Category Archives: Career

Integrity selling

Career

Years ago in the early 90’s I was in a corporate meeting where the topic was integrity selling. Everyone instinctively knew what the word integrity meant along the word selling, but the course that day made a huge impression on me.

Basically the term means to do it right, tell the truth and don’t be phony. We have all met sales people that did not have your best interest in mind and were only focused on making a sale. Over the 26 years I have sold hotels, I would like to believe that we have been honest and straightforward with clients, buyers and our staff. I have probably told thousands of buyers that the deal they were calling about wasn’t right for them and I have told many sellers not to sell now. As a salesperson, telling a buyer not to buy and a seller not to sell seems like the speedway to failure but the opposite has proven to be true. Many of these clients and buyers have become friends of ours and in many cases, we have done a lot business together. Why? It is because they trust us to tell them the truth.

I had a call with a seller yesterday where I told him to pull his asset off the market because there just wasn’t enough interest at his price level. Common practice would say to keep it on the market and hope for the best but we have always tried to tell clients the straight truth so that we are not having to answer six months later why we were wrong. I would say over the years I have probably declined almost as much business as I have accepted because to me, making money on one deal is not as important as earning a client’s trust for the long term.

For me, integrity selling means to act in such a way so that you are not ashamed. It means to sleep well knowing that you have told the truth and done your best. In sales organizations, all the charts are about sales volume and frequency of income. The chart that is the dearest to me is where I can track on a few fingers, the people that have failed that bought a hotel from me. So for me personally, this is the most important chart I will carry with me when I retire.

So, live life with integrity in all you do because the truth is much easier to remember. KT

Dog bone

Career

In business, chewing on one bone at a time will break your heart. What I am talking about is in business, when you get momentum, you cannot afford to just focus on one project. You must have several projects going at the same time to balance out your expectations.

I learned this the hard way in 1996. We were selling a 17-hotel portfolio and while I knew better, I let myself get focused on that one deal and didn’t go out and get new business. Long story short, that deal didn’t close, and it just about broke my heart. See, I let myself imagine, expect and envision that one deal closing. When it didn’t, it was a heartbreaker.

I call this the Dog Bone Theory. A dog will get one bone and go off and chew that one bone until he is finished. I know some hotel brokers in our line of work that think like that. The point is that when something good is happening and the momentum is shifting your way, you need to go get as many deals as you can so if you should lose one or two, you still have the others to look forward to. It is a mind game, and you almost have to force yourself to ramp up your efforts when things are good because human nature says to lay back and coast. I am not a very smart guy, but I do know that the only way you can coast is downhill.

Working on more than one client, deal, or project is like insulation for your heart, and it will actually allow you to be smarter and sharper on all projects. When you have only one thing and one project to work on, you pour yourself into it and can’t understand why everyone else isn’t as focused as you. When you do this, you actually hurt your chances of that deal closing, getting that project completed, or landing that job. It is like you need to fool your own mind so that one deal doesn’t become all-encompassing in your life.

So, when you feel the momentum is shifting in your work or your business, it could very well be God talking to you and telling you to get busy, get focused and use that new-found momentum to go get more business.

So in summary, the theory is to get a stack of bones you can chew on and not just one. That way if you lose one or two bones it doesn’t hurt as much. KT

United States Navy SEALs

Career, Life

I heard a statement recently where the Navy spokesperson was referring to a planned mission. He said “God may choose to have mercy on them, but the United Stated Navy will not.”

I was in the Navy from 1976-1980 and during that time I learned how to be respectful of leadership and respectful of being an American. Regardless of what anyone tells, being in the military makes you grow up quick and when you have completed your enlistment, you are proud of your country.

I will never forget boot camp in Orlando in July of 1976. They beat on us mentally and physically like nothing I had ever been involved in. I was on the enlisted side and my drill instructor was 1st class petty Officer Black. He was a devil in a white uniform, ha, and I think he was trained in hell because that is what it felt like to us recruits. His job was to basically see if he could make you quit.

So here we are in week 6 doing obstacle courses, running in combat gear, sweating like a showerhead and some officer walks up and calls us to attention and announces that they are doing tryouts for the Navy Seal program. No,,,, I did not try out. I do however remember what the qualifications were to even get an opportunity to get looked at. They took the ones that wanted to try out over to the Olympic pool and gave them a little physical screening test called the PST.

While the qualifications may have changed over the years, that day, In order to qualify, the recruits had to breast stroke or side stroke 500 yards in full gear in under 10 minutes. An Olympic pool is 50 meters or 54 yards long and to swim 500 yards is basically 10 full laps in the pool. 80 pushups in under two minutes, 80 sit-ups in under two minutes, 25 pull ups and run 1.5 miles in full gear in under 10 minutes.

If you passed that, what these recruits didn’t know was that if you got sent to Seal School you had to pass another little physical screening test to be able to stay in the Seal program. This little PST included 1000 meter swim in under 20 min, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups and a 4 mile full gear run in under 31 minutes.

If you passed that little hurdle (no pun intended) you got see if you have the juice for the real deal. Keep in mind that in Seal training, you could quit anytime by ringing the big bell and walk away. You could hear the bell all over the training facility and it was frequently rang. The real deal was 10 weeks of which the first 3 weeks was to see if the navy needed to spend the money on training you. Week 3 is called “hell’ week and only 25% of all recruits survive through this week. It is simply the toughest training in the US Military. If you survive the training and get to wear the Navy Seal Insignia, you are part of the most elite and lethal military group on the Globe.

When I was in “A” school in San Diego you would occasionally see a guy in uniform with the Navy Seal insignia of the eagle holding the rifle with a shiny ball on the end. If you saw this on some guy’s uniform, trust me when I tell you, he is not the guy you want to get into a fight with. He is the guy you want on your side.

If you want to see a real spectacle, take an active duty Navy Seal and put him in the ring with the Tae Kwon Do or Karate champ and you would see the difference of training in a gym with padded mats and head gear versus full combat mission preparedness. It would be over in about 20 seconds.

Go Navy. KT

The non-event, event

Career

Have you ever gone on a sales pitch, met a customer/client or went to an interview etc., and it did not turn out at all like you were expecting? Well it has happened to me many times and that is what I want to speak about in this blog post. When you are faced with a situation that “seems” to be a waste of time, take a step back and pause before you react. Regardless of how smart you think you are, you don’t know the future of each encounter and what God may have planned for you. The following story is a good example of what I mean.

At Hotel AG we are in the middle of something that may or may not be a great opportunity for us, but it all started with a failed meeting last fall in NY.

We took a meeting last fall in NY with one of the greatest guys you could ever meet. The meeting was for a specific purpose. We show up his office building for the meeting and are prepared with a great sales pitch and power point presentation and we have all the answers planned out. In short, we are ready.

The guy walks in and after the small talk of introductions we start with the pitch. Three minutes into the pitch, this guy holds up his hand and says ‘we would not be interested in doing that.” I stop and think geez,,, I have flown up here for this one purpose and within three minutes, he says no. I have wasted a day and spent a couple thousand dollars on this meeting.

I did what the prudent thing was to do. Salvage the meeting and see where it take us. We ended up going to lunch with the guy and really bonded and developed a very unexpected friendship. That same guy introduced us to another guy who introduced us to another situation may become one of the best things to ever happen for Hotel AG. Who would have ever expected that?

The point is to always listen to your inner heart before you react because just maybe, God is introducing you to a situation or putting you in a place that you didn’t even know was coming. KT

Hello fear

Career, Life

The definition of fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is likely to cause pain. Common synonyms for fear include alarm, panic, agitation, trepidation, dread, consternation, dismay and distress.

Fear is that one thing that holds you back. I choose the term “one thing” because in most cases it is the one thing you are the most afraid of that can manifest itself in many ways and in many forms but it is my opinion that the root is usually found in the fear or anxiety attached to one thing.

Over the years I have hired and trained many hotel brokers. I wished I could tell you that all of them were successful and learned the business but that would incorrect. Everyone comes with their own customized set of luggage. I call it the baggage of life. It is the past pain and past failures that people carry with them through life. Unless this baggage is dealt with, you will carry it all the way to your funeral.

When I think of a person that has allowed fear to control them, I think of the metaphor of a lovely house on a beautiful street that termites have eaten the inside. The fear of action can cause someone to focus on cutting the grass and painting the shutters on a house that is falling apart on the inside. It looks good from the street but the inside is a mess. If the house is not fixed on the inside first, it will eventually began to fall apart on the outside. Many people you see today look good on the outside but are crumbling on the inside because of a fear that they have let overtake their life.

Fear is like a water leak in your house. It starts in one room and keeps spreading until it is all through the house. A water leak (fear) can be hidden for a while but at some point it will affect everything.

The only way I know to address a fear is to go at it head first. I am not saying if you have a fear of jumping off the roof, you should go jump off the roof. What I am saying is that if you have a fear that you know is holding you back in life, when it sticks its head up, call it by name and speak to it (not out loud) and tell it you refuse to be controlled by it any longer. If you are a believer, a little prayer on the subject is also good. The more you address it and rebuke it, the stronger your resistance will become and one day you will realize that the fear that once controlled you, doesn’t have a hold on you anymore. KT