Lesson Two

YOU MUST BECOME AN EXPERT IN THE TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY

If there are aspects of the industry that are not familiar to you, it is imperative that you learn as much about a lot of things as time allows. For example, if you do not understand something about a truck and its primary parts that affect our business, ask people who have driven. If they cannot tell you then Google it. There is no excuse in this day and age for remaining ignorant about anything especially if it has the potential to make you more successful in your career. You need to make yourself indispensable as a resource to your customers. Every time you call them you need to give them something of value and in turn get something of value from them. It can be as simple as a pickup number or as important as a rate they are paying a competitor. BEFORE you call, decide what you want to get from them during that call. And decide what you want to give them about Trinity or about you (same thing!!! As you ARE their Trinity). A poorly planned call results in a waste of time for them and you. Make the most of their time by giving them something and getting something from them in return. Take notes if it is phone and transpose them to an email to yourself and save it in your CRM or Outlook folder if you don't use a CRM.

Building Relationships--- Part One of Six

HOW TO FARM AN ACCOUNT IN 6 (not so easy) LESSONS

Lesson Number I

YOU MUST HAVE A RELATIONSHIP

You must inject your personality and life experiences into the dialog. Ask them about themselves and find out what you have in common and play to that strength. Keep an email file just on their personal responses so you can go back and refer to this before each call. If they don’t email, summarize their conversation in an email to yourself and save it in the file. Keep special events on your Outlook calendar and do not stop remembering to email or call them even if you are no longer the account manager. It means even more to them and their relationship with Trinity if they hear from someone who they perceive has nothing to gain from them financially. It will help your successor in the account. We have Team Organizational Charts with pictures. Establish something like this for your team. Use this to your advantage with your customers and encourage them to find out more about us as you find out more about them. It is a very obvious concept: Friends like doing business with friends. Pick the brains of those who are successful at doing this.

After you find out this stuff from your customers…………………

tell your customers about yourself, your children, your grandchildren, your wives, your girlfriends, you’re friends, the area, what you do for leisure, who your favorites teams are, sports interests, and family life events. The list is endless. Get yourself into their lives and them into yours.

You do this one thing right and the rest of this we are about to discuss will come much easier!!!

Christmas Reflections

I have never quite gotten over Christmas. Thank God for that! In many ways, I still view it as I did as a kid growing up in Federalsburg, Maryland. As I sit here and write this, I can feel the excitement welling up inside of me even though it is only the sixth day of December. I am sure this is also due in no small part to the Christmas music playing in my ear. I start listening to the music of the season the day after Thanksgiving and continue it until New Year's. I still get up early Christmas morning and ALWAYS dream of a White Christmas. We did not have that many white ones in those days of yore but when we did it was glorious. Christmas Eve was the time for our family and friends to gather, eat and exchange gifts but the first order of business was to deliver Christmas dinners to families less fortunate. While as a kid I found this to be a major inconvenience, it is now one of the highlights of my Christmas memories. Then it was off to bed anticipating getting up at 5AM or earlier to see what Santa brought us. It was so exciting I could hardly contain myself. After breakfast of buckwheat cakes (batter made the night before by my MomMus Adams) and homemade McMahon brand sausage, we ventured out to visit our friends to see what St Nick had laid under their trees. Back home we waited for the reciprocal visits which went on all day long. Leftovers were for dinner which included my Mom's fried potato cakes made from the mashed ones left from Christmas dinner. A pat of butter on top and gravy over that made for a gourmet treat of unimaginable proportions. I come from a family of lengthy prayers. My Pop Pop Dobson was a retired minister and after he went to be with the Lord, my Dad took over the blessing duties and he was equally as long winded. I, to some degree, have carried on their tradition. We Dobson's have always ended our blessings with "Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and us to thy service in Christ's name. Amen" My family came to the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1715 and I suspect that blessing has come down from the original settler, John Dobson. I hope it does not end with me.
I believe very firmly and fervently in The Butterfly Effect which in the 90s became a bona fide scientific theory after being laughed at for years. A butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the earth and the motion of air from that can potentially set off a chain reaction that can cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe. Every action you take or don't take, every move you make has repercussions for mankind all over the world. May each of you flap your positive butterfly wings in someone's life and influence it and may that influence continue to bear fruit.
God Bless You Everyone!!!

Be Prepared!!

One of the groups of people I have watched intently throughout my sales career are lawyers. I, like the majority of Americans, do not especially care for lawyers as a professional group. I do, however, recognize that there are many things to be learned by a sales professional from a professional trial attorney. Most movies that center around court room trials also show the preparation by the attorneys outside the court room. A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise is a great example. The defense team spends countless hours of research and "what if" scenarios to hopefully eliminated the dreaded court room surprises. Surprises are also the kiss of death for sales professionals. While you cannot avoid them totally, you can set the odds in your favor by being prepared. It is essential you know as much or more about the company with which you are dealing as your contact does which sounds impossible. It does "sound" impossible but you will find that many people who are in traffic are very unfamiliar with the production side of the business and you, as a side benefit, can actually help them by being prepared.

Trust

I could write a book here about TRUST and the literally hundreds of ways one can build TRUST. I want you to think about how easily TRUST can be eroded if you have not thoroughly prepared your backup person as how to handle your customers when you are absent from your chair.
I had a mentor early on in my sales career who was my sales manager. The worst salesman I have ever met and I avoided taking him to my accounts like he was the plague. The best sales manager I have ever had, however! Like most baseball managers, being a great player does not assure great managerial qualities. Ted Williams was a flop as a manager and was arguably the best hitter in baseball and is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Anyway, my manager back in the 70s told me that I should exercise what he called the "alien abduction concept" as far as I how I handled my job. Assume that at any moment I would be abducted by aliens never to return to this planet and that someone would have to take over my job immediately without missing a beat. The point was that he, as my backup, needed to know everything and anything about my accounts and what was going on in same. This was before the computer age so I had to do all of this in writing (I could not type then either!) in the form of sales reports which were done immediately after the call and mailed weekly. BUT there they were on my desk up to date every day. If I was on Venus (my choice if I were an abductee), at least my survivors could mail them in.
You all have an electronic communication tool and if you are not keeping your customer file up to date with all the information necessary, you risk losing the TRUST you have worked so hard to build with your customers.
There are places in there for notes and quotes. Your backup or managers should be able to go into that customer file and act almost as you would in managing the account.
TRUST requires an investment of your time and making sure your backup is as TRUSTWORTHY as you are in your customers eyes is an investment you cannot afford to miss!!!

In our backups we TRUST,
Dan