Stories and Culture

Stories are a great way to foster a culture. There are some great stories that can help your staff relate to selling. Did you ever go ice fishing? Do you even live up north where you can go ice fishing? I lived in Wisconsin as a kid, and not only did we do some ice fishing, but it was lots of fun to take cars out and drive around on the lakes. If you are not accustomed to the ice culture, you might say, “What, are you guys nuts?” and I’d say, “Well, yes, but the ice was thick!” Although there are always stories about the people who went out on the ice a day too early in the season or the ones who went out on the ice a day too late in the season. There are more than a few cars and snowmobiles at the bottom of Wisconsin lakes.

Greg Tyler told me this story and you should tell it to your staff people. This is part of the oral tradition of the selling culture. You have to pass on the good stories. Anyway, here’s how the story goes. If you know a little bit about ice fishing, you know it is its own culture, and you can buy as much gear for ice fishing as you can for anything else. There was this one guy who bought all of the gear. He had the fancy ice house that he could pull out on a trailer with his TV and VCR in there, with a heater and satellite connection and everything you’d want. He had his automatic fish finder, his power auger to get through the ice, and the most expensive ice fishing pole one could buy. He was sitting there one day with his hook down in the water. Nothing happened. Not a single nibble. He looked out the double-pane-insulated glass of his fishing hut and saw a little kid walk up to a spot in the ice not too far from him, with a bucket in his hand and a hatchet. The kid turns the bucket over upside down, sits down on the bucket, takes the hatchet and chops a little hole in the ice, and throws a string with a hook down in there. The guy in the fancy ice hut is watching for a little while because he thinks this is pretty funny. He started ice fishing the same way when he was a kid. He laughed, thinking of how frustrated the kid would be sitting out in the freezing cold on his bucket all day trying to catch one fish. Our friend in the fancy ice house was eager to start piling up all the fish his expensive gear would help him catch and was about to go back to his ice hole, when the kid pulls a fish out, and the guy chuckles. He thinks, “Isn’t that cute? Beginner’s luck.” The guy feels a little annoyed because he has already been out there for a while and he has nothing to show for it.

He is about to sit back down at his ice hole when he flips to the golf channel on his satellite TV. Just then, out of the corner of his eye he sees the kid pull another fish out of the lake. And then another one out. Now he’s starting to get a little annoyed because his $6,000 fish finder wasn’t helping him at all. So he gets out of his 72-degree ice house and walks over to the kid and says, “Hey kid, what’s your secret?” and the kid says “ Mum ah mum mum” or something like that. The guy has no idea what he said, thinks to himself, “Oh, great! The kid is Special Ed, too!” He turns around and goes back in his ice house. He throws his hook in again; nothing happening. Not a nibble. He sits there for a few minutes that seem like an hour. He looks out the window again; the kid’s got three more fish up on the ice. Now he’s really starting to get mad. So he gets out, walks over to the kid and says, “Kid, I’ve got to know your secret.” The kid says, “MUM AH MUM MUM”, and the guy says, “Look, Kid, I can’t understand your gibberish. You’ve got to tell me, what’s your secret?” So the kid holds his hand up in front of his mouth, spits some worms out into his hand and says quite matter of fact “Keep your bait warm!” You can imagine our friend with all the fancy gear stood humbled for at least a moment or two.

What do you do to keep the bait warm in your business? Do you have a warm, friendly smile when people come in? Are you sure to make an extra walk around the property to see that there’s no litter floating around your place? Is the unit that you’re showing your customer actually swept out? Are you keeping your bait warm, or are you relying on your gadgets and expensive advertising and concessions to bring you business?

Here’s another good story about selling. Have you ever worked in retail? I did for a while. I worked in a toy store during the Christmas holidays one year wile I was in High School, so I can relate to some of the challenges of helping retail customers.

Well, there was this young guy right out of high school that went to work for a fantastic department store. Now it’s not your normal department store; it was like Penney’s and Dillard’s and Cabella’s and Wal-Mart and an auto mall all wrapped into one. Everything you could possibly imagine was there. The owner took an interest in all of the new people. So the owner came down from the office and introduced himself to the kid and said, “Well, I hope you have a good first day” and went back up to the office. At the end of the day came, the owner went downstairs to see how the kid did. He said, “Well, Kid, how did you do today? How many customers did you help today?” and the kid said, “Well, I…I helped one customer today.” The owner starts getting red in the face, “You were here all day, and you helped ONE customer? What did you sell him?” “Well, I sold him a fishing hook.” (I like fishing stories; you can tell!)

So the owner said, “You sold him a fishing hook?” and the kid said, “Yes and then after that we found out he didn’t have a rod and reel, so we went over and picked him out the latest new reel with the luxury rod and got him a whole big tackle box full of all of the stuff he’d need.” And the owner goes, “Okay, that’s good. Is that all you sold him?” and the kid goes, “No, no. We found out he didn’t have any outdoor clothes, so we went over to the outdoor clothes department and got him waders and a big coat and some camo gear while we were at it and some new boots. He looked real sharp. And then we found out he didn’t have a fishing boat, so we went over to the boat department and picked him out a beautiful boat that was going to be just right for what he wanted to do. But he didn’t have a trailer, so we had to add a trailer to that. And then we found out that he drove over here this morning in his little Volkswagen Jetta and couldn’t haul anything with it. So we went over to the truck department and got him a new GMC 3500 dual wheel on-demand four wheel drive super torque, and he drove off.”

By this time the owner’s jaw is to the ground and he’s thinking he needs to find out more. He says, “This is incredible! You sold all of this to a guy who came in looking for a fishing hook?” And the kid said, “Well, actually, I was working in the pharmacy early this morning and he came in looking for Band-Aids and I happened to say to him, “It would be a nice weekend to go fishing, don’t you think?”**If this isn’t a good example of suggestive selling, I don’t know what is. How many times do you have people come in to rent a truck and you forget to ask them about a storage unit? Or how many times do people come in to buy boxes and you forget that they’re going to need to put their boxes somewhere? You do it from time to time; you get busy and forget to take an extra second with a customer. How many times have you talked to someone on the phone and given them your store hours and then realized that you’ve hung up without asking them if they needed a storage unit? Don’t let it happen again. You are giving away money every time you do that. Take these silly stories and find some more that you like and share them with your people. Because all of these stories help people get the mindset of being in selling mode all of the time and being “on” with their sales techniques. This allows you, then, to track things like personal bests. Do you even have legends in your company about the day that someone rented ten units to the same company, or when so-and-so rented 27 units in a day? There are fantastic feats of selling that happen in your company. Find them. Celebrate

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