The fat toad who wanted to rise

The fat toad who wanted to rise
Adapted from a tale in Hans Bemann’s, “The Stone and the Flute”.

There was once a large fat toad with beautiful golden eyes who had grown fat eating swamp flies. When not eating flies he dreamed of eating flies and amidst his dreams he would say, "One day I shall have so many flies and I shall rise above all of this.”

His dreams became so real that eventually he stopped catching and eating flies, thinking only of the myriad flies he would have one day when he would rise above his circumstances. He stopped eating flies. He became thinner.His beautiful golden eyes lost their lustre.

A stork pecked him up, swallowed him and flew high in the air to share him with her chicks.

Fortunately he was so bony he stuck in her throat and she coughed him out. As he came falling and floating back to the swamp, he said, “I don’t think I wanted to rise quite that high.”
He took that as a lesson. He stopped dreaming of things that might one day be as if they were guaranteed just by having been dreamed, and started catching and eating his daily feed of flies once more.

My Kick in the Pants for You:
Yes. Dare to dream. Dream big dreams for small dreams have no magic. But don’t forget to catch and eat your flies today.

Recommendation

There’s a lot of hooey going around about Work-Life Balance. The general blah goes, join a gym, leave work early, meditate, eat more vegetables and fish, ride bikes with your children, turn off the TV, and my favourite; “take time for you” (Sigh!!) It’s all good advice, but for most busy leaders it might as well be, “Wear flowers in your hair, fray your bell-bottoms, paint your Kombi Van in psychedelic colours and go around saying, “Heavy, Man”." It doesn’t touch responsible leaders whose heads are in another universe entirely. This book does. It’s by my favourite author so I recommend it strongly to frazzled leaders or partners of leaders whose dreams have developed middle aged droop.
Get it here.

Cheers
Colin Pearce
Raconteur

Who really cares if the President's approval ratings go up or down?

The world has gone mad about approval ratings. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Princes, Town Mayors, NRL and AFL coaches——everyone is getting rated except the people taking polls and the people publishing them.

"O-o-o-o-o-o-h-h! President Obama's approval ratings are down. Flames, earthquakes, agues and boils will break out and the world will end at midnight."

How it started
Feedback forms and polls became a trend that started when suggestion boxes lay empty for years and photocopiers became ubiquitous and phones got buttons. Today you wouldn't bother with feedback forms if you had to get your "seccatry" to cut a wax Gestetner stencil and run the paper through a stinky inky noisy printer. Phone pollsters wouldn't ring you if they had to dial your number using the circular clickety clack reverse-wind dial.

Who's counting?
People have come to believe feedback is the ‘"correct" thing to do. It's the sort of exercise driven by try-hard training managers because they read about it in a magazine or by bean counters who like doing cost analyses. ‘You have to measure your outcomes,' they say. But how come no-one analyses the cost of doing the cost analysis?

Dopey
When I started speaking professionally it was the done thing to "elicit feedback" but I woke up pretty quickly that this was dopey. Research Statistics #101 taught me:

Belly-achers
10% of any audience will hate any presenter for any reason. So if there are 200 people in the audience there's 20 negative responses you can be guaranteed to get. These are usually the keenest to respond too. Taking a survey just tells you who your whiners are. Why would I want to know? Tell me you acted on it by sacking the mongrels and that would be news.

Poll Dancers
Another 10%—also keen to express their opinion—will respond negatively to a poll just because they were asked to take part in a poll and they think that's what is required in polls. I think it's called Polling Syndrome. There's another 20 negative responses you can guarantee. Any one of any of these is enough to quell one's desire to live.

Unpredictables
The middle 40% may or may not respond at all but if they do it will be with a mix of positive and negative responses, depending on a number of factors:
the wording of the questions,
> who is asking,
> how they normally respond to polls,
> their mood at the time of responding,
> how "intellectual" they want you to believe they are,
> whether they want to be noticed
> what they think you want to hear
> what they think you are too stupid to work out for yourself
> whether or not they like the pollster,
> the time of day
> whether or not they want your job and
> their level of annoyance or happiness at being asked.

Undependables
The last 40% will be a mixed bunch of ‘"happy enough" ranging to ‘"delighted" but still few of these will give you any response worth banking. The speaker could have appealed to them physically——I've had to adjust the ratings down many times because of this factor in my case——or might have smiled at them twice or let them have the last cookie at morning tea.

I saw a speaker's website blurb that read, "Over the past 15 years she has averaged 97% audience approval ratings." Yeah, right! Some silly people will say anything and expect other silly people to believe it.

So no doubt you'll have an opinion on this and you'll probably feel the need to share it with me, —for my own good, of course. Yes I know. You have to give me a little bit of feedback.
Ahhh, dear!
Go on then.
I'll just lie back and think of England.

I bought a car

A good friend connected me to the right dealer, with the right car.
The young man who demonstrated the first car to me was a perfect gentleman. His product knowledge was excellent. I just couldn't help wondering though if I had not been a referred and locked-in buyer would I have endured the rigours of the presentation.

You see he didn't talk about the only thing I wanted to hear about. And if you've known me for a while you can guess what I wanted to hear about.

Yep...

Me - the nicest guy in the world, the centre of the universe, the only person I think about from dawn till dusk. Same as you. Same as your customers.

How many more times do I have to shout this? Don't talk about what it is. Don't talk about what it does. Talk about what it does for me!

Ask, Ask, Ask
And before you start, ask me if I want to know what you are about to tell me. And as you are telling me ask me if you're telling me what I thought I'd hear. The fine young man started telling me I could fit two travel cases in the boot and my tennis balls in one of the boot pockets and my golf balls in the other but didn't ask me if I played tennis or golf. If he had he would have found out I developed tendonitis playing golf and can barely lift a double gelato cone let alone my travel cases. He told me about how easy the boot was to pack but didn't ask me if I was the packer. In fact he didn't ask me anything. He just waddled up to the boot and started quacking as if I really wanted to know everything about a car's boot. As if!! In the end I turned that car down because of the road noise-nothing to do with the boot.

It's not enough!
I could go on. It's not enough to be well-groomed, well mannered and knowledgeable - although that would be a nice start for most salespeople. Please dear reader... ask me questions. I am your customer. I want you to notice me, pander to me, love me, and sell me what I want and the only way you'll win my heart (and my money) is if you ask me questions about my favourite topic. Me!

Thought
Are you sure you couldn't do with a one day seminar brush up on your sales skills? Call me or leave a response here.

My Kick in the Pants for You:
Ask. Ask, ask ask, ask, ask and when you're done asking, ask if there's anything you haven't asked.

Cheers
Colin Pearce

Trying to buy a car

Today's Saga: Trying to buy a car. But first, an advert

Advert
Please read the message on this site. It's about you.
In New Zealand last week the all-day seminar featured one session about the phone. I've been teaching this stuff for 25 years and am still amazed that audiences tell me it is so worthwhile. I KNOW from listening to thousands of mystery shopping calls for clients that you can confidently count on increasing your sales by 10% to 30% if you do your phonework right. I KNOW you are losing that much right now. Read the feisty opinionated article and you will see what I mean.
Get the Great Phone Skills pack with its e-Book and 4 free MP3s.


Anyway...

Trying to buy a car
See if you can get the picture:

The economy is all gloom and misery.

The car industry is in tatters.

Car yards are closing quicker than window shutters during a Taliban hunt for girls with school books.

You'd think every car salesperson would therefore be over the moon at the sight of a nice man like me whose opening remark is, "Hi. Wife and teenagers over 15 years have driven her car into the ground — it won't even start — so we need a new one now."

You'd think — over the moon. You'd think they would use some of my pet phrases from Balancing the Sale. Something like. "Thanks for coming in. Can I ask you a couple of questions to see how I can help you best. First of all, what kind of car is the one you want to replace? Have you been happy with it? Is there anything about it you'd like to change? etc..."

You'd be dead wrong.

All I can find are oxygen thieves. God's beloved and hugely nice people everyone of them, but fair dinkum! It's 2009 and they're still acting like they're selling donkeys and wooden wheeled wagons to Bedouins in Basra.

"How much ya wanna spend?" (How in blazes would I know? What is there to buy?)

"Watcharfta?" (If I knew that I would have bought it off the internet)

"Yeah. Seen anythink ya like?" (Errrr!)

"The ‘XYZ' is a good car." (Whee!)

Home truth time"
So, are your people any better? You'd think so but then you are the person who thought I'd be getting treated like royalty by members of the desperate car industry. What about checking again. Even ask yourself how your own selling skills are faring.

Thought
If I held a public seminar in your capital city would you come? Would you host it and invite your circle of friends, distributors or suppliers to buy a table of tickets. That's what the Doveys at Exceed Maintenance did in Auckland last week. It cost them less and they got megas out of it. Here's what they said afterwards.

Karen: "We had a fantastic day. The big learning point for me was the telephone session, about not interrogating people but using the techniques to open up the conversation."
David: "Your message was strong and you challenged us. I wrote pages and pages of notes. Once we start believing we are as you say, ten times better, we will be totally different."

So email me and tell me you are interested in discussing the public seminar idea. It's colin at colinpearce.com.

My Kick in the Pants for You:
My "K.I.S.S." principle. "Keep Improving Sales Skills."

Cheers
Colin Pearce
Raconteur

Easter Long Week End – From the Weekly Kick in the Pants Newsletter

First, an advert
Advert
I can't believe how many firms and schools are still getting complaining to me about their receptionists. Most receptionists are well-meaning people who haven't been given any help by the boss, apart from how to work the buttons on the phone. It's a stressful job. Do them and yourself a favour and get my Receptionist Training CDs and e-Book.

Anyway...

Isn't the Easter Long Week End Just Perfect?
Especially when it falls in April. As a kid you went on a church camp or a Scout or a Guides camp or a family camping trip or to the same holiday house the family went to every year since Federation. You went ‘down to the shack', ‘over to the island', ‘up the river', or ‘to the beach'. You'd made it through a couple of months of school or work after Christmas. It was good to forget about it.

Same
You had the same food from the same old bowls and tangy cutlery. Same routine too. Meals and snacks all on the same day at the same time as last year: Barbecue Friday, fish and chips Saturday, sandwiches, peaches from a can, just enough of Grandma's cake and biscuits in those good old cake tins to last till last cuppa on Monday. If you were lucky you dodged washing for four days.

Jobs
If you stayed home you painted the house, re-did the garden, built a cubby, cleaned out the shed, went on a picnic, probably went to church, if Pesach co-incided, you went to a Seder, you went to the pictures or the footy, had friends over, caught up with rellies, played a big game of Monopoly or did a jigsaw. If you were lucky you dodged changing your clothes for four days.

Bliss
Four days were too short but you still got everything done; the routines though slower all fitted into the days. You got into it and wished it would last forever. The days were clear but cooler, the nights were cold and crystal clear under the biggest moon of the year. At Easter the girls were prettier, the boys were more appealing, the fun was funnier. It was a reminder of the Christmas holidays, only shorter so you intensified the joy.


Buns
And the hot cross buns. Weren't they bigger back then? Did you know that 100% fat butter was invented purely for the purpose of being laid a 1/4 of an inch thick on hot cross buns? So was blackberry jam.


Why?
I still love the Easter break. I still love to recall that we get it because of its being the perfect reminder of love in the face suffering, forgiveness in the face of humiliation, anticipation of life in the face of death.

Enjoy it.

PS Why not write to me about your best memories of Easter?

My Kick in the Pants for You:
Life is for living. You only get one run at it. Make the most of every wonderful minute.

The Bradman Myth

A manager in a client's business gave me this book to read to change my thinking about having chosen Sir Donald Bradman as the "flagship" in the Character Works navy. See Character Works Hero Gallery. He was suggesting I had chosen poorly and that the book would prove to me that Bradman wasn't the man of good character I portrayed him as being.



The book is no ground breaker, often repetitive and doesn't seem to say much about what I already knew. Basically it's a study, not of Bradman, but of the times and culture in which he lived and the social forces that caused writers, commentators and the common bloke and blokess to regard Bradman in such glowing terms as "the Don", "the boy from the bush" and "the simple country lad who is bringing down the house".

Brett Hutchins the author is at pains to say the book is not really about Bradman nor does he set out to take anything from his character. It's about how mythology is created.

I therefore can't change my position. Bradman's still my flagship.

Aren't you tired of frauds and fakes and finaglers?

Aren't you tired of frauds and fakes and finaglers?

I am. I am just tired of people pretending to be one thing and actually being nothing like it.

There's "keeping up appearances" and a "healthy air of confidence" and then there's a slight turn off the track which leads to momentary fields of pleasure but which end at the hidden precipice of destruction.