Customer Relations
No Excuses: Be Proactive
At the age of 10, I learned that if I wanted something,
I could make it happen. In 1970, my father
would take the family to the Westlake Mall
in Bessemer, AL. It was brand new, and we would go
almost every Friday night. On those evenings, I would
always go to the Sears & Roebuck store to marvel at the
toys.
One particular Friday, I watched a young man and
his girlfriend purchase a 10-speed, Free Spirit bike. As
I watched the man roll the shiny bike out of the store,
I said to myself, I want to do that, too. To this day I can
hear the click, click, click of the back tire as it freewheeled
out the door.
Of course, as a 10-year-old, the first thing I did was
ask my parents for a Free Spirit 10-speed bike. Quickly,
they answered No!
To put this into perspective, the bicycle cost $110,
and my father’s mortgage
payment was $95—so it
was more than a mortgage
payment at the time. In
that context, this was a
very expensive bike for a
10-year-old.
Still dreaming about
the Free Spirit bike, I had
an idea that involved my
father’s lawnmower. I
decided that I would take
the lawnmower and the
gas to cut the grass in our
neighbor’s yard.
So, I knocked on their
door and asked if they
would like their grass cut,
and, fortunately, they said
yes. After that I knocked
on another neighbor’s door; they said yes, too. Soon, I
was walking down the street pushing that lawnmower,
with the gas can on top, knocking on doors. I built a very
nice business and started to count my cash.
On one Friday I made $35—a considerable sum at the
time, and 36% of my family’s mortgage payment. This
was in one day, and I was 10 years old. Do the math:
what is the average mortgage payment in a middle-class
neighborhood today? I was doing very well for a kid.
In Alabama, the grass grows quickly
Thanks to the climate in the South, it wasn’t long before
I could return to Sears, where I paid cash for a new bike.
Roger Daviston
President
The Daviston Group
Writing this story again brings back a great feeling of
joy and accomplishment. However, little did I know the
lesson that I was learning; it would be a lifelong lesson
that I would use 20 years later to save my heating and
air business. Not only did this lesson save my business,
but it also helped it to prosper.
Without Leads
It’s because of this story and experiences that I do not
pity salespeople who continually complain about not
having leads.
My first job out of college was as a government securities
trader at a bank, where I traded treasury bills,
notes and bonds. In this role, I worked in a room with 50
sales people, and these salespeople knew how to work
the telephone. The good ones made about $400,000 a
year in commission.
After a year and a half
of making $12,500 as a
trader, I went to the sales
manager and told him I
wanted an opportunity to
sell bonds. Eagerly, they
gave me the opportunity,
which consisted of a desk,
a phone and a list of banks
in Georgia, Florida and
Kentucky. All I had to do
is cold call these banks
and make a fortune. Easy,
right?
I quickly found out that
these bank presidents already
had a swarm of bond
salesmen calling them. At
the time, I had not perfected
Whatever your motivation (for the author it was a Free Spirit
bicycle), cold-calling can be an effective sales method.
my skills, but I dialed the phone anyway. I had a
special code that I had to put on the phone so that the
manager could measure my dials. By Thursday afternoon,
I had called everyone on my list and sold nothing.
So, on Friday morning I would go back through my list
and call those people that I had talked to on Monday.
This was hard work, and I was getting nowhere. This
was not because I did not work hard, but rather because
I was not very good at it. I had no cold-calling skills. Jim
Rohn, known as the father of personal development,
said: Don’t wish it were easier; wish that you would get
better.
After struggling for a month or two, the manager
suggested that I plan a road trip and visit some of these
14 ICM/July/August 2019