Kahle Way B2B Sales Blog

The latest unemployment numbers were just released, and they are depressing. National unemployment is over ten percent and my home state of Michigan leads the pack with official unemployment over 15 percent. And, everyone knows that the government numbers reflect the tightest definition of unemployment and that real unemployment is significantly greater than the government’s numbers.

All this in spite of the new administration’s promises to create three million jobs by spending far more than it had, and accumulating government debt that is multiply larger than any previous administration. We may now be the most in-debt country in the history of mankind. 

I see the impact on my clients. In many businesses, sales forces have shrunk from the size they formerly were, personal incomes are down, and principals and executives are afraid to spend money on their future.

Clearly, something isn’t working.

It’s time to take a closer look at the causes of our current malaise, and see if we can’t uncover some lessons that will help us with our personal situation.

Let’s review how we got here. As everyone knows, the direct cause of the recession was the housing bubble and the trillions of dollars of bad debt that developed during the inflation of that bubble. When it all crashed, the debts turned bad, money disappeared. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, and countless businesses have contracted.
The most direct, observable cause of the recession was, then, the housing bubble and the bad mortgages that fueled it. 

And that housing bubble was composed of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who bought houses they couldn’t afford, with mortgages sold to them by commissioned mortgage brokers who were more motivated by the commission than by the solidity of the deal.

But, to focus on that is to look only at the most superficial aspect of the problem – the behavior that caused the problem. It’s like searching for mushrooms in the middle of the forest. The mushroom that you see is just the most superficial expression of the much larger fungus that lives beneath the soil. So, too, the behavior that caused the problem was just the most superficial expression of something far larger that lies beneath the surface. Let’s look underneath the surface, below the behavior, to the emotions, attitudes and beliefs that caused that behavior.

Underlying the bad behavior was an attitude – an attitude that said we were entitled to live beyond our means, to spend more than we had, to accumulate things. The cost of all this? Our integrity. Every mortgage broker who pushed through a spurious deal to make the commission chipped away at our national storehouse of integrity. So did every home buyer who falsified an application and moved into a home he knew he couldn’t afford. So did every congressperson who lobbied the lending agencies to ignore time-tested principles and loan to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back. On and on it goes, with blame enough for countless people, all motivated by the pursuit of things we couldn’t afford.

There’s a word for that: Greed. The Bible has an additional word for it: the spirit of Mammon. That’s the unhealthy pursuit of wealth, power and riches.

Why are we in this recession? Because of a national epidemic of greed. As a nation, we allowed greed to diminish our national store of integrity.

The solution (borrowing trillions of dollars and spending it) is not a solution, but rather, a triple dose of the prescription that got us into this. Instead of just hundreds of thousands of individuals living beyond their means and spending money they don’t have, we’re going to fix that by institutionalizing it. Now, the nation as a whole is living beyond its means and spending more than it has.

No wonder the economy is so sluggish. More of a bad thing doesn’t magically turn into a good thing.

So what does this have to do with you, your job and your business? It’s time we examined our motivations and refocused on those deeper issues that ultimately impact everything we do. Ultimately, our success and prosperity are a function of our character. Character counts. 

If we want to return to a time of prosperity, let’s do it by becoming better people. Let’s work on building integrity into our business dealings and providing real service and value to our customers. 

Let’s live within our means, and not expect the government to transfer the wealth in this nation to our short term benefit. Let’s earn what we get, and not expect anyone to give us anything for nothing.

Integrity trumps the acquisition of more things. Ultimately, the measure of our existence is more deeply impacted by our characters than the things we accumulate. There is nothing wrong with prosperity, as long as it doesn’t come at the cost of our character. 

As individuals, let’s decide to work hard for our employers, to deal with integrity, to be sensitive to the needs of our customers, and to live within our means.

As leaders and business owners, let’s establish a culture of integrity and fair value, and let’s live within our means.

Let’s get back to being people and businesses motivated by a desire to serve, and defined by sound character. When hundreds of thousands of people turn from greed and living beyond their means to focusing on integrity and sound character, we will build a solid foundation for a prosperous economy. ###

By Dave Kahle

I still remember the worst sales call I ever made. More than just remember it, I react to the memory. I get a queasy feeling in my stomach every time I think about it. It wasn’t just a bad sales call, it was a humiliating, embarrassing event. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

That’s the point. There is something about adversity that has the power to linger forever in our memories, shaping our character and molding our behavior for the rest of our life.

Adversity can take countless forms. It can be a gut-wrenching incident, like my worst sales call, or more poignantly, something like an auto accident or the loss of a loved one. I’ve had them all. Or, it can be a period of financial distress – yes, I’ve had that too, a couple of times. Or, it can be a time of health problems, and relationship conflicts. Yep, you guessed it. I’ve lived through both of those situations as well.

Regardless, the Encarta Dictionary defines adversity this way:

1. misfortune (hardship and suffering)
2. adverse happening (an extremely unfavorable experience or event)

One of the things that these experiences have in common is their impact on us – they create an intense, negative emotional response. We become angry, embarrassed, humiliated, depressed, and hopeless. Adversity produces a grab-bag of bad feelings. It’s not fun. As I reflect on my personal experiences, I have to acknowledge that the events mentioned above were some of the worst hours, days, and months of my life. I never want to go through any of them again.

But it is that intensity of emotional response that contains the seeds that can bloom into a sounder character, if we respond appropriately. We’ve all heard the expression, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Sort of true, but not exactly. That common expression would be more accurate if we tacked on the phrase, “if we let it.” The real truth is: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, if we let it.”

“If we let it,” is the secret. There’s no guarantee that, by itself, without our active and appropriate response, adversity will make us stronger. I’ve met, and I’m sure you have too, many people who allowed adversity to turn them into bitter or defeated individuals. To them, life is a burden, the world is a dangerous place, and they can’t do much about it. It’s easy, and tempting, to allow adversity to develop a “victim mentality” in us.

In order to prevent that from happening, in order to grow “stronger,” we must learn from those painful experiences. And, in learning, we create habits that emerge as character traits, and thus we become better and more capable people.

My humiliating sales call, for example, taught me a simple lesson that has stuck with me for decades and has flowered into a broader character trait. “Never speak badly about the competition” was the lesson. I like to think that “Respect for all my competitors” is the broader character trait. The periods of financial hardship have developed an empathy in me for those in similar circumstances, and a very conservative financial perspective. The death of my daughter is somehow pushing up buds of greater patience, empathy and tolerance in my character.

While I never want to go through any of these things again, I am probably a better person because of them — and because of my response to them.

Now, I understand that the current state of the economy is dousing my readers with a fire hose of adversity. I wish I could make it go away. If only I could turn off the valve.

I do my best to help you weather the storm by the tips and practices expressed in this Ezine, on the blog, and in the products and presentations described on my website. In the long run, however, it is what you do with your response to adversity that will make all the difference.

Here are a couple of practical suggestions to help you deal with your adversity:

• Take the high road.

Don’t allow the circumstances to drag you down, to compromise your values, or impinge on your relationships. I had a renter, for example, in a house that we own. He was laid off from his job. Instead of being honest about it, he made up stories, told lies, and eventually stuck me with two months unpaid rent and damages to the house. While I have to deal with the financial damages, he has a significantly diminished character. Because he took the low road, he’s less of a man today than he was before.

Don’t give into the temptation to take ethical short-cuts or to abandon your responsibilities. Take the high road.

• Learn from it.

At some point, you’ll have an opportunity to look on your adverse circumstances somewhat objectively. That’s when you’ll want to ask yourself this question: “What can I learn from this?” Then follow up with a more pointed version of this question, “What can I do differently, as a result of what I’ve learned?”

The answer to “What can I learn from my embarrassing sales call” was, “Customers don’t like to hear you talk badly about a competing product or person.” That would be academic information if I didn’t follow up with the second question: “What can I do differently, as a result of what I’ve learned?” The answer to that question was, “Never speak badly about a competitor.”

The emphasis must eventually rest on us and our response. If we don’t change anything we do, believe, or think, then we will have learned nothing.

Eventually we must change what we do. That’s the key to growing from adversity. As long as we focus on other people or our circumstances, we’ll be forever locked in a victim mentality. Remember, “if we let it.”

Our Creator put us on this earth to grow, develop and become more like Him. Adversity is the fertilizer that stimulates that growth, if we let it.

At some point, this will pass. At that point, the real measure of this set of circumstances will be the impact on your character.

By: Dave Kahle

As a sales educator and consultant, my work has consisted of bringing about positive change in sales organizations, sales managers and sales people.

While my content has always been about sales in one way or another, my actual work itself has always been to create change.

So, I’ve made “creating change” a focus of study for at least three decades. Over that period of time, I have assembled a set of principles and practices that I use to facilitate change in organizations and people.

I have, of course, recognized that, as an outside force, I only have a limited ability to help a person change. Take, for example, the best practice of “thoroughly preparing for a sales call.” I can share with them why that practice is a good idea, I can lead them to see what it would mean to them, and I can show them exactly how to do it, but I can’t make them change. Ultimately, the desire to change has to come from within the person.

And that is the focus of this post.

If you’re not a trainer, why would you be interested?  Because, as a serious professional, you share the need to change and improve and grow – to continually improve your performance and develop more completely as a human being. If you are a serious professional, there should be a question which continuously pops up in your mind. And that is, “How can I change and improve myself so I can continue to provide for my family and impact my workplace?”

But I’m not interested in superficial answers, I’m interested in exploring the deeper, let’s call them “spiritual”, answers. Let me explain.

This is a diagram from my book,

Take Your Sales Performance Up-a-Notch.
It is one way of looking at human behavior – our behavior.

Think of this as a diagram of one way to look at each of us. Some of you are familiar with my onion analogy. Imagine this diagram is a pie-shaped slice of an onion. There are layers and layers of substance to the onion, from the thin and crinkly skin at the surface, to the strongly pungent core.

Each of us is like that. We have layers and layers of complexity and substance to us.

On the very surface are our interactions with other people – our customers and prospects. These interactions are often shaped and directed by the sales tactics we’ve learned along the way. This is the person that our customers see. For example, you may ask a customer a series of good questions. That series of questions is a tactic – the very surface of who you are. If you, over a period of time, develop that practice of asking questions effectively, you’ve created a skill. Notice that is a slightly deeper issue. Good for you. That’s important. However, in the bigger picture of everything that you are, it’s the most superficial part of you.

As we peel each layer off of the onion, we go deeper into the person that we are. Just beneath the surface are the strategies we design, the goals we set, the habits we have built up over the years, and the ways we go about doing things.

For example, let’s say you ask your customer good questions. That’s a tactic –– on the very surface of your being. It’s where you interact with someone else.

The reason you ask questions –– the motivating force that underlies your use of that tactic –– can be one of a number of things. Perhaps it arises out of a strategic plan you created to learn more about your customer. The strategy was the deeper motivation that gave rise to the more superficial tactic.

Or, you may have developed a goal to ask four questions during the course of the day. In that case, the goal was the deeper motivation.

Or, maybe it’s just your habit to always ask good questions. You’re not really sure why you have that habit. In that case, the habit was the deeper issue that caused you to ask those questions.

Or, finally, the deeper issue could be a process that you’ve created that requires you to fill out a form with the answer to that question. Regardless, your sales behavior always arises out of one of those four motivations. You either work intentionally, with planning and forethought, as evidenced by your goals, strategies, and processes, or you work “unconsciously,” through your habits and routines. These motivating forces lie just beneath the surface, but they shape your actual behavior.

Peel off that outer layer, and we’ll find, at the next deepest level, our attitudes. You’ve heard many times about the importance of a good attitude. That’s because your attitudes give rise to your habits and your goals.

When you’re burdened with a depressed, pessimistic attitude, you don’t set worthwhile goals or aspire to great accomplishment. The opposite is also true. When you have positive, optimistic attitudes, you naturally aspire to challenging goals, and that leads to energy and positive behavior.

If your attitude is positive, you’ll feel like you can positively influence a prospect. That positive attitude can lead you to creating a goal and developing the strategy that you’ll need to achieve that goal.

Back to the asking questions example. Let’s say your positive attitude has led you to develop the goal of  acquiring three new accounts this month. Now that you are optimistic enough to set a challenging goal, you need to create a strategy to achieve it. So, you decide on a strategy, part of which requires you to ask good questions of a certain number of prospects.

In this example, your attitude led to a goal, which led to a strategy, which led to the actions you took with your prospect. Your actions bubbled up from the inside out.

But, you’re still not at the very heart of things. Underlying your attitudes are your values. Values refer to the things you hold dear and important. For example, you may value integrity, success in your job, and the well being of your spouse. These values give rise to certain attitudes about those things.

Take the situation where you highly value your spouse’s physical well-being. Since you value him or her so highly, you think positively about your ability to provide protection and security. Out of that attitude arise your goals and strategies.

But, you’re still not finished. Underlying and supporting your values are your beliefs. For example, you may believe that it is always the husband’s responsibility to support the family no matter what. This belief may be so deep inside you that you never really articulated it. It’s just been embedded deep into your psyche.

As a result of that belief, you place a high value on the physical well-being of your spouse because, after all, it’s your job to take care of that. That value leads to attitudes, which lead to goals or habits, which lead to behavior.

There is yet one layer deeper. And that is your worldview. Your worldview is comprised of your fundamental, core beliefs about the world and yourself. It’s composed of the absolute deepest beliefs you hold about your purpose in life and the way in which the world functions. It differs from the beliefs above it only in degree. The worldview comprises the beginning of the spiritual part of ourselves. These beliefs shape everything
above them.

For example, one person may believe that the universe is so connected that everything we do is a result of fate or destiny. Another individual may believe the opposite, that we are creatures with free will existing in a world that responds to us. A third may believe that we are the creation of a loving God –– designed for a specific purpose.

If you hold a world view that attributes everything that happens to you as controlled by fate, or destiny, you’ll have little interest in building positive attitudes, creating goals, developing strategies, practicing skills, and using effective tactics.

I’ve personally seen tribal people in developing countries who hold a world view like this. As a group, they never seem to make much progress, and many live in a life style and economic conditions that have changed little over the generations. The lack of improvement in their conditions is, in my opinion, a function of their worldview. In many cases, millions of dollars of aid and years of assistance at the more superficial levels have done little. Real change won’t happen until they make changes in their world-view.

This basic view of yourself and the world is usually influenced by your culture. It is often influenced by religious education, because it borders on the spiritual part of us.

Now, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with sales or management. Study the illustration. Notice that there is a direct relationship between the higher layers and the deeper layers. When changes are made in the deeper layers, those changes affect everything above them. A small change made deep down in a person will affect almost everything above it.

If you change your attitudes, you’ll change your strategy, habits and actions. Change your values and your beliefs, and you can’t help but change your attitudes. Modify your worldview, and everything above it will change.

In my Ezine, published on the fifth Tuesday four times a year, I intend to deal with the deeper issues of values, beliefs, paradigms, world view and spirituality in our lives and our workplace.

Welcome aboard the journey.

By: Dave Kahle

Q. Any advice for a salesperson in this economy? It seems like almost every customer is saying that they are cutting back and delaying spending. How can I get them to loosen the purse strings and buy?

A. Great question. I’m sure this change in the economy and your customer’s reactions to it are very frustrating. I have several ideas.

First, step out of your day-to-day world and take a big picture, 10,000 feet high view. Let’s not think about your customers, for a minute. Let’s think about your territory.

How much market share do you have in your territory?

Here’s a way to calculate that with some degree of accuracy. Identify all the customers and potential customers (prospects) in your territory. Then ask, “If they bought everything they could from me, over the next 12 months, how much would it be?” The answer will be a dollar figure.

You can just estimate the answer, but you’ll find it more effective if you base that estimate on some quantifiable measurement. Find something that is measurable about them, like the number of employees, or the square foot of display space, etc. This kind of information is easily purchased. Then create a formula.

For example, you may be selling industrial supplies to manufacturers. How much, per employee, does a typical manufacturer spend on your category of product? Once you develop that formula, it’s a simple matter of multiplying that times the number of employees in each account. The result of this little calculation will be the answer to the question above.

Regardless of how you come to the number, you need to develop a measurement of approximately how much business there is in your category of product in your territory.

Now, how much business are you currently doing this year? In other words, what is the total dollar volume of sales in your territory?

Compare the two answers and express that as a percentage. For example, if there is $10 million dollars of potential in your territory, and you are doing $2 million, you have a 20 percent share.

That’s the measurement of your share of the market. Most business-to-business sellers are going to be under 25 percent. In other words, you probably have potential that is four or five times the amount you are currently doing.

Now, look at what you have there. Unless you have 85 – 90 percent market share, there is huge potential in your territory.

Start by focusing on that potential. Instead of reacting to, and being influenced by, the dreary conversations of your customers, plan to go after that huge potential in your territory.

This little exercise has the power to transform your attitude, replacing negative reaction with positive proactive action.

There is a principle at work here. The act of changing your mindset and focusing on something positive has a way of changing your results. You begin to see opportunities that you overlooked before. Your more positive attitude oozes out of you, and subtly influences the people around you.

You become more like the stone thrown into the pond that creates the ripples on the surface of the water, whereas before you were more like the bubbles on the top of the wave, blowing this way and that way, totally dependent on some other force to determine your way.

By: Dave Kahle

I can’t help but be somewhat caught up in the optimism and expectation that is in the air surrounding the Obama inauguration. It is always exciting to issue in something, or someone new..

I’m concerned, though, about the nature of the “change.” It looks to me like what is being offered as part of the “change” for the economy is a whole lot bigger helping of exactly what got us into this mess.

In an earlier piece, I observed that the core reason we are in this mess is that a couple generations of people forgot, or paid no attention to, the lessons their parents had learned. As a result, millions of people made the mistake of putting today’s gratifications above tomorrow’s, and have lived above their means.

That is a mistake in judgement, and the symptom of character flaw. The issue is deeper than just mortgage rates.

Millions of people ignored the proven formulas from generations, and bought homes they couldn’t afford. It seems like almost everyone ran up huge credit card balances, buying things they couldn’t afford otherwise. As all of this debt increased, it morphed into esoteric financial instruments that were promoted by greedy investors and salespeople and, before you knew it, BAM, the house of cards built on debt came crushing down.

So, now, the government is stepping in and doing exactly the same thing. Only this time, it is not a couple of thousand dollars on your credit card, its 700 billion dollars! Wow. Talk about borrowing from tomorrow to make sure there is less pain today! Isn’t that exactly the mind set that got us into this mess? Aren’t we doing exactly the same thing, only a whole lot bigger and more intensely? Isn’t the core motivation exactly the same?

One of the things that I try to do, whether it is interviewing a prospective hire, talking with a client, or dialoguing with my employees, is to try to see beyond the words to the implications and truths that lie underneath.

I just had this experience, in interviewing a group of people from a company for whom we were doing our sales audit. I couldn’t help but note that certain people said all the right things and sounded great. However, when I examined what was underneath those words, I discovered that the words were just words. The actions did not support them.

And, so, I’m concerned that the words sounds great. The rhetoric is uplifting.

The feelings are positive. Underneath though, aren’t we just exchanging a little less pain today for more debt tomorrow? Who is going to pay that 700 billion?

I suspect it will be our children. And we will go down in history as one of the few generations to have left the world a worst place then we had found it, by exchanging a tremendous burden on our children for our immediate well being.

Government action is not the solution. Refining our character is.

Welcome to the Kahle Way (r) Sales Blog.  It’s my hope that this will be a device whereby we can help each other improve our sales effectiveness and enhance our lives.  I hope you’ll join in and share your thoughts and opinions.   ~~ Dave