Why the Silence?

I've been fortunate over the years to work with some pretty remarkable people. Great leaders, customers, competitors, industry friends, and a few characters who probably deserve their own chapter in a book.

I've also known a few people who could make a perfectly good day feel like a root canal.

But here's something I've come to appreciate after more than 40 years in business and a few more years figuring out life.

The people you surround yourself with have a lot to do with the person you become.

And I'm not just talking about the people you work with.

Think about the people in your world. The folks you work alongside, the relationships you've developed across your industry, and the friends and family you spend time with when the workday is over.

Are they making you better? Or are they just making you comfortable?

I've had some pretty spirited discussions over the years with people I respect. Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes we were so far apart you'd have thought we were talking about two different subjects.

And sometimes, after listening to the other guy, I had to admit he made a pretty good point.

Imagine that.

You can disagree with somebody without deciding they're an idiot.

Somewhere along the way, we've gotten pretty good at turning a difference of opinion into a personal insult. Raise your voice, question somebody's intelligence, and if that doesn't work, just stop talking to them.

Whatever happened to being able to disagree with somebody and still have a decent conversation?

Think about the relationships you've spent years developing. Friends, family, coworkers, customers, and people you've come to respect across your industry. Years of conversations, shared experiences, helping each other through difficult situations, and building trust.

Then one day you disagree about something. Maybe something important. Maybe something that really gets under your skin.

And suddenly you're willing to throw away years of respect over one moment of disagreement?

C'mon. What the hell are we doing?

You don't have to change your opinion. You don't even have to like theirs.

But if one disagreement can wipe out everything you've built together, maybe you ought to ask yourself how much you valued that relationship in the first place.

Now, before anybody gets the idea that I've got all this figured out, let me introduce you to my wife. She's been putting up with me for nearly as long as I've been tracking mud in the house and smelling diesel fumes.

Occasionally, I can't see much beyond the end of my own nose. The glass isn't just half empty; I'm looking to blame somebody for drinking the other half.

That's usually when she looks at me and says, "OK, Mr. Negative."

And just like that, I get the message.

Do I always appreciate hearing it? Probably not. But after all these years, she's earned the right to tell me when my thinking needs a little adjustment.

And I'd be a fool not to listen.

That's what good relationships are supposed to do. The people who make us better aren't always telling us something new. Sometimes they're reminding us of something we already know but don't particularly want to admit.

But here's where the shoe ends up on the other foot.

Are you that person for somebody else?

When a friend, coworker, or someone you respect asks for your opinion, are you willing to tell them what you really think? Or do you take the easy way out, nod your head, and tell them what they want to hear?

I've never believed you do somebody a favor by agreeing with a bad idea just to keep the peace.

That doesn't mean you need to hit them in the forehead with a 2x4 either.

There's a big difference between being honest and being obnoxious. I've probably crossed that line a time or two myself.

But if somebody trusts you enough to ask what you think, don't insult them by giving them an answer you don't believe.

And when the roles are reversed, you'd better be willing to listen.

You can't spend your life telling everybody how much you value honesty and then get your underwear in a bunch when somebody disagrees with you.

So here's something to think about over your next cup of coffee.

If the people closest to you were asked whether they could count on you for an honest opinion, what would they say?

And here's the tougher question.

Would they feel comfortable telling you that your opinion was wrong?

Because if the answer to that second question is no, you might not be making the people around you better.

You might just be teaching them to shake their head and keep their damn mouth shut.

See you next week…

The journey continues.

— HAMP

Neither One of Us Was Going to Quit

I've spent a lot of years telling salespeople that you can't learn much about a customer's business sitting behind a desk.

You've got to get out there. Ask questions. Look around. And sometimes get your shoes a little dirty.

But every once in a while, you need somebody riding along who's just as stubborn as you are.

Let me tell you about Jay.

Years ago, when I was working in Full-Service Truck Leasing and Dedicated Contract Carriage, I decided to spend a day riding with Jay, one of our top account managers.

We headed out of Columbus for a three-hour drive to Pittsburgh to meet with a prospective customer.

Now, Jay had been a pretty accomplished athlete in high school and Division III college sports. Competitive? Oh, you bet.

And I wasn't exactly known for backing away from a challenge myself.

We spent most of the drive talking sports, swapping stories that probably got a little better with every mile, and occasionally remembering we were supposed to be talking business.

We had a good customer meeting and started heading back toward Columbus.

Somewhere along the interstate, we stopped for gas.

While Jay was filling up, I noticed a big warehouse sitting down in a valley, out in the middle of nowhere.

I asked him, "You know who's in that place?"

"Nope."

"Want to find out?"

And off we went.

A cold call on steroids.

When we pulled up, we spotted rental trucks from one of our competitors sitting at the loading docks.

Well, now things were getting interesting.

Except there wasn't anybody around.

No activity in the offices. Nobody hanging around the docks. Doors locked.

A perfectly good reason to get back in the car and head home.

But neither of us was giving up our man card first.

Then we heard a truck fire up. We looked at each other.

Somebody to talk to!

We found a dock worker getting a load of steel ready for delivery the next morning, and we started asking questions.

Who was shipping out of the warehouse? Who made the transportation decisions? Where was the boss located?

Turns out he was in Chicago.

We even learned how our competitor's rental trucks were doing.

And here's something that caught my attention.

The fellow told us he'd never seen anybody from that leasing company come out to the warehouse.

Think about that.

They had trucks sitting at his docks, but as far as he knew, nobody from the company they were renting from had bothered to come see what was happening out there.

We thanked him, got back in the car and started toward Columbus.

But we weren't finished.

We made a call to Chicago on the way home. That conversation eventually turned into business for Jay, not just at that warehouse but at other locations around the country. All because two guys spotted a building in a valley and decided to find out what was going on.

Now, I could tell you this is a story about prospecting, persistence or finding opportunities where other people aren't looking.

And it is.

But there's something else I remember about that afternoon.

We fed off each other's curiosity and competitive nature. When one of us spotted something worth chasing, the other was ready to go after it.

And Jay learned something about me that day, too.

Having a boss who wasn't afraid to get his shoes dirty right alongside you wasn't such a bad way to spend an occasional day on the road. No lectures about sales techniques. No sitting in the passenger seat telling him what he should be doing.

Just two guys working together, asking questions and chasing a deal neither of us knew existed three hours earlier.

Jay landed the business. I got to know one of our best account managers a little better.

And neither of us lost our man card that day.

But here's something worth thinking about.

When was the last time you spent a day working alongside the people who make your business run? Salespeople, mechanics, parts guys, drivers, shop employees. The folks who deal with the problems your reports don't always show.

Not walking through to shake a few hands. Not making an appearance because somebody put it on your calendar.

Actually spending time doing what they do.

And here's the uncomfortable part.

If you showed up tomorrow to work alongside your people, would they be glad to have you there, or would they wonder what the hell you were doing there?

That answer might tell you more about your leadership style than you want to admit.

See you next week…

The journey continues.

— HAMP

We Looked Like the Beverly Hillbillies

I've had a little quirk over the years when visiting facilities we're selling into or selling out of.

I take pictures. Back then with a small camera, and these days with my iPhone.

Not necessarily of the equipment or the people. I'm talking about the facility itself. The building, the parking lot, the entrance, the landscaping and whatever else happens to be sitting around.

And here's the important part. I don't look at those pictures until the next day.

Then I sit down and study them.

Funny what you'll notice when you're looking at a picture instead of something you've walked past a hundred times.

The landscaping that needs trimming. The fence that could use a coat of paint. And that big oil spot right in front of the entrance door.

You know the one. The oil spot everybody's been stepping around for the last year.

Your customer sees it. You don't.

You've been walking past it every morning for so long that it's become part of the scenery.

Let me tell you about a time when those pictures got me into a pretty uncomfortable situation.

Years ago, I started a new job with a company that had 18 locations. As I began visiting them, something caught my attention.

They looked terrible.

Overgrown landscaping, buildings needing attention, parking lots and entrances that hadn't seen much love in a while.

We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.

C'mon. Is anybody paying attention to what our customers see when they pull in here?

So I started asking the location managers why their facilities looked that way. Interestingly enough, I kept getting pretty much the same answer.

They'd submitted appearance improvements in their annual budgets, but when those budgets were approved, the owner had taken those expenses out and moved the money to the bottom line.

Well, that explained a few things.

The location managers knew their facilities needed attention. But the money to do something about it wasn't there.

I figured there was a better way to make the point than walking into a management meeting and complaining about trimming bushes and painting fences.

I'd let the pictures do the talking.

I started taking pictures of our competitors in each city and comparing them to our locations. Same markets. Same customers we were trying to earn business from.

Very different first impressions.

Now, you've got to remember, this was back when a slide presentation actually meant slides.

First, I had to take the pictures with my little camera, drop the film off at the 1-Hour Photo, pick up the prints and spread them out to decide which ones told the story I wanted to tell.

Then I had to take the selected photographs back and have them made into slides for the projector.

No PowerPoint. No moving things around five minutes before the meeting. No last-minute edits.

What I'd prepared was what everybody was going to see.

And I'd gone all in.

Our facility. Their facility. Side by side.

Then came the senior management meeting.

About three facilities into the presentation, the owner stood up.

"I've seen enough."

And walked out of the room.

Well, son of a gun.

There I sat, in front of the entire senior management team, with a projector full of slides and absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.

Was he mad? Had I embarrassed him? Had I just turned a presentation about landscaping into a career-ending event?

I didn't know.

Fifteen minutes of managers, including the owner's son, looking at each other in silence.

Nobody said a word.

Then the owner walked back into the room, looked at all of us and said,

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

He told every location manager to get their facilities looking better than our competitors.

And here's the important part.

He followed through.

The facilities started getting the attention they needed. The landscaping was maintained, the buildings looked better and the entrances started looking like places where somebody actually cared about doing business.

But something else happened.

The employees started taking pride in where they worked again.

Think about that.

For years, those location managers had been watching their appearance budgets get cut. The people working at those facilities walked past the same neglected surroundings every morning.

Now somebody was investing in their workplace.

It wasn't just the buildings getting a little paint. It was the people getting a little pride back.

And that pride has a way of showing up in how people work, how they treat their customers and how they represent the company.

Over the next five years, we grew from 18 locations to 56, with stronger earnings per location than the company had ever experienced.

Now, I'm not going to tell you that trimming bushes and painting fences made all that happen.

C'mon.

There were plenty of other things going on in the business.

But don't underestimate what happens when employees are proud of where they work.

That pride walks out the front door and meets your customers every day.

And I've got to give the owner credit.

He could have come back into that meeting and defended his budget decisions. He could have explained why appearance improvements weren't a priority.

He didn't.

He saw something he hadn't seen before, changed his mind and did something about it.

There's a difference between managing the bottom line and leading a business.

Sometimes you have to look beyond what something costs and recognize what neglect might be costing you.

Last week in The Yard, we talked about a salesman cleaning out the back seat of his pickup while his customer stood waiting to go to lunch.

This week, we're looking at an entire company that needed to clean up its own backyard.

Different circumstances. Same problem.

We'd gotten so used to what we were looking at that we'd stopped seeing what our customers saw.

So here's what I suggest you do.

The next time you pull into your facility, park next to that big oil spot everybody's been walking around for the last year.

Pull out your phone and take a few pictures.

The building. The entrance. The landscaping. The parking lot. All those little things you've probably stopped noticing.

Then put your phone away.

Don't look at those pictures until tomorrow.

When you do, take a good look at what you've captured. Not as somebody who's been walking through that door every morning, but as somebody seeing the place for the very first time.

You might be surprised.

You might even be a little embarrassed, because the devil is in the details.

But remember, your customer has been looking at those same things all along.

See you next week…

The journey continues.

— HAMP