Who Have You Helped Today?

Learning how to give instead of trying to get, changed how I approached sales, customer service, and life.

At one point, early in my career, I worked in sales for a large telecommunications company. I struggled constantly to meet my monthly sales objective. I came close a few times, but never made 100% of my objective. My job was held over my head every month. The message was – “sell or you could find yourself out of a job.” Talk about stress.

Then one month I finally made it – 100.2%. Time to celebrate. But, the next day I checked, I was only at 99.9%. I went through my orders and found that someone had gone in and put their sales codes on one of my orders. When I told my manager all she told me was, “You need to pay more attention to your orders.” She didn’t even try to help me rectify the problem, and stealing sales was a huge problem where I worked.

This episode left me bitter. Why try to meet the sales goal when it’s going to be stolen from me anyway? The company is going to say I am a bad employee (anything less than a 100% was “does not meet expectations.”) Throw in a daily dose of customers yelling at you and I was at the bottom. I went through months of the absolutely worst days I had working in that call center.

Finally, I made a decision. Since I couldn’t find any satisfaction in the job doing it the company way, I would try things differently. I love helping people. It makes me feel good. I was raised to think of others. I decided if I could help one person each day, then it would be a successful day in my books, regardless of how much I sold. If I was going to get fired, at least I was going to enjoy the process.  I essentially ignored my sales objective. I forgot about it, didn’t care, eliminated it from my radar. I wasn’t going to let my sales, or lack thereof, define whether I had a good day or not.

So, I started each day with two objectives. The first, was to help one person that day. I would literally say to myself before logging in to take my first call, “Who am I going to help today?” I knew somebody out there really needed my help, and if I took their call I would do everything in my power to help them.

The second thing I said to myself each morning was, “What’s going to happen to me today, that’s never happened to me before?” This was freeing. I knew I’d get a nasty call that day, a problem that would otherwise ruin my day, but I wasn’t going to let it affect me. I built it into my day. I anticipated it. I looked at it as a learning experience.

The funny things is, once I started to ignore my sales numbers and focus on helping my customers, my sales took off. I went from making 90% of my monthly sales to an average of 120%. The highest month I had was 153% of my objective! And, after a while I was helping more than one person a day. Go figure!

And, because I didn’t mind receiving the “problem” call, I looked at it as a way to learn and also help, I became the guy that knew how to solve problems. If someone ran into some mess they’d be referred to me since I had probably run into it at some point. I kept records of the problems I encountered and how to fix them. I ended up becoming a team leader; writing and presenting training, handling difficult calls, and helping coach others.

I also sat in on a few sales meetings because of my high sales. You know those meetings where they want to know what you do and then roll it out to the rest of the call center? Yeah, those. When I was asked for my opinion on how to increase sales I said, “Get rid of the sales objective.” The manager looked at me and blurted out, “that will never happen” and ignored me for the rest of the meeting. Their loss, I thought.

There’s been a lot of research lately to back up why looking at helping others is a good plan to have. One fantastic book that explores this is Adam Grant’s “Give and Take.” It shows why giving is the best way to achieve your own success. It’s worked for me. What is your experience?