The importance of small things

As I walked onto the beach today, I noticed how far out the ocean happened to be. It was also apparent that the slope of the beach had changed slightly since I last visited a couple weeks ago.

Just as I was about to descend to the beach, I looked behind the beach grass line and saw three or four fairly new sprouts of grass advancing into some sand on the backside of the dune.

It dawned on me how important those new sprouts might be some day. If the waves are driven over the dunes, and there is no grass there, it will be easy to lose that sand. If grass is anchoring it, then it will be much more likely to stay.

On a beach it is pretty easy to get overwhelmed by the big picture of sky and water and forget about the small things.

Often in dealing with a group of people it is far too easy to forget the individuals. We used to have some "friends' who we would run into back in the day when we were members of the local country club. We had joined so our kids and I could have a place to swim. These friends would often strike up a conversation with you, but if someone walked by whom they viewed as more important, you would be dropped like a hot potato. It was not exactly a great way to build a friendship. I have had managers who would be talking to you, and completely stop in mid sentence if an executive wandered nearby. I had to wonder where their heads were.

We had our real estate sales group holiday brunch this morning. Real estate as most people know is a tough business right now, so our last two parties have been potluck events which is fine with me since the group has some great cooks.

I have worked with a number of different companies, a very big one, Apple, and some at the other end of the spectrum. Apple was a place where there was very little effort expended making people feel welcome. The general idea was that you were lucky to be working at Apple so don't count on any warm and fuzzies. While I had some great friends and wonderful moments with the team that worked for me at Apple, beyond my immediate manager that I had for several years, there were few who made you feel really welcome.

Apple is stark contrast to the group of people I work with today. There are some very talented individuals in today's group, and some people that I value as friends. As I walked into the room for our party this morning, I saw an area associate that I had briefly worked with in another office. We talked for a moment, and then each of us wandered off talking to some others. Our group is heavily weighted toward the ladies. I think there were six of us guys there today and about eighteen ladies.

I have been with some of the people in the group for three years, and I can say without a doubt that I feel welcome and a part of the group. A lot of faces have changed over the years, and no one is having it particularly easy. The president of the company sat down beside me for a few minutes before he had to leave. There was no bitterness in his assessment of the state of the market or the company. He could have blamed his real estate agents for not bringing in enough business, but he has the business intelligence to know that we are not the ones at fault.

In fact I got the feeling that he was proud of those of us who were making personal sacrifices to hang on through a tough market. None of us have made very much money, and in fact most of us have never worked harder for so little money.

There are some little things in this whole scenario that are worth mentioning. First of all at Apple, area associates, were never considered part of the sales team. In spite of much lobbying from their managers, the corporation thought they had little value in the sales process.

In our world of real estate, it is completely different. The administrative people are considered the first people to touch the customer and as such are valued greatly for their ability to engage the customer and quickly direct the customer to the right person. It might seem like a small thing, but its importance is huge. We do not hide behind impersonal telephone trees.

Another small thing is some balance when evaluating performance. At Apple and some places I have worked. Market conditions did not matter. Whatever performance goal was thrown at you was expected to be met even if it was impossible. In fact you could be doing exceptionally well in growing your business far over the industry or company average and still lose your job.

At Apple, you could miss your number because the company could not deliver product in time, and it was still your fault.

Both Apple and one of the other companies where I worked really cared more that you did not rock the boat than they did about how good you were at doing your job. If you could stand back and look at both companies, you would wonder why management and sales were at odds with each other. I actually had one high level executive tell me that the only way to get anything out of sales people was to threaten to take something from them.

While the idea that management and sales are in the same boat might seem like a small thing, it also turns out to be a hugely important thing if you want to build companies where people enjoy working and give it their best over time. I remember when times got tough at Apple, they had to start throwing bonuses at people to keep them from leaving. Given the current management style at Apple, I wonder how many people would hang around if things were no so rosy in Cupertino. Loyalty might be an outdated concept in most of the business world, but I have to wonder what we have lost in jettisoning it?

I like to think living here on the Crystal Coast gives us a chance to be a little different since we live in place where the scenery often soothes your soul. Perhaps it is harder for people in pressure cooker metro areas to see these small things, but they certainly can make a huge difference in people's lives.

Fear of salespeople

I am wondering if it is a particularly American thing to be reluctant to talk to salespeople. I will admit to visiting car dealerships only on Sundays until I am ready to engage in the battle of wits.

I wrote about auto buying in America in the "That peculiarly American dance, the auto two-step." Still I like talking to good salespeople who know their products.

That's probably the reason that I avoid many of the big box sales people in electronics stores since it is so rare that they know their products. There are exceptions to the rules as I found in my purchase of one of the HP all-in-one printer, scanner, copiers.

Actually I have always considered myself something of a knowledge sponge, willing to soak up whatever wisdom I can glean from an expert. In real estate, we have used a Realtor® every Itime we bought a place but once. That once reinforced my belief in using Realtors®.

I have been in sales most of my adult life. Even when I was farming for eleven years, sales was never very far in the background. I firmly believe that sales done right is an honorable career.

I have found that in most cases, people have already sold themselves by the time they reach a sales person. The best that a sales person can do is make certain they do not end up buying the wrong product and become unhappy.

I am sure there are plenty of sleazy sales people in the world, but I cannot believe that people have become so divorced from their critical thinking skills that people ignore the opportunity to learn valuable information from people who actually know what they are talking about when it comes to a particular product.

We are almost ready to buy a boat, and I have been wandering around boat show rooms for months since I know almost nothing about boats. Aside from one guy who tried to convince me that if I bought a skiff I would stay wet all the time, the salespeople and nearly half have been women have been very knowledgeable and helpful. In fact most of them haven't been real sales folks since I have gotten almost zero follow-up on my visits. That includes email requests for pricing which have mostly been ignored.

I recently had another experience which made me wonder how some people make decisions. I was participating in a forum where people are trying to find out about cities and towns where they either live or might want to live. Though I thought I was being very careful to adhere to the rules of the forum, one of which was not advertising my services as a Realtor®. I was, however, uncomfortable with people not knowing that I was a Realtor® when I was talking about real estate. I ended up being banished from the forum by what was likely an over zealous moderator who I am sure thought he was protecting people from me. Unfortunately for the readers, I was just trying to help some people learn the facts instead of hearsay.

I have a long history of posts about Apple and their computer products. I recently did a post about my letters to a friend who was considering buying a Mac. A couple of my readers there have suggested that I was doing everything I could to stop him from buying a Mac. Actually all I was doing was making sure that he went into the purchase with his eyes wide open.

In the end his friendship is worth more to me than whether he buys a Macintosh or not. I could tell from his letters that he has already decided to do it, so he might as well know the complete truth about the products instead of the Apple fanboy version of reality. Sugar coating the truth would only lead him to question our friendship.

It's easy to own one product and think that you have had the greatest experience in the world as an owner or user. When you have been involved in the industry or had a history with a particular company, things might not look so rosy.

I will no longer buy a Volvo, and I know a couple of Volvo owners who say the same thing. I only got to that point on my third Volvo. I will not buy a Maytag washer or dryer no matter how many cute the commercials they run are. If my current Apple MacBook breaks again, I might well buy a HP or Sony Laptop. In spite of what some of the Mac users want to believe the reality is that the reliability on my recent Apple purchases has not been good, and dealing with Apple on them has not been a lot of fun.

Still having said that, I am not afraid to engage a salesperson for Volvos. A good one would run back to the company and tell them how they lost someone who could have been a Volvo customer for life.

In this age of full disclosure on the Internet and with the power of Google, I find it hard to believe that there are people who are still afraid of being tricked by Realtors®. I spent nearly three years trying to find the right spot on the Crystal Coast. It was only with the help of a true local expert and Realtors® that we found it.

Expertise might be hard to find, but anonymous expertise is impossible to find. Engage the salespeople and learn what you can. You might find someone whose knowledge keeps you from making a mistake.

If you want to know about living along North Carolina's secret coast, the Crystal Coast, visit my website, "Coastal Paradise." I promise not to sell you anything since the facts speak for themselves, and you might even learn something from someone who is learning from the real local experts as fast as he can.