A couple of weeks ago a buddy of mine and his wife came out to Honey Lake to spend a relaxed night together in one of our cottages far away from the kids. They asked my wife and me to join them for dinner and the conversation turned to some problems he was having with an employee.
It seems that every time he tried to tell this person to do something that was even slightly out of the ordinary, he met stiff resistance and they demonstrated a demeanor of telling him that what he wanted to accomplish simply couldn’t be done. He told me that it was difficult and frustrating to work with this person who otherwise was an excellent employee.
I told him that it had been my experience that most people don’t think they can achieve anything significant, and his plight was not unusual. I once had an employee who exhibited similar traits. I had an appointment with a large potential customer in Kansas City and it was going to cost roughly $1000 to fly out there and present our software to them. I didn’t want to fly all of the way out there just to see one potential client and I desired more appointments to make my trip more cost effective. I was extremely busy preparing for the trip and I asked my subordinate to get me a couple of more appointments in the Kansas City area that I could go see while I was out there.
He left my office and in about five minutes at most he was back knocking on my office door. He came in and matter of factly told me that he couldn’t find anyone who would see me. Steam shot out of my ears, my face turned red, my jugular vein enlarged, my eyes started twitching, and my jaws tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed. I shouted at him loud enough to be heard three blocks away, “You go back out there and try again; only this time you do it like your JOB DEPENDS ON IT! BECAUSE IT DOES PAL!
He turned white as a sheet and in about ten minutes returned with four appointments.
Hmmm… I’m kinder and gentler now. I counseled one of our resort sales staff employees just the other day who was struggling a little. Honey Lake Resort sells itself, but we have to get people out to the plantation to visit and see the majesty of it in person in order to succeed in booking events. Therein was this person’s problem. So far he had not been able to convince anyone to come out and visit the plantation and thus he was struggling mightily in making sales.
I told him that he should just offer to drive these potential customers out to our location, buy their lunch, and drive them around a little and his problems would be resolved. He seemed perplexed as to how to convince someone to come out to Honey Lake, so I posed the following question to him: “If it was 9:00 in the morning and someone was holding your mother captive and looked at you with mean eyes and held your mothers head under his arm and jammed a gun barrel against her temple and told you through gritted teeth, ‘Either you bring someone out here to tour the plantation today by 5:00 p.m. or I’m gonna put a bullet in your mama’s head’, and you believed every word that they just uttered, do you think you could convince someone to come out here for a tour?”
By this time my salesperson’s eyes were very wide and the color on his face had drained to a sickly white color. He shook his head rapidly and emphatically ‘yes’.
I nonchalantly told him, “Good, now go out there and sell with that same intensity and you’ll be our number one salesperson before you know it.”
I told my buddy to feel free to use my techniques on his secretary.
He laughed heartily and told me that it might be just a teeny bit harsh for his purpose and not fit in all that well in his stately office environment, but he would give it due consideration. I quipped, that he should keep in mind that if he wanted me to serve on his board of directors that those are the kind of nuggets I could bring to the table and he could expect from me. He smiled and told me that he would keep that foremost in his mind.
Okay I’m a redneck, but I’m an effective redneck and my staff and I get a myriad of big wonderful things accomplished in a short amount of time. Most anyone can accomplish far more than they think they can. You just gotta believe in yourself and in your God. Have faith and go after your dreams and don’t take any prisoners. (Oops, if there are any namby pambys who got offended by that last remark, I’m sorry I just couldn’t resist.)
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!
Matthew 17:20
Jesus answered, “Because your faith is too small. I tell you the truth, if your faith is as big as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. All things will be possible for you.”
Matthew 21:21
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will be able to do what I did to this tree and even more. You will be able to say to this mountain, ‘Go, fall into the sea.’ And if you have faith, it will happen.
Matthew 14:31
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught Peter. Jesus said, “Your faith is small. Why did you doubt?”