Published A headline in the Wednesday April 2, 2003 Wall Street Journal hints (rather loudly) about the end of the world based on a drop of manufacturing activity. A specific phrase caught my attention: “the continued unraveling of the late 1990’s excesses”. I’m no economic genius but I have a fairly decent memory. Didn’t I hear something similar about the excesses of the 80’s and before that, the 70’s?
Back in 1984 I was the lead salesman for an accounting office in Fort Worth, Texas. The country was officially in a recession, yet we led the entire nation in new sales that year. Why? I guess there were many reasons. For one thing, we saw a lot of people. We had a marketing machine (albeit a primitive one) that didn’t rely on just one person’s efforts. All that helped. But I think the thing that made the real difference was that we were focused on taking extreme care of the people we worked with. We had a mission to change the lives of the people who might become our clients. That mission started when it was made very clear to me by the CEO of the company at a national convention in Chicago that we were not in the accounting or tax business. We were not in the business of providing financial statements and tax work. What we really did was save people’s lives and families. The people we were calling on were in a life and death struggle to make their businesses succeed and failure could mean their kids weren’t going to college; they might lose the house and even their family. I recognized that this was more, so much more than a sales job. My entire mission for all of 1984 was simple: Save Those Families.
We breathed it, ate it, slept it and at the end of the year, without realizing it, we had enrolled more new clients in our office than any single office in the entire country. That was over 400 other offices. Frankly I was stunned when we were given the top producers award in the 1985 convention because that wasn’t where my mission lay. We were saving families! That was all that mattered.
A powerful reminder of the potential in the worst economies is contained in a recent white paper published by CEG Worldwide. Even as the markets were plummeting there was a certain group of financial advisors who were doing quite well. In fact wealth under management for this group had grown 30 times more than the second group over a 6-month period. The defining difference? While most of the advisors claimed to be “client-centered” versus “investment-centered”, the successful ones (less than 14%) actually lived it. That was the difference. They were the ones who talked to and met with their clients; they reassured them; they actively prospected; they responded to inquiries; they asked clients for referrals. Now this may seem like a “duh” kind of list, but it is just this kind of obvious stuff that makes the difference. A difference of 3000%!
Like in so many businesses where everyone seems much the same, this special group lives a mission that truly has their client’s success at its core. Like my sales team in 1984, they are “saving families”, not crunching numbers.
Right now, many are going through some down times because of the war in Iraq, 9-11 aftermath, the dot-com bust, etc. Now is the time to turn to the core values that define who you are as an individual and as a company. Look to your customers good as your personal mission. Find out what they really want from you, for themselves and what they are dreaming of and fearfully avoiding. That is the kind of passion that will keep you at the top of their mind and, most importantly, in their hearts.
April 16, 2003
The End of the World (Again)
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