Category Archives: Career

Do you have enemies?

Career, Life

Winston Churchill was quoted as saying “You have enemies? Good. That means you stood up for something.”

I have always believed that whatever you compromise to keep, you will eventually lose. Take your credibility and integrity as an example. If you choose to compromise them for money, you most likely will lose the money you compromised yourself for. Look at your health because we all know this is true. If you compromise your health to keep living like you know you should not do, you most likely will lose your health.

The bible references this in the lesson of sowing and reaping. The simple point is that you will reap what you sow. You lie to others, others will lie to you. You cheat others, others will cheat you. You treat others with truth and kindness, you will be treated with truth and kindness. You show love and love will be shown to you. You care for others and others will care for you. You save money, you will have money. Simple, right? Then why do we as people think we are smarter than God?

Fast forward five years in your life and put on a piece of paper the one or two word description you want to have in your life, like joy, peace, financial security, friends, good health, great family, etc. Well, the answer is really simple. You start to do and be those one and two word descriptions in your life today. Whatever you sow, you will reap.

Do you think that a farmer gets up one morning and sees corn growing in his field and gets mad and throws his hat down because he wanted beans? Sounds foolish right? See, the farmer knew what he had planted and knew what it would look like when the crop he had sown started to grow. This is what God means by sowing and reaping.

Choose what you want to have and want to be. Then start sowing those seeds in your life and then like the farmer, when you see your crop coming up, it won’t be a surprise. KT

Driving your business

Career

The founder of Forbes Magazine B.C. Forbes said, “If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.”

This is true and it is inescapable. Just ask Kodak, Circuit City, Hudson Motors, Edsel Motor Company, BlackBerry, Motorola, Nokia, etc. All these companies rested on their past success and expected it to continue and did not see their market turning until it was too late.

The smartest business leaders I have known were all very focused on the details of their companies, their customers and the products they produced. In 1985 when you thought about buying a luxury automobile, you thought about Lincoln and Cadillac. They owned that market. Today when you think about buying a luxury automobile, Lincoln and Cadillac come to mind only after Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and Infinity. The two car companies just did not see their market changing in time to change with it.

Look at BlackBerry. In 2006 they owned 95% of the global smart phone market. Today they own less than 10% and falling because of a little invention called the iPhone. All the Blackberry execs had houses in Aspen, private jets and they thought no one could beat them in the marketplace. Well, they were wrong, just like Kodak thought people were going to continue buying film for cameras.

The point is to get personal with your customers and ask them how you are doing. You will be surprised at how open they are at giving you feedback. You will also learn some very valuable trends they as customers are seeing. Maybe if Kodak, Lincoln and BlackBerry had really gone to the street, got out of their offices and asked their customers for feedback, just maybe they could have gotten ahead of the curve before it was too late.

Driving your business means to meet with your customers and find out what you need to know. KT

Firing the customer

Career

Every now and then you just have to fire a customer. There could be many reasons but usually it is because they are either not honest or truthful or just a doofus.

One such story happened years ago on a hotel we were selling in Gatlinburg, TN, for an important client. The buyer and his equity investor were spending the night and touring the hotel in Gatlinburg. We are usually at showings but this was one on a weekend where the general manager just handled the showing for us.

We were at our lake house and I get this call from my client. The client proceeded to tell me what the buyer had done at his property. Apparently that evening, the buyer ran up a $300 bar tab and decided he would make a pass at one of the hotel’s female employees. Well to summarize the event, it proceeded beyond a pass and ended up that the buyer and this employee ran around all the bases, including home plate (if you know what I mean). AND they were seen by other employees at the hotel.

When I ended the call with my client I got this boneheaded buyer on the phone. I will not tell you in this blog post what I said to that buyer, but needless to say, he left that hotel at that moment and was never welcomed again by our company. When we talked on that call, I left zero questions as to what was going to happen. Of course the buyer has his side of the story that he wanted to tell me, but let’s just say there was not a gap in the conversation. I was doing all the talking.

The funny thing was, the next time I saw him a few years later was at my daughter’s college graduation from Samford University (a Christian college) because his daughter was graduating at the same time. Ha. He saw me across the room and I saw him. Let’s just say he knew better than to come over to me and my family.

The point is you do not have to be all things to all people and allow a customer to mistreat you. There is a standard acceptable guideline of behavior that must be maintained at all times. This bonehead stepped way over the line of acceptable behavior and that behavior probably costs him very dearly in the economic sense because he lost my respect and trust. Sometimes you just have to choose who you do business with because life is too short to be involved with a person that could hurt your reputation and your business. KT

A salesman’s attitude

Career

Sales are mostly contingent on the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the buyer. How many times have you seen a pushy salesman that only wanted one thing? To make a commission on you. There is an internal radar in most of us that doesn’t like this. In sales the most important attitude is that of the salesman. Integrity selling is doing what is right and honest for the buyer even if it is not in the salesman’s best interest.

Some of the greatest salesman I have ever encountered were always more about letting the buyer make the decision on his or her own schedule versus trying to push the sale through. Integrity selling is also about getting to know the buyer before selling him something. Getting to know his or her story and about their family and how they got started. I have yet to see someone that will not open up when they asked about the most important things in their lives.

At Hotel AG we have sold a lot of hotels. For me personally, I have sold a lot of hotels but the statistic I am most proud of is the low number of failures of people that have bought hotels through me. There are many of my current clients that have been clients for 15-25 years. I got a call the other day from a client in Nashville that I met in 1992 when we first worked together and he wanted to talk to me about selling his hotels. These are the things that mean the most to me in our line of work.

That client from 1992 worked with me when I was flat broke and needed so desperately to make a sale but I still let the decision be about what was best for him. As you get older like I am, it’s the repeat customers that mean the most because you know you handled it the right way years ago.

The salesman should never take his cue from the buyer, meaning he should never let the buyer set the attitude climate of the meeting. This should always be the salesman and his attitude should always be transparent, open, forthcoming and honest. People can usually tell if they are being mismanaged or lied to and it is the salesman that sets the tempo and mood of the meeting.

Selling is not about the attitude of the buyer, it is about the attitude of the salesman. Just like you, people like to be treated honestly and fairly and they usually respond favorably when they are. KT

Winning is not about muscle, it is about heart

Career, Life

In the movie Rocky V, there were two statements that are worth repeating. In the movie Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is broke and has lost all his winnings from the other championships when he starts teaching and training this your boxer named Tommy Gunn. Tommy Gunn goes all the way to a championship fight, but fires Rocky as his sponsor right before the fight. The young fighter goes on to win the title, but everyone says he is not as good as Rocky was. He challenges and taunts Rocky to a fight and they end up in a street brawl to settle the matter. In the course of Tommy Gunn’s taunting, he punches Rocky’s brother in-law Paulie and knocks him down. Rocky looks at Tommy Gunn and says (this is 1st statement) “you knocked him down, so now why don’t you try to knock me down.”

Well, the Rocky music started playing and yep Rocky basically whips this young boxer in street and goes on to win the day and the hearts of all the people. It is pure Rocky on the screen.

The 2nd statement happened a little before the fight when his wife Adrian tells him “winning is not about muscle, it’s about heart.” Well, in all 5 of the Rocky movies he had heart. Ha

Why am I telling you about this old movie? Because winning is not about muscle. It is in fact about heart and it is about looking your opponent in the eye and saying gently, take your biggest shot. Your opponent could be fear, anxiety, self-esteem, and doubt, past failures, health or many other examples. More times than not, your biggest opponent is simply fear.

Having heart is the young father that loses his job and goes and gets 3 part-time jobs to take care of his family. It’s the young mom who will stop at nothing to protect and provide for her children. It’s the salesman that simply won’t quit. It’s the person when challenged to the max, pushes through to the other side. It’s the person striving for significance that just won’t quit. It’s the person that is handicapped or the person that just received a bad report from their doctors who says in his or her heart to Satan, “go on, shoot your biggest shot.”

In almost every company in the world the leading salesman is the one that just won’t quit and the one that beats down fear every day and just keeps going.

Sometimes we all need to watch an old Rocky movie because deep inside every one of us is the will to win. Most of the time the difference is the motivation. I have always believed if you can figure out the why, you can figure out the how. Finding the “why” could be one of the most important things you will ever do because that is the purpose that will drive you forward. KT