Seth Godin wrote this the other day:
The Empathy of Magic
Magicians know where the trapdoors are, what’s up their sleeves and how to hide the ball.
And yet, mechanical skill is just the first step in being actually good at magic.
The real skill is in finding the empathy to imagine that someone else might believe. To do the trick for them, not to them.
The thought that jumped off the page for me was “Do it FOR them, not TO them“.
Many years ago I led a timeshare resort in the Cayman Islands. It was common practice in that industry to offer people a gift for a few hours of their vacation to talk to them about timeshare. The thinking was that “nobody wakes up in the morning thinking “I’ll buy a timeshare””, so they have to have the idea “sold” to them. There were widespread stories out there of companies who used a “hard sell” approach, techniques to get people to buy the product. Each sale generated commission (and a “buzz”) for the salesperson, so there could always be a danger of the motivation of the salesperson only being to close the sale, not give the customer what was right for them.
I will always remember our top salesperson though. They absolutely loved and believed in what they were selling, the wonder of a family having one perfect week each year at their gorgeous Cayman home, a place where they knew they would come and relax each year. No matter what else was going on in their lives, that customer, by buying their timeshare, had invested in themselves and their family for generations to come. This is what I believed about timeshare (and still do!), and, critically, this is what that top salesperson always believed. They were selling timeshare FOR the customers, not TO them. They were joyful every time they made a sale. Yes, they earned their commission, but for them, this was a by-product of matching another family with the forever vacation home of their dreams, the outcome, not the source of their motivation.
I didn’t personally take charge of hiring our salespeople, but I did try to meet each of them before we completed the hiring process. All I was interested in was finding out if they truly loved and believed in what we were selling. If I felt any sign at all that they didn’t, but simply thought it was something they could sell anyway, I would quietly leave that conversation and then veto the hire.
As I write this, I have a team of landscapers completely re-doing the garden of the house I moved into a few months ago. I’ve used them before and they are totally wonderful. They do great work and they take great pride in it. They do it FOR the customers.
Oh, and on another level, they do it FOR themselves and everyone on their team. They would never do a job that was less than the best they can possibly do. They do that for the customer and for themselves.