THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HAPPY FACE AND A SAD FACE IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE."Creating Extreme Loyalty: Speaking of Long-Term Motivation,"
By Barry Maher
What would it take to make you successful?
Stockbrokers base their success on making their clients money. Or maybe not. The following story is one of many similar tales I’ve heard from brokers over the years.
Back in the early seventies, when the market was dropping faster than Richard Nixon’s approval ratings, a stockbroker was trying to land a well-to-do contractor as a client. She wasn't having much luck with him over the phone so one afternoon she stopped by his office. It wasn't going any better until, searching for something to build a little rapport, she noticed a newspaper clipping mounted on a
plaque on one wall. Accompanying the story was a picture of a little girl in a ballet outfit.
"Is that your daughter?" she asked.
It was the last thing she got to say for ten minutes. The proud parent went on and on about the kid and her dancing. With apparently justifiable pride. His daughter
had even been selected by George Balanchine to perform in “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center one year. That seemed to thrill the contractor even more than it must have thrilled the girl.
A few months later, the broker heard that a world-renowned Russian ballet troop was coming to town. She bought two tickets. At $27.50 each, which back then, with the stock market busily tunneling its way to hell, was a lot of money. She sent the tickets to the contractor and his daughter along with a warm personal note.
"Whereupon," says the broker, "the guy turned into what I call the Rasputin Account: Nothing I did could kill it." Nothing. No matter how badly her recommendations performed, the contractor kept coming back for more.
As I said, any number of other financial consultants tell the same type of story. Which is why brokerages teach their people, "This business is not about making clients money; it's about building relationships." That's just not what they tell their clients, most of whom seem to believe they're more interested in making money than new friends.
Truth: Once people believe you care about them, they’ll look for reasons to do business with you. When they look, they usually find.
A Simple Trick, a Possible Bore and Some Basic Motivation
There is of course a trick to getting a person to believe you care about him or her. The trick to getting a person to believe you care, is to care.
Someone once said that quoting yourself is the hallmark of the true bore. That may well be true, but at the risk of confirming what you might already suspect, here it comes anyway. As Barry Maher(me)frequently says, "Concentrate on the What’s-in-it-for-them and the What’s-in-it-for-you will usually take care of itself.”
You can concentrate on the What’s-in-it-for-you and still be successful. There are business people out there who view business as war and the customer as an enemy that has to be overcome. They con the customer about who they are and how much they care, even if they tell the complete truth about their products and services.
Whether or not they have a problem with how that makes them feel about their jobs and their lives is their business. This isn’t about ethics. But the longer the
relationship with that customer goes on, the more likely it is that their true priorities are going to come out. And when that happens, no matter how well liked they might have been before, they’re immediately going to drop back down to the level of just another huckster.
Truth: It’s easier just to care than to pretend to care.
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Barry Maher speaks and trains on success, management, motivation, communication and sales. His book, Filling the Glass was cited as "[One of] The Seven Essential Popular Business Books" by Today's Librarian. Visit his website and sign up for his free newsletter at www.barrymaher.com or contact him at 760-962-9872.
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Great Article! This guy is a good story-teller, and I was all-ears. In fact I read "sales" articles often because ... I don't want to be duped, as the consumer. I want to stay up on the hype, and know what might be used against me, so to speak.
This is part of emotional intelligence. 90% of the sales articles and books you'll read will mention that it's emotion that motivates people to buy, which can be translated to "impulse." The underlying assumption is that if you can hook in their emotions, you can disconnect their "reason," and they will buy something they ordinarily might not.
Ergo, if you can't separate thinking from emotion, you're going to end up being "a Rasputin account." While the drift of this article is about sincerity (perhaps), what gives me chills is when it says: "'Whereupon,' says the broker, 'the guy turned into what I call the Rasputin Account: Nothing I did could kill it.' Nothing. No matter how badly her recommendations performed, the contractor kept coming back for more."
Nice for the contractor that someone noticed his love for his daughter's ballet. Not nice that he let his feelings about this sway his judgment. Why would you keep going back to a stock broker who loses you money? It's their job to make you money. This is not to be confused with "liking him," or "feeling sorry for him," or "thinking she's hot."
This is the neighbor who chooses a realtor who is "my friend and a good guy" instead of looking at the realtor's sales record. This is your friend who takes his cancer to the doctor "who's so good looking," or "has the pretty office," instead of the one with the credentials and reputation. This is you, when you hire the secretary in the black spandex mini instead of the one who types 80 wpm., with 15 years experience, but "looks like a dog." And this is your partner who wants a stock broker with "personality," and doesn't pay attention to the bottom line.
The sales person on the other end of "the Rasputin account" is crowing to his friends, "And I knew from that moment, she was mine." With this statement, they signal that the other person is no longer thinking, but has become "putty in
my hands."
This is also an example of those neuron loops we talk about in EQ. This contractor got it hooked up [buy stock <---> this stock broker], and each time he returned, he strengthened the "loop" and lessened the probability that he would be inclined not to stay in it.
Want to be someone's "Rasputin account"? I don't think so.
Know how to avoid it? Learn EQ.
And P.S. always read articles critically.
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DON'T EVER BE SOMEONE'S RASPUTIN ACCOUNT!!
