Psych 101. That’s where I heard it and although time has erased some of the detail, the point remains crystal clear. Researchers studying the effect of feedback on productivity were working with a steel mill intending to increase production. When the workers were asked how many tons of product were produced on their shift, the researchers were surprised to discover that even though the supervisors had a pretty clear idea of the totals, the folks who actually did the work were, for the most part, clueless.
The research team decided to measure the output of the day shift and chalked the number in large numerals in the center of the shop floor.
“What’s this?” asked the evening shift operators.
“That’s the day shift production total.”
When the day shift arrived the following morning their production total had been replaced by a new, larger number that represented the night shift total. The friendly competition continued as the workers implemented new, worker inspired ideas for increasing production.
I can’t attest to every detail. But I would appreciate a little credit for remembering what I did. After all, this was the late 60’s!
Accurate or not, the point remains the same: Feedback shapes performance.
Now fast forward a couple of decades. We’re running a small-town franchise fried chicken restaurant when, one day, I walked to the drive-thru window and with a red marker wrote a big, fat number on the window.
“What’s that?” asked the kid working the inside counter. “It’s his average sale per transaction and you’re getting one, too!”
And in short order our sales per transaction number was exactly 50% higher than the chain-wide average.
Chuck Coonradt, wrote a fabulous book, The Game of Work, in which he asked, why do people pay for the hard work of playing sports when, back at the office, they are reluctant to work even though they are paid?
Coonradt believed the explanation was that if work were more like the games we played, we might work with the same gusto as we play.
So what can producing steel, hawking fried chicken, and a pick-up game of round ball possibly have in common? If you treat them as if they were a game, performance improves.
With a deep bow to Coonradt, here are the elements that make a game…and sometimes work…fun!
The score is updated constantly.
The score is visible to everyone.
You get to play with people you like.
You have the potential to play well.
The entire team is rewarded.
You have options to determine how you play the game.
The game doesn’t outlast your attention span.
There is an element of risk.
It is possible to lose.
Three years ago, as a newly elected city council member, I introduced our city government to the value of keeping score. It wasn’t easy. In fact, we lost a department head almost immediately. But I am proud to say that the problems I pledged to reform when I ran for my first term on City Council are not even mentioned in the position paper I have issued for this year’s re-election bid.
(If you think your town might benefit from service metrics, send them to me!)
We’ve come a long way and have a long way to go. I have come to believe the principles apply universally. Currently we are testing new tools of performance in four internationally recognized QSR (fast food) concepts.
I’ll be back soon with a full report. In the meantime see how you might apply the elements in the list above to supercharge performance in your neck of the woods!
Make no mistake about it., we are what we do.
The work we choose, in the end, chooses us.
The kid who got the job fueling small planes at the local airstrip becomes a pilot. No surprise. And how is it that the bag boy becomes the butcher, the scouts top seller of cookies moves on to selling houses? Was it the worker or the work? And when grandfather puts in a good word for that job at the foundry, is he just offering a hand or acting a larger part, shaping a life for a lifetime?
Me? I would have been a doctor… but I didn’t think I’d have the patients. Sorry, not called for. My dad was funny and so I was shaped or maybe warped.
We all bend toward our own decisions, our choices made consciously but more likely not.
The weather was sunny in San Antonio but that was as far west as you could fly and still be follow visual flight rules… the ceiling was a thousand feet, visibility three miles and that is the minimum. Only a fool would set out in a light plane weather like this without an instrument rating and the instruments to go with it. Most pilots are, wisely, fair weather flyers. Why go when the weather turns raw?
We fly because we need to be some where on business. There are schedules to keep. This makes for many flights launched into the murk on days when I would rather be home in front of the fireplace or tucked against a pillow in my favorite chair in the office.
On this day we choose to fly. That the instrument rating is for, flying when you choose.
Two hundred feet and we were solidly in the gloom, disappearing into the cloud deck over Kerrville like unfortunate travelers in a Twilight Zone episode.
I trimmed the little Mooney for a steady climb to ten thousand feet and let Houston Center know that we were on the frequency.
“Mooney niner five mike kilo is radar contact seven and a half miles northwest of Kerrville at four thousand. Climb and maintain ten thousand.”
“That’s us. Up to one zero, ten thousand for five mike kilo.”
For the next five hundred miles there would be only the occasional glimpse of mother earth, and then only for a moment and then only the parts of her that are barren and brown.
Just east of Fort Stockton a military re-fueling operation code-named Turbo three six checked onto the frequency asking for a block altitude from eight thousand to twelve thousand. We were at ten cruising between layers of cloud, the highest layer marking gentle shadows on the layer below. The one shadow I did not want to see was the shadow of a military aircraft, or two, or more.
That’s a great reason for choosing to fly under instrument rules, you are under the constant watch of the controllers, almost always in radio contact. But with choices come consequences. You can’t fly instrument and just point the airplane in any direction. You have to bend to traffic and rules. In the end, the trade-off is a good one.
The controller advised Turbo Three Six that there was traffic at ten thousand just east of Fort Stockton. That was me and I knew it. But, he said, the traffic is fast and as long as the refueling operation would break of by Fort Stockton the traffic should be no factor. Oh, how I wish airplanes had rear-view mirrors!
We peeked at the oil fields near Fort Stockton, caught a wisp of Interstate Ten as it wafted along the desert near the Pecos River and then said good-bye to the ground and Albuquerque center when we slipped below their radar and out of reach of the radio for fifty or so miles of loneliness.
Our flight took us to FST62, a funny little bend in the Victor airway between Fort Stockton and the Hudspeth VOR. I have no idea why the airway arrows 62 miles into the dessert from Fort Stockton before making a three or so degree jog to the right. But I follow the rules and the airway with the idea that if, while we were radio and radar lost, something should happen we would be easier to find.
At Hudspeth I always look to see why there is a place called Hudspeth and there is never anything to see so I just call El Paso approach and get on with the business of flying. By Hudspeth we have picked up the automated weather report, learned the hourly code and advised El Paso that we are “checking in at ten thousand with Echo’ or Delta or Romeo or what ever is the code du l’heure.
We taxied to Cutter Aviation where the line guys are always hustling even when the hot winds of the dessert in summer are baking the tarmac and anything that ventures onto it. These tough, mostly Hispanic guys should give a lesson to sometimes lethargic crew that owns the tarmac in Phoenix. This time we were marshaled to a spot close to the building and right next to a brightly painted tail-dragger, a high wing affair that sported yellow and red paint, looking perfect in a shaft of sunshine that had found El Paso and no where else for several hundred miles in any direction.
From the other side of the yellow bird, a forty-ish fellow in T-shirt and jeans sauntered over to have a closer look at five mike kilo, inquiring about her pedigree and the weather to the east. His plane, a high wing fabric covered, two-seater was not equipped for instrument flying had been resting in El Paso for two days. I told him that I hoped he liked El Paso and recommended Forti’s Mexican Elder Restaurant, a barrio hideout of hot Mexican food and warm southwestern hospitality. I also recommended that he give El Paso at least another day as this was no day to venture across so much open space under so much closed in weather.
His face fell at the news just as a pair of blue-jeaned legs scooted out from under the yellow bird.
“What’s the word?” asked a perky blonde with braided hair that matched her airplane.
“He says he hopes we like El Paso.”
“Oh.” The legs slid back under the plane to continue the work. It may not fly in weather but at least it looked good.
If there is one thing that sticks with me from all our adventures it is this idea of chosing our destiny. Why do some, too many actually, persist at work that does not fill them up and make them whole? Why?
And worse, why do folks make choices that are actually destructive?
I walked into the local convenience store and was soon lost in the act of looking for an item Melanie needed to finish our dinner. Suddenly, I looked up to see a young man walking up the aisle toward me.
He was dirty from greasy head to barefoot toe. He wore no shirt, only several tatoos. The outfit was completed by a cigarette dangling from his mouth. By the time he made it half way along the aisle a woman, surely his physical counter part walked the aisle in the opposite direction. Except that she wore a shirt, albeit a dirty one, she was dressed identically to the fellow.
“Where’s your old lady?” she dragged on the cigarette.
“Awww, she’s in jail.”
“Oh.”
Oh? Oh? You don’t know me from Adam but if I wrote at the end of this book that it was dedicated to my wife who is currently in jail would you think, ‘oh?’ I think not.
So I am left with this question about choices: I know that we are the sum of our choices but… are we able to actually choose? Isn’t being aware that there are options part of the choosing?
One of the most important stories in the Bible is the first one, the Adam and Eve apple in the garden parable. It is the story of how God gave us freedom. Without the freedom to choose, we are no different than animals. It is the freedom to choose that makes us whole and the story of these adventures is the story of choice and choosing.
Riding in a cab to La Guardia we enjoyed talking with our Haitian cabbie. You know, say what you want about cab drivers and joke about their inability to speak English if you will but driving a cab is in many instances the very essence of the American dream. What better way to learn a new language and the customs of a new country than to drive a cab?
We’ve met some of the most thoughtful, hard-working individuals ever while riding n cabs. People who have an education. People who often have had the courage to flee repressive governments. People who have a dream and have chosen to follow it.
This cabbie was no different. He was the father of two girls and was working on a degree in pharmacology in his few off hours. He told us about bringing his younger brother to New York and taking a precious day off to make a proper impression.
The cabbie drove his brother all over the city showing him exclusive residences balanced by a tour areas rife with poverty, drugs, and aloholics. At days end they stopped for coffee and the delivery of the punchline: in America you can choose. You can wind up with the druggies or you can live with the wealthy and it is all a matter of choice.
In Dallas I met an attractive sales woman with a mysterious accent.
“I can tell you are not from around here. I bet you’re from Alabama,” I joked.
“I am from Russia,” and she wasn’t joking.
“I kinda figured that. Tell me, what is it that brought you to Dallas?”
“I have degree in pediatric psychology. Here I can choose good job.
Government does not choose for me. It is simple.”
Simple? Perhaps. Easy or obvious? Not for some.
Flying is nothing more than a series of choices, usually involving weather.
Inside I talked to the weather guys and got the news. Another day in El Paso would also be good for Mooneys. But not good for business. So we elected to launch with the idea that if things got really rough we could and would do the most important of all aerial maneuvers, a one-eighty that would take us back to the barn.
I filed for twelve thousand feet and in fifteen too short minutes was climbing over Mexican airspace anticipating a turn to the west and a hand off to the controllers in Albuquerque. Once at twelve we could see nearly forever and the sight wasn’t all that encouraging. Although the Stormscope was clear, no dancing green crosses that promised connective activity, the windshield was full of disappointment and black, black skies just off the nose.
I requested a descent to ten which would keep us out of the clouds. The idea was that below the cloud bases we could see the rain cells and fly around them. This worked for nearly a hundred miles as we zigzagged first north then south, before the mountains grew and the storms began to settle, hunkering lower to suck power from the earth below.
We asked to climb and were cleared to sixteen thousand. I watched the airspeed drop as the little Mooney stuck her nose up and gamely began her climb. Outside the air temperature was ten below zero and falling. I hoped that we had made the right decision. If the lifting action of the storms carried warmer moisture it would freeze in an instant on the cold skin of the Mooney. I pulled open the cabin heat, double-checked the defroster, and switched on the pitot heat so that moisture hitting the pitot, the air speed sensor, would not freeze and render it useless.
At this altitude the air is so thin the little Mooney sips fuel since there is not enough oxygen to drink deeply. The same for us. We broke out the canulas and sniffed the clean clear gas that hissed from the tank suspended behind my seat. All the while we hoped that we would reach the tops and be able to see the larger cells so we could steer clear.
That was our choice but mother nature dealt a different hand and in it she held ice, the bain of aircraft large or small.
“Center Mooney niner five mile kilo. Pilot report. We have light clear ice passing through fifteen thousand.”
No de-ice. No hot prop. No turbo charging to zoom us to the tops.
We could sense the tops. We could hear about them as a King Air reported that he was just grazing the tops at flight level two zero, twenty-thousand feet. We could dream about it but we couldn’t go there.
All we could do was hope. Hope follows choice, never the other way around.
About twenty miles shy of totec intersection, an imaginary point in space some forty miles south of Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, we broke out into the clear at ten thousand feet.
Well, almost clear. We were looking at a wall of thunderstorms that stretched from horizon to horizon. There were choices here. Fly through. Fly under and through. Or maybe take a shot at that little hole just to the north, the one that appeared to be closing between to dark sheets of solid falling water.
We’ll take the hole not the curtain and Phoenix approach gave us the option, a choice we would not have known was ours to make had we elected to remain in the clouds at sixteen thousand.
Funny thing about choices. They are all around us but so often we are in the dark in the clouds, unable to see them. Robert Frost and his road less traveled could maybe have come even closer to truth had he mentioned that it is the choice unknown that makes all the difference.
In a matter of minutes we were through. A few minutes more and we were in the sunshine taxiing to parking at Scottsdale Airport. By evening we were at the DoubleTree enjoying a reception with the client. By morning we would have enjoyed game four of the World Series and be breakfasting in the southwestern elegance of the hotel.
But where ever we are, whatever we would be doing could never be more nor less than the sum total of our choices.
And who would say that the gardener who swept the walk before us would not have been piloting a Mooney had the choices been different.
And just as it is ours to choose, perhaps it is ours to honor the choices of others. There but for the grace of God, and I will add the grace of my choices, go I.
at no time completely escaped what and who I am
I get to go home and they knew it
lessor jobs more accepting because they did not see me as a threat
no matter what you do for your employees.. you are always the boss
your job is to be interesting
get out of the office
First the scene. Christmas eve at a busy SW Airlines gate. The gate agent is suffering from a cold; she is away from her family for the holiday season and feeling as miserable as the weather.
This is a story about angels. Two of them. One is an “angel unaware” named Rachel. The other is named McDonald.
Now, in the words of Angel Rachel:
“I looked up and saw the sweetest-looking, old man standing with a cane. He walked very slowly over to the counter and in the faintest voice told me that he had to go to New Orleans. I tried to explain to him that there were no more flights that night and that he would have to go in the morning. He looked so confused and very worried.
“I asked if he had a reservation or if he remembered when he was supposed travel, but he seemed to get more confused with each question. He just kept saying, ‘She said I have to go to New Orleans.’
“It took a while but finally I was able to discover that this old man had been dropped off at the curb by his sister-in-law on Christmas eve and told to go to New Orleans where he had family. She had given him some cash and told him to ‘just go inside and buy a ticket.’ When I asked if he could come back tomorrow, he said that she was gone and that he had no place to stay. He then said bravely that he would ‘wait right here until tomorrow.’
“Naturally, I felt a little ashamed. Here I was feeling sorry for myself about being alone for Christmas, when this angel named Mr. McDonald was sent to me as a reminder of what being alone really meant. It broke my heart to see him standing there.
“I told him not to worry, that we would get everything straightened out. Cynthia, another agent on duty, helped book him a seat on the earliest flight the next morning. We gave him a senior citizen’s fare, which left him a little extra money for traveling. About this time, he started looking very tired and I stepped around the counter to ask quietly if he was all right. That’s when I noticed that his leg was wrapped in a bandage. He had been standing on it the whole time, holding a plastic bag full of clothes.
“I called for a wheelchair.
“When the wheelchair came, we both stepped around to help him in, and noticed a small amount of blood on his bandage. I asked how he had hurt his leg and he explained that he had just had bypass surgery and that an artery had been taken from his leg. Can you imagine? This man had heart surgery, and shortly afterward had been dropped off at the curb to buy a ticket with no reservation to fly to New Orleans alone.
“I had never really had a situation like this, and I wasn’t sure what I could do. I went back to ask my supervisors, Kathy and Mercedes. When they had heard the whole story, I asked if we could find a place for him to stay. They both said absolutely.
“We gave Mr. McDonald a hotel room for the night and a meal ticket for dinner and breakfast. When I came back out, we got his plastic bag of clothes and cane together and gave the nice World Services employee a tip to take him downstairs to wait for the shuttle. I bent down to explain the hotel, food, and itinerary again while I patted him on the arm. I promised him that everything would be just fine.
“As he was about to be wheeled away, he said, ‘Thank you,’ bent his head, and started to cry.
“I cried, too.
“When I went back to thank Kathy, she just smiled and said, ‘I love stories like that. He is your Christmas man.’”
Somewhere on the way to becoming known as an expert in customer service, and just past my intention to achieve guru status in the field of branding, I must have taken an unexpected turn. The new un-planned, un-charted road took me to a place in my life where I am known not as a service guy or a marketing guy. Instead I turned out to be the story-telling guy.
That shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, I was raised on stories.
In church I heard stories from the Bible. I read stories in books and watched in black and white as Disney told the stories of the Hardy Boys. We sang musical stories in four part harmony while riding in a 1951 Studebaker that burned more oil than gas… “I looked over Jordan and what did I see? A band of angels coming after me.”
For me, the best stories were told by my grandmother. We would snuggle close in a wooden porch swing and watch the freight trains lumbering out of the Latonia railroad yard. On a cool night we could hear the banging of rusted metal as the yard rats coasted individual cars over the ‘hump’ and joined them with a newly formed train headed to God only knew where.
Gran would begin every story with, “There once was a little boy with big, blue eyes.” And every time I would steel myself for adventure because I knew the story was going to be about me!
The thing about stories is that they so often change with the telling. We expect one ending and sometimes get another. And that’s good. Sometimes.
When the grandkids were lap-size, we used the couch in the den for storytelling. Often, but not always, I would ask the kids what kind of ending they wanted. Big Guy usually said, “Pops, I want no happiness.” His no happiness really meant he wanted a scary ending. The Princess wanted a happy ending… always.
When you are telling the story, you can decide up front what the ending will be. Unfortunately, we don’t live in fairy tales.
Look for a moment at your story. Is it unfolding the way you wanted it to unfold? Have you thought about the ending? Chances are the story you are living today is not what you thought it would be. And here is where people get lost. Their story takes a twist and the hero, you, misses the turn.
To say that 2009 is a tough year for most is an understatement. In my case the industry that has fed us so well and kept us fat, dumb, and happy has all but disappeared. That may be the circumstance for you. What do you do?
You can insist that the story you imagined from the beginning is the only story for you. Or, you can go with the story as it unfolds in a new direction, enjoy meeting new characters, and be surprised at the ending. The part of the story that has already been told isn’t wasted. It serves as a background and foundation for the story yet to come.
We’ve decided that we need to re-think our story, take a fresh look at how we do business, and offer new, innovative products and new ways for sharing our content. Now might be a good time for you to do the same. Take a look at where you think your story is headed and consider how the story already told might influence the story to come. Your story may have taken an unexpected twist that doesn’t doom you to a “no happiness ending.” Be flexible, enjoy the changing scenery, and I predict that you will live happily ever after.
The End
Moral of the story: Adversity does not build character. Adversity reveals character.
When we first moved to the Texas hill country we went looking for a family doctor and were repeatedly referred to Doc Jim a D.O. doing business in the small town of Comfort, working from a tiny office right on the main drag. Jim could fix you up right now and only get to the money as an after thought. He left me waiting one morning as he sewed up the near-severed finger of a toddler. The conversation seeping through the exam room wall was mostly Spanish. I understood most of the Spanish and all of the tears.
The worried parents had no insurance and no money but they negotiated for yard work in the summer and homemade tamales at the holidays.
As luck would have it I was in the office again when the tiny family returned for a follow up. The finger, like the rest of the child, was warm and pink. A good sign.
“I didn’t get into this for the money,” Doc Jim had a penchant for the obvious. One look around the office told the story. I think about the time I had to remove chainsaw parts from the exam table or the time Doc Jim showed up at the scene of an MVA I was working as an EMT. He was sporting a full white beard grown especially for the annual stock show. He wore a beat-up straw cowboy hat to compliment grass stained athletic shoes. But pretty or not I was glad to see him. And of course there were those few times when I called him at home on a weekend or in the middle of the night. He never said more than, “I’ll meet you at the office.”
That’s the way healthcare was meant to be.
No, we’re not saying you should post your personal phone number on a billboard. But there may be a middle ground that lies somewhere between routing all calls to an answering service and not having a life.
We’re going to give you a few simple tools for restoring healthcare to the way it was meant to be. We’re also going to give you permission to use them!
We’re going to give you a positively outrageous Service Prescription! Come on, open wide… this is going to make it all better.
Once upon a time… we owned a restaurant. To say that we were doing miserably would be painting a picture that was way too optimistic. We were losing our backsides, going to hell in that proverbial handcart, failing big time. But the oddest thing was that we were doing, according to the experts, everything right.
Our location was the best. Our food was exceptional. Our prices were fair and our operation was squeaky clean.
Customers stayed away in droves.
We were in a sink or swim situation and I was forced into my natural, geeky, back-up style… Mr. Science. I did what good scientists often do: parallel analysis. So you don’t have to suffer: parallel analysis is the act of looking for similar situations in dissimilar industries to see if the way they solved their problem might be adapted or adopted as a solution to yours. Whew! ‘Sorry about that.
Our observations became notes, our notes became principles, and our principles came to be known as Positively Outrageous Service or POS for short. POS was defined as:
Random and unexpected
Out of proportion to the circumstance
Customer is highly involved
Creates positive, compelling word of mouth
If you look at the definition closely you’ll realize that what we call POS is exactly what great docs and caring staff do instinctively. But the geek in me knows that good science is repeatable science and a good definition helps us do what we know in our heart with intention and purpose. It also serves as a model for folks who want to reach out but don’t quite feel comfortable. It’s the answer to the question: do we shake hands or hug?
So we offer our positively outrageous Service Prescription:
Often highly personal. Always involving
Of the moment, from the heart… (Neither requested nor expected)
A form of unconditional love
Creates compelling, positive word of mouth
One nice thing about the Service Prescription is that you needn’t be a medical expert to practice this piece of medicine.
We didn’t really know the man. He was just one of our customers and that was good enough for us.
Every afternoon he’d come toddling in and the wait staff would fall in behind him as he wound his way through the bar and headed to the patio where we offered draft beer for a buck a glass. (We called it our really, really happy hour.) The first brew would land nearly simultaneous with his arrival at ‘his’ table. He would smile a broken smile and settle in, shoulders slouched, ankles crossed, and adopt the thousand yard stare of a man who has been too many places but no place to go.
We became friends of sorts. I’m not good at having ‘buddies,’ especially when I have a restaurant to run. He loved to start a conversation knowing it would lead to prolonged discussion. Sometimes I could feel the day growing longer, passing in slow motion, but for him, I think the conversations made days going slowly nowhere feel a little more life-like.
He was a smart man. He talked about encounters with great thinkers whose names I knew and books I had read but never dreamed of meeting. And to be really truthful, my little judgmental voice often whispered that he hadn’t met such people either.
We sold the restaurant and I gave no thought about what would fill his long afternoons.
Within a month, a flat, letter-sized envelope arrived, looking for all the world like it had been carried in a back pocket for a week. The return address, written in dull-pointed pencil, read “Richard Cage” in block print letters that looked not much better than mine.
I thought, “Who the hell is Richard Cage?” and turned the envelope every which way in a futile attempt to divine the answer.
Buns had just finished with her pile of mail and with the eagle-eye of a bingo player, poked her finger at the slab of manila and pronounced, “You know Richard. He’s the buck-a-beer guy!”
Sliding the contents of the envelope onto the table revealed a letter. Nine pages. Little did I imagine that this scene was to be repeated every month or so; each envelope containing a surprisingly artful rendition of an armadillo.
There were letters, all of them long, on a wide range of topics. We discussed, (via old fashioned post), aerodynamics, hydraulics, basic physics, management, history, and more. His final letter was on philosophy and his big point was, “You can’t punish or embarrass someone into doing something.”
Our hometown weekly paper includes a column by a local radio personality and, in this particular issue, he told the tale of a local builder attempting to file a request for an inspection. Being close to City Hall, the builder entered the appropriate department and stated his business only to be told by the clerk that all inspection requests must be phoned in. (The phone-in system allows requests to be logged and performance measures to be reported. In the vacuum of an office, it makes pretty good sense.)
Not thinking, the busy clerk said she could not accept his request in person. And without further thought or explanation, told the gentleman to just use his cell and an inspection would be scheduled right away.
Now there is some debate as to whether or not he was denied use of the department phone or whether or not it was suggested that he leave the building to place his call. Even if you don’t believe the entire story, there is still plenty of reason to shake your head and think, “Your tax dollars at work.”
If you think about it, someone who cares about the city might have called for a supervisor. But if your goal is not to solve the problem but to rub a face in an innocent mistake, you take the story to the media… where it grows with each re-telling.
Perhaps the intent was to make things better by “punishing or embarrassing someone into doing something.”
“Oh, golly!” said the poof of silvery hair that sits across the table from me at breakfast. “Richard Cage died.” I thought instantly of the pile of letters I had received and the pile that would go unwritten.
At the funeral there was a small clutch of Masons and, other than ourselves, only one couple who we guessed managed the small apartment complex where Richard had spent his final days.
When the preacher spoke, we were surprised to learn that Richard had been CIA and Special Forces, and an expert in martial arts; that he held numerous degrees from elite universities, which explained the long and thoughtful letters he shared with me. He was ‘someone’. But I knew that.
And so I suspect that the clerk who just for a moment got a little stupid is also someone. Maybe she is a good mom, a loving daughter, and who knows, a budding musician or a community volunteer. I’ve got a feeling that had it been Richard Cage applying for the permit, the situation would have turned out differently. He would have recognized that this clerk was ’someone’ and that you can’t punish or embarrass anyone into doing something.
The client was named Skeeter. It’s one of those things that for whatever reason sticks in your memory. It must have been the early 90’s. Positively Outrageous Service had just been published. I was still speaking for next to nothing, lucky to have a wife at home who never complained about just getting by.
When Skeeter booked the date, she moaned about her too small budget and said she would make the deal if I would agree to stay over an extra night and emcee her annual banquet. (She needed an emcee. I needed the fee. Done!)
On my way back to my hotel room I passed one of the attendees. I said “Hello”; He said, “I’m looking forward to hearing your presentation tonight.”
“I’m not presenting tonight. Just introducing the VIPs.” I said as I stopped and turned to face the direction from which I’d come. He turned to mirror my maneuver.
“It says right here” he whipped a wrinkled yellow agenda from a pocket inside his sport coat, “that you are doing a comedy routine.”
“Let me see that!”
He was right. There it was in black and wrinkled yellow. “T. Scott Gross will open our gala affair with what is sure to become a comedy classic.”
That was not funny.
I raced to my room, fired up the Mont Blanc, and began to outline something that was funny but far short of a comedy classic.
When people decide that you are funny they immediately respond by trying to be funny, too. (They rarely are.) One of my biggest fans from the morning session was self-appointed to introduce me. Not to be out done by the guy being paid to be funny, he headed to the bookstore where he found a small paperback titled, The World’s Worst Jokes. Whoever came up with that title was right on target!
My so-called fan told first one stinker and then another. Each punchline earned a tired groan from the audience which only served to encourage our tormentor: “Okay, okay, let’s try another one.”
With the audience slipping toward coma, Mr. Personality suddenly closed his little book and said, “Without further ado… T. Scott Gross.” Then just to make certain I had the situation accurately pegged he added, “I don’t think these guys are in the mood for comedy.”
I don’t remember much about the routine or how it was received. I do remember looking nervously at my watch and wondering when the “real” entertainment would arrive. Finally, the door at the back of the room cracked just a bit. I saw the glint of tiny sequins, and knowing I was about to be saved, launched one last story before snatching the neatly printed introduction of Miss Tennessee, nineteen eighty something who was, no surprise, going to entertain us with a patriotic routine of baton twirling and tap dancing.
Not what I would have ordered for the evening but it saved my butt and now it was her turn and that was just fine with me!
Now there were just two tiny problems. First, the ceiling in this room was barely ten feet. This baton act would have to go into stealth mode because anything high enough to be seen by the audience would have to penetrate the drop in tiles.
Oh well, there’s always the tap dancing. Except. The same Skeeter who neglected to inform the speaker he had suddenly turned pro comedian had also neglected to have the hotel bring in a wood floor. Yep-per, this tap routine would be performed on genuine, high pile, easy-to-care-for DEW-pont carpet!
Tap dance is lost on carpet.
Like the speaker who quickly wrote a comedy routine, Miss Whatever simply pushed a button on her boom box and in less than three minutes, the crowd had pushed away from their tables, struggled to rise from their chairs, and joined the now beaming young woman in a rousing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner!
When the music stopped and the applause died I stepped to the mic saying, “Thank-you very much. You’ve been a great audience. Good night!” I caught a quick smile from Miss Tennessee and headed to my room wondering if there would ever be another night quite like this.
There are many things that happen in our lives for which we think we have had no preparation. But that is simply not true. Everything we have experienced influences our decisions in the present. Afternoons writing an emergency comedy routine and evenings spent tap dancing on carpet leave their mark.
For example I am in my eighth or ninth year of Parkinson disease. I am also in the best physical condition of my life. I can lift more, run farther, and am mentally sharper than ever. Yes, I do have a bit of a tremor in my left hand but one of my tiny blue pills (not what you are thinking) or a couple of cold beers and the tremor goes away. I do have trouble with those aggravating little buttons on my shirtsleeves. But so what? I always travel with Buns who just happens to be a world class buttonerupper!
I do walk funny but I’ve always walked funny. It’s my nature. My biggest fear is that they find a cure, nothing changes, and we discover I was just born a dork.
I may have Parkinson but Mr. Parkinson doesn’t have me!
Could you honestly say to me that all those years of loving on audiences and helping them learn while they laugh hasn’t influenced my handling of this minor inconvenience?
What past experiences… if you brought them forward and put them to work… might help you right now?
When you are hiring a new employee, understand that you are hiring past, present, and future behavior. The purpose of an interview is to learn enough about past performance to predict future behavior.
If a sixty-ish woman wearing a sequined leotard and carrying a baton applies at your place… hire her! She knows how to handle an audience.
Hawking, it’s the art of selling to mass audiences like you would find at a sporting event, carnival, or parade. It’s the job of a hawker to stand out but one stands above them all. He out-sells the other hawkers two, three, sometimes four to one! He stands out mostly because of his arresting pitch, never taking the easy way out, shouting, “Cold beer, here,” or “ice cold Coke, ice cold Coke!”
Nope, he just sings out, “That’s what I got! Thaaat’s what I got!”
And guess what the crowd wants to know… “what is it?” They are arrested!
I got to drive the shopping bus today navigating from one super sale to the next, dutifully camping in front of each store with other devoted husbands until the prizes appeared, waiting geek-like with my nose stuck in a business book, a yellow highlighter poking from my shirt pocket.
At one mall campsite a pleasant young woman, clipboard pressed against her chest, asked if I would participate in a marketing survey and promised a five dollar reward for ten minutes or so of my already loaded itinerary.
“Sorry,” I lied, instantly feeling guilty. “I don’t have time. Shopping duty,” I explained and then headed in search of a Radio Shack.
When I returned to my post in front of department store number three I smiled and asked how many participants she had landed while I was gone. “None,” she replied looking down as if checking to see if she was still wearing shoes.
Her pitch had been a straight-forward, “Excuse me, would you like to earn $5 for participating in a marketing study?”
“Let’s try something different. How about, ‘Can you help me out? We’re doing a marketing survey and I need two more participants to complete our panel. And… you’ll make a quick five bucks for sharing your opinion!’ ”
She mouthed the words in quick rehearsal. Almost immediately a mark appeared. Bamm! We got a hit!
My new research assistant winked at me as she led her catch to the survey room.
Back on post, she instantly zeroed in on what would become hit number two!
I can’t tell you that was the perfect pitch. In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t but it did make me think about the value of working on the pitch. I wanted to stick around to refine the pitch and calculate our batting average but was called away to reposition the SUV so my power shopper could stay on schedule.
I love a good pitch as much as I hate poorly constructed ones or pitches that seem contrived, mechanical, or intrusive.
I’d like to know who is the idiot who taught the cart vendors to accost shoppers with this blatant offense, “Can I ask you a question?” (No. You may not.)
Even a poorly constructed pitch can work if the delivery is exceptional. We watched (at least I did) a tall, gorgeous, young woman saunter to her drink station at a local water park. She popped up the bright umbrella, let the beach cover fall to her feet, and waited in a tiny string bikini for business to appear which took all of about ten seconds.
If you get even one part of the transaction really, really right the other parts can be a little wobbly.
Or how about our visit to Cancun where we mostly window shopped until hearing the world’s
best-worst pitch: “Senor? Help me get rid of this s_ _ _.” (Sanitized for your protection!)
Here’s what I wonder: How many sales are lost simply because the pitch wasn’t right? (Or never made!)
I see a great pitch as a three part process: hook, deal, and close. You can combine these three elements any way you want but all of them will be present in almost every successful transaction. If you want to see this process done by a pro, forget retailers and go to the masters, the carnies who operate the “stick joints” that line the midway at the county fair. Carnies have but split seconds to say or do something to grab your attention. ‘Think you’re that good?
(The following is excerpted from Borrowed Dreams.)
Think about it. A carnie must in an instant size you up and say something that will grab your attention, buy a little time, and allow him to set the hook.
Take all of your media budget and training programs. Compress them into three seconds and you begin to get a picture of what the carnie does instinctively. Take all of your focus groups and psychographic surveys and stuff them into a twelve-by-twelve booth with a colored awning and see how they would stack up against a carnie with a polished pitch.
If I have to give a name to what they do to make you look, I’d probably call it situational selling, although used car salesmen use a more colorful term, cold spearing. In a milli¬second, the experienced carnie sizes up the mark and creates a one-of-a-kind sales pitch.
Bone tired, I shuffled past the joints that should have been closed but were still milking marks for one last dollar. Two young women at the end of the last row of joints were comparing notes when I stopped to shoot the bull.
Their game was simple; pop two balloons with two darts and win a rather odd-looking hat that resembled something Dr. Seuss used to crown characters in Cat in a Hat (If you had kids, you’ll remember that one! The ‘prize’ was a gaudy, goofy hat that no one would want in the morning. Tall and floppy, made of plush something or the other, a stovepipe hat of garishly col¬ored rings. The customers loved them.
“So, give me your best pitch,” I asked.
“Easy….Hey, Bud! I can get you a better hat than that!” She snickered and pointed at my gimme cap, squatting low, mouth half-covered to make the mockery more dramatic.
A piece of cake. One quick glance and grab onto some¬thing, anything that you can use to personalize the pitch. Dr. Frazier Crane should be so astute.
Down the way, a rather earthy-looking carnie was wowing stragglers with a challenge to break beer bottles with a baseball. Everyone wants to break glass and here is this guy giving you permission… daring you, to do it in public, all you have to do is throw a baseball at a row of beer bottles (professionally emptied) stuck neck down in a two-by-six. One of the “marks” my grandmother would have described as a “tall drink of water” who was accompanied by a woman ten years his senior I would grudgingly describe as “pudgy in a too-short skirt.” They didn’t stand a chance.
“Win this for your little lady! Bet you can’t do it! Hey! Even girls can do this one!” (End of excerpt.)
Okay, not the best hook but it served the moment…customer’s attention focused, ready for the deal. Still, the carnie with the beer bottle bashing booth was smooth. And notice that the deal does not have to mention price, just terms. This last deal was simply, “Win this for your little lady.” And the close? “Bet you can’t do it! Hey! Even girls can do this one!”
As if to prove he had mastered the art, the carnie added, “Wait! I’ll get you started.” With that he knocked off the top bottle and placed the two baseballs into the hands of the mark.
There is more, much more to be said about how to construct your “pitch.” For now think about all the opportunities we have to pitch our products, our services, our ideas. And think how you might use hook, deal, and close to crank up sales. Hey! Even girls can do this one!
If you have a sample pitch you are willing to share, please send it to me at Scott@TScottGross.com
The happening place in Bandera, TX is the 11th street bar. I’m assuming it’s on 11th street but for the life of me I can’t imagine there being eleven streets in Bandera. Maybe if you count in both directions.
The big night is Wednesday, steak night. Five or six tall iron caldrons are filled with fresh charcoal and by six o’clock the fires are hot and the crowd has claimed their spot in the huge outdoor dance hall. On steak night you bring your own steak, cook it just the way you can’t blame someone else, and flop the sizzling results onto a paper plate filled with salad and twice-baked potato served by the lovely ladies in the cook shack. Four dollars, please!
The music is mostly country western and always on the mellow side to allow the families and friends gathered beneath the ancient oaks to enjoy a quiet conversation between bites and head-tilting swigs from a longneck.
In the tradition of small music venues everywhere there is a tip jar at the edge of the stage. The jar is always seeded with a few single bills no doubt from the wallets of the musicians and then just in case the audience is blind or stupid or just plain cheap there is a two by two paper patch taped to the side of the jar and in whatever color marker could be found, labeled ‘TIPS!”
One Wednesday evening three teen-aged girls from Galveston arrived with their parents. The girls were pretty and they knew it in the way that only teen-age girls could possibly understand. The girls, there being strength in numbers and the anonymity of being from out of town, found multiple reasons not to be at the family table. They paraded around giggling at the cowboys, stopping occasionally to dance in a tight all-girl circle on the broad concrete dance floor. They were, their grandma told me, hot stuff.
When the band stopped for a break the tall female lead singer sought out the girls and asked if they would be kind enough to pass around the tip jar.
“Peeps! What do we do?” they asked their grandma. The girls had somehow been promoted to “roadies,” a job for which they were totally unprepared.
“Just take the jar to each table, hold it out, and say, “If you’ve enjoyed the music, this is for the band!”
They did just that. In a matter of minutes the jar was filled to overflow a condition pretty unlikely had the jar been left to languish at the edge of the stage.
What were the dynamics at work that filled the jar?
As always, we look for the hook, the deal, and the close.
The hook… the attention arresting event… was obvious: three giggling girls wiggling their way to your table. Nobody says no to a naturally beautiful young woman.
The deal was a little more complicated. “If you’ve enjoyed the music, this is for the band.” What you can’t see but you can imagine is this being presented by three smiling, anxious faces.
If you don’t put buckos in the jarro you either a.) didn’t like the music or b.) are a cheap SOB. Try to explain that to the girls who would no doubt take the rebuff personally. Really, would you risk sending three delicate flowers crying to the ladies room for a couple of lousy bucks? Pony up, cowboy!
As the jar begins to fill another dynamic comes into play: social proof. In college we called this “bandwagon.” Once the tip jar begins to fill prospective tippers see that the infamous “everyone else” has contributed and therefore, they should too.
Here’s a quick quiz: What do you think would be the overall impact on total dollars collected if the girls had decided to empty the jar after every two or three tables?
What do you think would be the results had the girls decided to each carry a tip jar and gone to the tables separately/
What do you think if the girls had each carried a tip jar but approached the tables together?
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