COLLAPSE -- WE SHOULDN'T BE SURPRISED BY THE SHAPE WE'RE IN!

COLLAPSE – WE SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED BY THE SHAPE WE’RE IN!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© September 24, 2008

“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882), American poet and essayist

Early in 1968 before going to South Africa, I was invited by my company to speak in San Francisco at a Regional Meeting.

In the course of that visit, I went to Golden Gate State Park, and Haight Asbury.

Here I was young, successful, working close to seven days a week traveling across the United States, Europe and South America, and I come across literally scores of young people doing absolutely nothing, wearing tie-dyed clothes hair down to their waists -- men as well as women -- smoking something that smelled like burnt rope, a smell I had never encountered before.

If this were not remarkable enough, my cab driver asked me, "Do you want me to take you to a college sex club, cab fare is free if you do." I answered, "What in the world for?" He tossed his hands in the air, "Had to ask."

My audience at the Regional Meeting was people like myself, young and energetic, but who couldn't grasp what I was saying.

You see they wanted to know why I had been so successful, what my formula was. They wanted a simple step process to reach my numbers, when all I could tell them was this, "Once I realized the problem was not the buyer but the seller, my sensors exploded and I found I could read buyers where they were that moment, not before or after, but right then. That point forward we were on the same side of the desk working together."

I also told them that I took copious notes after each call, which I later typed with schematic diagrams of the plants, operating systems, and offices as I remembered them, and what they told me about the buyer and his operations. If there were handout booklets of the company history in the lobby, I read them and annotated them with my notes.

In the calm of my study or motel room, looking at these notes and memos, I would profile the person and the place for developing a strategy. I would use this on my next call with a major and minor goal of that call. I did this religiously despite how hectic my schedule might be. I told them it was a practice that got me a Phi Beta Kappa key in college, and a nice income now.

I had not read selling book, knew little or nothing about psychology, but was inclined to be introspective and to notice things that others were apparently inclined to miss.

I told the group that the buyer is crying out in so many ways to tell the seller precisely where he is and how he is and why he is that way. All the buyer wants is a sympathetic and understanding audience, which you, the seller can be. And just possibly, you may have what he needs but not necessarily what he wants.

The selling comes in persuading him to want what he needs. The barrier to this penetration is the difference between his expectations and what is possible; between his pocketbook and the relative costs, in other words, between needs and wants.

When I got through, they complained almost in unison, "That sounds complicated," when it was the antithesis of complexity. It might be hard work at first, I said, but the dividends are real. They weren’t convinced. They wanted a “how to” approach when I am not a “how to” man.

What I was saying and what they were unprepared to grasp is:

(1) It is more important to listen than to talk.
(2) It is more important to sell what the buyer needs and can afford than to sell the buyer what he is willing to buy but does not need and cannot afford.

If you sell “need,” it will augur better for the buyer and seller in the long run.

They thought it heresy when I admitted what they had heard was true, that is, that I had recommended a competitor’s system to ours because it was a better fit. "We don't cooperate with competitors," they almost shouted, "what does the word competition mean to you, anyway?"

“It means to me,” I said, “to serve the customer.” I left it at that as I knew there was no point in mentioning “at all cost.”

Nor did I mention what I wrote about in one of my books.

My company did not make feeding equipment except very primitive slug by-pass feeders. This was neither economical nor effective chemical treatment. I found a positive displacement pump manufacturer whose pumping equipment was the best in the industry, and also the most expensive. My hardest selling job was persuading the buyers to buy these pumps when we gave ours away free. All my customers eventually had these pumps.

One night I got a call in my home, and the pump seller asked, "What split do you expect from my commissions on these pump sales? You've sold more pumps for me this month than I have myself."

I answered, "I just want the pumps to keep working as effectively as they have," and hung up. I kept selling the pumps and never heard from him again.

Many of you weren't born by 1968, but I've felt that in that particular year things started to unravel.

Young people were full of themselves and used the Vietnam War to justify being irresponsible. Many of these rebels such as Abbie Hoffman (1936 - 1989) are now long dead having burned the candle at both ends.

Subsequent generations have followed their lead as the Hippies, Yuppies, Generation X and Y, and the "Me" generation.

When they have had no other choice but to grow up, at least a little, they didn't find it necessary to accompany it with some ethics and emotional maturity.

We find them today in jobs in real estate, Wall Street, and other occupations where "they were entitled," and used scams and questionable practices selling homes, insurance, real estate and credit cards, cooking the books, and of course many of them eventually found their way unto Mahogany Row, and into brokerage houses, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and elected office as well as jobs in industry and commerce, education and the church to continue their prestidigitation.

What do you think fueled the electronic age -- people who didn’t want to work but preferred messing around making electronic toys? Eric Hoffer correctly noted that all things start first with playthings, and then they become forms of work, but not the other way around.

So, we should not be surprised at all with the mess we are in.

JRF