it is entirely covered with a subtle soapy film. This could be catastrophic! My entire 75 minute Gran Prix du Laundry may come to a screeching halt as this unexpected problem throws me a yellow flag.

The Pit Stop

I have to point out that about 75% of my laundry is black, so I’m a little concerned. This little soap problem happens often, but is usually minor. But this is an expensive comforter, and it’s BIG. So I take it over to the counter, and the nice but reserved lady gives me a subtle “oh boy, here comes a complainer” kind of look. This worries me slightly, but I politely explain the problem. She looks it over, sighs, and says “lemme go get the manager”. A minute later the guy comes out. He doesn’t look excited; who knows, maybe he was in the back room trading commodities and my timing was bad. But he takes a look and says “Well, we can take care of this. Do you want to leave it and pick it up later? No charge?” He picks up on my “OH MY GOD NO CAN WE DO THIS NOW MY EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING” look and says “Or we can just take care of it right now”. A wave of relief passes over me. This is too easy. I say “that would be GREAT if we could do it now”, and without saying much he heads over to a machine to get to work on it. I go back to my routine, glancing over occasionally to see the guy diligently and methodically DOING MY LAUNDRY. How cool is that? While he’s waiting for the first cycle, he comes over to give me an update, and we strike up a conversation about the importance of customer service, and how it’s probably going to make a comeback in today’s tough economy. It’s easy to stay in business when times are good, even if your customer service is crap. But in tough times, it can make or break a business. He shares a story about how he took over a neglected laundromat in a nearby town that was taking in 200 dollars a day, and turned that into 1800 dollars a day. Without changing anything except the service attitude. I leave the laundromat 10 minutes behind schedule, and ecstatic. I will give this guy more advertising (for free!) in the next few months than he probably got all last year. Not that he seems to need it. But wow, what a great feeling to know there are still business people out there that genuinely care.

Apple Redefines the Word “Genius”

So the next day, I notice that my beloved black MacBook has an unusual problem. A few days earlier, I had noticed that it wasn’t resting evenly as I worked at a cafe, but didn’t think much of it, figuring it was the table. But as I headed out for a meeting now a couple of days later, I noticed that the battery cover on the bottom seemed to have popped slightly out of place. I made a little adjustment, and things were okay. Or so I thought. By the end of the day, the battery was bulging like my MacBook was with MacChild. Personally, I’d be ecstatic to have a Mac Mini, but I know this isn’t how they come into the world. So I do a little looking around on some Mac forums, and it turns out that this was a not entirely uncommon manufacturing flaw. People posting on the forums shared a wide variety of results, but there seems to be a random willingness on the part of “Genius Bar” employees to replace them at no cost. So I head to the local Apple store. They look a little busy when I arrive, but I see a clerk-to-customer ratio of 1:1 or better. There are easily ten “Geniuses” on the clock. So the greeter distractedly greets me as he mutters into his earpiece and taps into his iPad, simultaneously asking me what I need. The guy does a really excellent impression of stock broker engaged in trades while acting like he cares what you’re saying, but I figure they’re busy, so I don’t actually get put off by his detached indifference. Besides, this is THE APPLE STORE. I’ve heard nothing but great things about Apple support. Besides, a minute later, he waves me back into the store.

Genuine Genius Requires An Appointment

So the Genius Guy greets me and asks what the problem is. I pull out my MacBook while explaining the problem, and his eyes widen as he sees how badly the battery is bulging. We agree that it would be surprising if this weren’t doing damage to the internals. He steps away for a moment, and comes back with a boxed battery, without saying much, except that the battery costs $129.00. I point out that I’m not keen on dropping over 100 bucks on what I consider manufacturing flaw that probably warranted a recall that Apple never issued. He says that I have to make an appointment. I think it’s odd that I’m surrounded by Customer Service Geniuses but have to make an appointment, but whatever. I understand that maybe this is now going to be considered more like a repair issue. I ask him if that appointment might be today. He checks his iDevice, and says “I can get you in at 5pm”. That’s 18 minutes from the current time, which was the first ding in the service, from my point of view. He doesn’t suggest anything will actually be accomplished at that point, and I’m being told – while I’m ALREADY being helped – that I have to make an appointment 18 minutes away. I make the appointment, figuring I’ll run a quick errand.

Preliminary Dis-Appointment

I come back for my appointment at exactly 4:58pm. My stockbroker friend that’s doubling as a greeter for Apple doesn’t acknowledge me for three minutes. Yes, I’m timing things at this point. All he was doing was waiting to get a response on a clerk being ready to help the couple ahead of me, a couple to whom he had already spoken. He acknowledges my presence at 5:02. I wait eight minutes, and then attempt to let him know that I can’t wait any longer. He is so inattentive that I finally just walk away. Not fuming or anything, but definitely a bit miffed at the weird 30 minutes of my day that I spent doing pretty much nothing.

Email Novellas and Genuine Disappointment Contempt

So that evening, I decide to follow up in a simple way. A message from the “Apple Store Team” awaits me in my inbox. I elect to reply to it with a 900-word email, politely explaining my experience. In an attempt to reach someone I think might actually care, I Cc the message to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Can you guess what happened next? Nothing. I got an automated reply from “the team” with links to things that are supposed to solve all my problems. No surprise there. And I honestly don’t expect a busy CEO like Tim Cook to reply to my emails, right? WRONG. I find it stunning that a high-salary CEO that has literally thousands of employees in his service doesn’t have a team devoted to exactly this kind of message. I don’t expect Mr. Cook to coddle me, but really. Apple is one of the most profitable and cash-rich corporations in the world.

Apples, Oranges, and Ice Cream Sandwiches

So where does this leave me? It leaves me ready to reconsider close to ten thousand dollars in hardware purchases. As I pointed out in my lengthy email that sailed into the abyss, I’ve been comparing tablets, smartphones, and desktops, since most of my devices are at or near the end of their service cycles. And you know what? That DROID RAZR is looking pretty hot compared to the iPhone, and likewise with the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the ASUS Transformer Prime as alternatives to the iPad. And when I look at the cost and serviceability of non-Apple desktops, I start to remember the reason I’ve always resisted making the switch, no matter HOW much I love the Apple design asthetic and quality engineering.

It’s Not About Money At All

So what’s the lesson here? Customer service really boils down to emotion. The fact that the guy at the laundromat gave me five bucks worth of service and a clean comforter were secondary to the fact that he CARED. And that he showed it. And Apple? If I don’t hear something from somebody in the next few days, there’s a good chance they’ll lose ten grand of business over a hundred bucks and some robotic human interaction. If any one of the dozen fellows in that Apple Store had so much as ACTED like they cared, I might have buckled and ponied up for the battery at full price. But now I just may stop being a “switch” customer, AND demand my replacement battery. And frankly, every time I look at my MacBook now, I feel a subtle contempt. It also feels a lot heavier than it used to for some reason.

Recently I had to face some uncomfortable facts. As someone who is working hard on creating a Personal Transformation System with my pal Nick, part of my goal is to help others be organized, focused, happy, successful, and motivated. But ironically, I suddenly found myself disorganized, unfocused, unhappy, and not feeling especially successful. At least I was still motivated! But what had happened?

Being Organized – The Map is not the Road

One of the little dangers of having a lot of organizational tools is that if you’re not careful, you spend more time working on planning than actually DOING things. I’ve always been alert to this; I’ve seen people spend weeks setting up software like ACT! and then using it for nothing more than storing contacts. Or setting up QuickBooks, and using it primarily as an invoice generator. Or loading up their smartphone with email functionality, and then never being able to find a message or attachment on their phone OR their computer.

Another thing you may run into once you do a lot of elaborate planning is that you probably have lots of deadlines – some of which affect each other, some of which don’t relate to others at all! Your head can quickly become a spaghetti bowl of overlapping timelines and goals, and leave you feeling more disorganized and plan-less than if you had never organized a plan! It’s like driving down the freeway with a bunch of maps on your lap, but not knowing what town you’re in.

Scope Creep and Product vs. Process – The Destination is not the Road Either!

If you have a “one widget business”, I envy you. Sometimes I’m tempted to chuck all my activities, and open a chocolate chip cookie shop. I know there’s a demand, I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie, and what could be more fun than baking cookies all day! Plus, you could make employee performance jokes with your staff constantly, like “whaddya want, a COOKIE?” But alas, I am gifted/cursed with a brain that explodes with pretty decent ideas on a regular basis, and my real challenge is filtering things down to the achievable ones and focusing on them.

Most of what I’m about to say would be different if my ventures were well-capitalized, but like many of us, my business is about 80% sweat equity at the moment. So the problem arises when I take one of my product ideas and walk it through the logical steps. I’m going to reference some basic items here that you may have to work through to roll out a product. They may overlap, they may not ALL be necessary as discrete steps, but they all are necessary in ONE way or another. And the list is by no means all-inclusive:

Creating the Product:

Ideation & Conceptualization
Prototyping/Designing/Outlining
Sourcing Services/Materials
Package Design
Setting up production

Taking it to Market:

Identifying place in market
Marketing
Sales
Advertising

Okay, that’s already a lot of stuff. I’m lucky in a way, in that I have the skills and knowledge to execute almost all of those tasks. But that can also quickly devour me. Walking a single product or service through this is not rocket science, it’s just work and persistence. But what if it’s necessary to create two or three products at the same time? Or if – as is often the case these days – the product is sort of a marketing piece in itself, and is interdependent with other products, services, or marketing strategies that have to be rolled out at the same time? Like social media, websites, seminars, and an actual retail product? Where do the product and business end, and the marketing and sales begin?

This is where I personally got derailed recently; as well as trying to wrap up some other projects, I was creating a book with Nick. After completing the writing and distribution arrangements for the book, we got so focused on marketing the thing that we kind of forgot that it wasn’t our magnum opus, or even a “core product”. It was originally meant to be a vehicle for building out our production and sales channels, and creating a standard product development process. In this case for a book. It should be simple – write the book, find a way to publish and distribute it (we did, it’s on Amazon now), and then do some promotion. But several things then came into play. They can be summarized with a just a few concepts:

Robot-Brained Marketing Strategies

Be thorough, but use some common sense or simple analysis before you roll out that multi-platform marketing campaign! Just because we have hundreds of marketing channels at our disposal doesn’t mean we have to utilize them ALL. There’s a strong tendency at present to put a lot of effort into “social”, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. Facebook in particular is a possible paper tiger and time-sink rolled into one. Yes, there are a HALF BILLION USERS. But how can you really connect? Sharing in your own network? Maybe, but that’s likely to come across as spam. Advertising? Sure. So you place an ad. It better have lots of cha though, or you’re wasting your time. And assuming you DO get users to click, where do you take them? To a page to buy a product? Why would they do THAT? Is it remarkably unique? Is it REALLY CHEAP? Is there some other reward? I’m focusing on Facebook here, because it’s still so popular right now, but I could do the same with any channel that one might think is of value as a marketing tool. CHOOSE YOUR CHANNELS INTELLIGENTLY.

There are 168 Hours in a Week

I learned that with my very first business, a small 24/7 telecom company. Most people sleep at least 56 of those hours. That leaves 116. Subtract about 21 hours for eating-related activities, and you have 91 left. If all you want to do with your life is eat, sleep, and work (like me, apparently) then you’re all set. But seriously. When do you plan to execute all these crazy marketing ideas? Assuming you already have a product, how long does it take to create a good campaign, with decent images and copy? How long does it take to actually place the ads? If the marketing ideas are meant to generate user-engagement, how much of that can be fully automated? Do you have time for the parts that can’t if you get a good conversion rate? Have you scripted all the nice responses for your registration thank you emails? After you’ve laid out all these plans and executed them, ask yourself – could you have sold more copies of your book by standing on a street corner for the same amount of time? BE REAL ABOUT TIME AND USE IT WELL.

Are You Happy?

Oh yeah. Isn’t that why we started a business in the first place? Of course, there’s that whole “making money” thing, but let’s face it. Unless you’re fueling a business with outside capital (an entirely different game) you’d probably make a lot more money with a high-paying job than by starting your own business. So you might as well be ENJOYING things, right? And that, to me, is the number one priority. It’s just that my passion for keeping things moving, doing things in the smartest way possible, and being as thorough as possible can all work at cross purposes. If you ever find yourself in the same boat, step back and ask yourself some reasonable questions:

Am I doing too many things at once?
If so, thin things out, and extend deadlines if necessary. Give things the attention they deserve.

Who made these deadlines, anyway?
Oh yeah. That was me. And I’m a FREAK. Let’s just revise those a bit when needed!

Is this task even in the right bucket?
Don’t confuse advertising with marketing, or marketing with sales, even though they overlap.
Don’t confuse website development with product development. Unless of course the website IS the product.

Am I thinking like a businessperson?
This gets me a LOT. I love some of the creative work I do so much that I often forget that time equals money.

Can I outsource this?
Just because you have the skills to do something doesn’t mean you’re the best person to do it.
Could someone do it just as well, and a lot faster?
Can you AFFORD to outsource it? If you’re not prepared to pay to have it done, ponder its value in the first place.

Are you enjoying your work?
Because no-one is MAKING you do it.
Take a break and hit a lot of reset buttons if you need to.
Get back to the things that launched you on the journey in the first place.

When you find the right path, you’ll know it, because success, happiness, and wealth will simply be happening.

We were applying our usual rigorous process to organizing a sales strategy, including the basics like defining areas to rep, basic terms, and even some inventive ideas for point of sale displays. Somewhere in the midst of researching items to create the point of sale displays, it hit me. Were we overdoing it? Were we trying to do it TOO well, when we didn’t really have the resources? Were our great ideas simply getting in the way of doing what we needed to do in a simpler fashion?

So that’s one of my goals for the near future. To develop a system for assessing the question of “do it now, or do it right?” This is a peculiar area, because while the problem of perfectionism getting in the way of results is familiar, and although I find it easy to identify this happening with others, I don’t feel like I have a good system for assessing this in my own work.

Any ideas?

It’s pretty amusing how the “spare the rod, spoil the child” debate about child-rearing seems to continue well into our adult lives when we find ourselves in the position of either “parenting” or “being parented” in the workplace. Especially in sales. I personally haven’t worked directly in sales very much; my work has usually been more related to marketing, but I often find myself working closely with sales people or departments. Two things make me a horrible salesperson. One is that I refuse to sell things I don’t believe in. This is in itself not a bad thing, but someone like me is likely to kill a lot of sales that would otherwise happen with an especially inquisitive customer. When selling, I’m very prone to reaching a point where I want to yell at the buyer “How DARE you doubt me. Why the hell would I be selling it if it weren’t worth buying?!?” Not very conducive to selling, as you might imagine. The other thing is that when working in marketing, I’m merely thinking of ways to make people aware of a product. I’m not literally telling them to buy it. Things change for me when it comes down to someone letting go of their hard-earned money. I worry WAY to much about whether they’re doing the right thing with it. We’ve discussed integrity here before, and this is one scenario where “too much” integrity might not be benefitting anyone.

So as I said, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to observe sales methods, and I’ve put a lot of energy into at least studying them. This year though, something really struck me. I’ve been calling it the “Tasers or Candy” dilemma. Because I do contract work, and am not directly employed by anyone, I get to see things from a different angle than both employees and their bosses. And I also get to work in quite a variety of settings. Recently I was working with two different projects, one with a global cosmetics firm which shall remain nameless, and one with a group of what I’m going to call “ethnic businessmen” who are variously of Arab, Central European, or Mediterranean descent. They joke about their ethnicity all the time, and if this makes you squeamish, maybe you better go away now. I’m about as “color blind” as people get, but the simple fact is that different cultures bring different approaches to doing business, and if you can’t learn the reality of this, you may bungle opportunities that otherwise could be very successful if you didn’t have your politically correct undies in a bunch.

So this whole Tasers vs Candy theme began one day a few months ago when – within a two hour period – I had to work directly with the global cosmetics firm (hereafter referred to as “GCF”) and the “ethnic businessmen” (hereafter referred to as “EBM”) regarding sales strategies heading into the holidays. First, let’s talk about the EBM strategy. The interesting thing about the core of the EBM strategy is that to the extent that there IS one, it’s largely based on the salesperson understanding the high expectations placed on them, even though they may not be precisely defined. There are no incentives offered beyond straight commissions, but if the salesperson does well and sticks around long enough, they learn that there ARE in fact incentives – in the form of unexpected bonuses or revenue sharing -  which are often far better than what one might expect or be offered in typical corporate American environments. So there’s no candy promised. On the other hand, the Taser is always evident, with lots of profanity tossed around, and the potential for getting yelled at. I call this Poinephobic Performance Maintenance. It’s based largely on the fear of being punished, and the employees in question often resemble PTSD sufferers. But in the big picture, they more closely resemble family members with a verbally abusive parent, because the boss actually DOES really care about them, and much like the “honeymooning” of abusive relationships, the rewards are positive in direct proportion to all the apparent hostility dished out. So. In the Tasers and Candy framework, this method is almost all Taser, and no Candy.

Where’s My Candy?

So this brings us to the more familiar “gimme candy” method. A surprising amount of the sales motivation strategies I see in play are based almost ENTIRELY on getting candy for being good, and NOT getting any if you’re NOT good. It’s often based on goals for a specific period of time, and is literally as simple as “If you sell x amount by x date, you will receive x“, or “you will receive x percentage unless you manage to sell up to x amount, in which case we will give also you the fixed amount of x dollars“. The problems with these basic schemes are manifold, in my opinion. The GCF I referenced above uses these simple models, which – in the real world – fall flat on their face for several reasons. The first is poor training and communication. At one location I worked with, the clerks that could be making commissions were paid about ten dollars an hour if they sold NOTHING. They are rarely terminated for poor sales performance, as long as they dress according to code, and perform all their basic tasks at the counter. This is often called “clerking it”, with a heavy negative implied meaning.

Visualizing the Candy

The approach I used in this situation to motivate the sales people was to pull them aside, and ask them if they understood their commission structure. They would say “sure, I get 10% of all sales and a bonus at x dollars for the month“. Then I would ask how much they made an hour. They’d say “ten dollars, before taxes“, and I’d say “how do you figure?“, to which they’d reply “well, it’s what ALL of us get paid to start, right?” Then I’d slide a thousand dollars worth of cosmetics in front of them. This was easy, because it’s very expensive stuff. Then I’d ask “If we didn’t pay you an hourly, how many of these things would you have to sell in an hour to make double your current hourly?“, and it would start to dawn on them that if they only made a point of selling two facial creams every hour, they’d be raking in twenty bucks just on the commission. We’d then make little charts showing them how it was almost impossible to NOT be taking home thirty bucks an hour, if they were even doing a half-assed job of selling.

Non-continuous Assessment & Thievin’ Dogs

There are other problems that are easily recognized, if you just examine things in action a bit. This probably happens far too little in sales management, where sales managers Taser the salespeople and send them into the wild with promises of candy when they come back with results. One is that many sales goals have great rewards for reaching them, but no incremental incentives. I actually have overheard salespeople say “well, by Tuesday I’ll know if I can make this month’s goal, and if things aren’t looking good, I’m not gonna sweat it for the rest of the month – I know my numbers from the last few years and I’m not gonna waste all that energy if I’m not gonna make the bonus” Which is INSANE if you think about it. The incentive structure effectively acts instead as a DE-incentive. Another incredibly dumb strategy is giving products that the person is selling as the incentive. Sure, make a person you’re only paying 10 bucks an hour sell hundred dollar items all day, and then reward them with one of the hundred dollar items. This is not only a mildly insulting incentive regardless of the item’s retail value, I would argue that the average company really hates to look honestly at the pilfering that goes on, and when they DO give it a hard look, they respond in the wrong way. They institute harsh policies and create a paranoid environment, rather than looking at how the original environment and policies led to hiring people that ended up feeling comfortable stealing from them. The point being that in any case, there’s a reasonable chance the employee has already given THEMSELVES the “bonus”.

So What’ll It Be, Tasers, Or Candy?

So I’ve gone all over the map here to talk about a simple question, which is: what is a good fundamental approach to motivating sales people? I think a talented and successful sales force is much more the exception than the rule. And having sat in on plenty of sales team meetings in wide variety of contexts, I feel confident in saying that the most common problem is the simple-minded and polarized approaches mentioned here: Sell a lot, and you get some candy, don’t sell a lot and you get tasered. The candy approach is more familiar in less aggressive and competitive environments like retail, and the taser approach is more common in high-pressure, high-stakes environments like car sales, commercial real estate, financial services, high-volume tech industry sales, or any position where wholesale sales reps are dealing with entire districts or regions of retailers. One classic example of just how reasonable the “taser” metaphor actually is would be the movie Suckers. I personally know three auto dealership sales managers who make watching this film mandatory for new hires. Why? In spite of the fact that the film is often referred to as a “low rent Glengarry Glen Ross”, the sales meetings portrayed in the film – which are meant to motivate the staff to be ruthless and manipulative in ways that only a car salesman could be – are based on real-world auto sales tricks that only real-world car salesman are familiar with. It’s actually a decent training film for this kind of aggressive and deceptive sales environment, and the minor gratuitious nudity and b-movie heist plot keep the new hire engaged enough to watch the whole thing.

Let’s Put Down Our Weapons & Try Some Peace Talks

So I’ve actually had a lot of luck the last few months with the Taser or Candy question, because framing things in a humorous fashion like this opens up the dialog from both ends. Both the managers and the managed can talk more freely about the core concepts in question when using such absurd reference points. And what happens then? Well, communication. And once the floggers and the floggees are allowed to discuss what’s REALLY important, everyone suddenly remembers it’s the CUSTOMER that’s most important, for one thing. They’re also more likely to try to understand what’s really going on, instead of resenting the demands sent down from some distant VP of sales who – sadly – really has NO IDEA what is going on beyond their office and the documents they shuffle around. In one instance in which I helped the staff look at what they were selling and what an incredible opportunity they had right in front of them, they were suddenly able to connect the crazy numbers sent down from on high with an hourly activity. And you know what happened? Sales at that location increased FORTY PERCENT in sixty days. Yes, I said 40%. I said it ALL IN CAPS and repeated it, because I didn’t want you to think it was a typo.

So the next time you feel like whipping out the cattle prod or throwing bribes around the staff, why not try a little direct communication. I know it sounds archaic and naiive, but you have to admit that a 40% increase in sales is a lot more shocking than a taser could EVER be. And we were still offering the exact same amount of candy, we just did a better job of describing how delicious it was.