Thread by @ThyConsigliori

1 October 2021 #MyStory #28

The last time Frank and I met was for a brief conversation at the San Jose International Airport. He'd called to let me know he was coming and to meet him there. As he had my last payment for the Jaguar, he obviously knew I'd show up.

2) "Look, kid, I've done a few deals like this in my life, where I cared as much about the other guy as I did for myself, and I always regretted it. I'll beat myself up for this later, but this time, I know I won't regret helping you out. Here's your check.

3) "You're a bright person, and I'm sure you already know I see a lot of myself in you, too much, actually. I could, and should, have had your car at half the price I'm paying you for it. That's my weakness. I thought I was over it, and maybe this is the last time. Ha!

4) "I've learned how to forgive myself for my weaknesses, so I'll be fine. Thing is, obviously, I could have overnighted you the check but I wanted to hand it to you in person. What I need in return is that you listen to what I'm about to tell you.

5) "The car business is tough. It's tough for anyone. It's impossible for an outsider like you. You did good. You should be proud of yourself. The fact that you got the car here at all, got it smogged, and didn't have all your money stolen along the way speaks well for you.

6) "But you were never going to sell this car, at all, if you hadn't found me. And the reason is, this is just not your game. So I'm going to give you a lesson, and you have to promise me to learn it." I promised. "Good. In another life, you and I would have been true friends.

7) "But I know how life works, and in this life, you and I will never meet again after today. That's why it's so important that you listen and learn. Here it is, and it couldn't be simpler.

"Never play another man's game."

8) And with that, Frank walked out of my life. We're told that some relationships are forever, and some for a time. Frank was obviously for but a time. We're going to parse his lesson, and how it affected me. But there will be no disrespect allowed for Frank. He was a great man.

9) First, Frank was right. There's no greater mandate for a salesman. You must know your product. You must know its strengths and weaknesses. You must know your competition in their strengths and weaknesses. You must know your prospects and how your product fits into their world.

10) You must know, most of all, what trust is and how it is created. How do your customers make their decisions? On what basis? When your game is yours, you know all this and so much more. Flip it round again. When you're the customer you feel your salesman's comfort or lack.

11) A Samurai saying is that the master reveals himself in every motion, announces himself in his smallest step. That's what it's like when you're playing your own, and NOT another man's game. A true salesman falls in love with his product and learns everything there is to know.

12) Second, Frank was wrong. His act was one of grace, and he very literally paid for the right to be my teacher. Yet still he was wrong. Here's how. No game is YOUR game until you make it yours. How do you go about that? You HAVE to play a game that isn't yours, until it is.

13) For instance, you already know that I have no college degree, but that I became a consultant, a field in which advanced degrees are often considered mandatory. How did I do that? How did I compete against other consultants with their pedigrees and union cards?

14) Let me put this another way. I have been an outsider for my entire life. Outsiders like me have to win their spot on other people's turf. We have to learn how to play other people's games if we're to live and survive at all. I pushed the mandate further.

15) Looking at the reality of my life, I came to understand that it wasn't merely the other man's game I had to play, it was his very own ruleset, his rules I had to play by. And I still had to win. I had to arrive with no advantages and win anyway.

16) What I mastered was the art of value. Any man can have his game, and enjoy his own rules. But all men require value. No man owns the entire field of value. No man is already infinite or able to provide himself all values he requires. That is the outsider's opening.

17) Let's go back to trust. The way trust typically works is by qualifications, social positioning, mutual friendship and connection. Most trust is trust by association. This is precisely what an outsider does NOT have. He suffers distrust by non-association.

18) We might call all this a trust network. Ah but in such networks, it is the network itself wherein all the power lies. If anyone breaches the trust requirements of the network, they're out. What gets lost? The unique needs of the individual get lost. They're subordinate.

19) I once coached the scion of an immensely wealthy family. His career was a facade. He had a $20,000,000 trust fund that threw off more money than even he might spend, already, and he didn't control the fund yet. His work meant nothing. Failure or success did not matter.

20) The poor fellow actually lost his gorgeous wife to her tennis pro, along with 50% of his trust fund income stream. Who might have empathy for his pain and agony. I brag, I did. He never set the rules of the game his life was defined by. His network/family did. He didn't.

21) He'd not only graduated from one of the finest schools in the nation, he did so with high honors. He was brilliant and capable, but utter suppressed when we met. He worked for the family business. My job was to help him quit and start over.

22) We succeeded. We accomplished that by viewing even his needs as his own. They were separate from the network/family needs. They were individual. They were truly his and that's an honorable thing. Here's another principle. Each man's pain is his own, his own alone.

23) The way an outsider wins trust is by caring about an insider's true needs, those unique to himself and NOT defined by nor attend to by the network. Funny thing, that ended up being my game. I learned how to uncover, to discover each man's unique needs.

24) But still, when I purchased my glorious Jaguar, why didn't I know that I did NOT have the trust network within which to sell my car at profit? Youth and foolishness covered, why still? The answer is as powerful as it is simple.

25) I wasn't taught and I didn't know how to learn. I wasn't taught the essence of business, and I didn't know how to learn that essence, yet. As you know, my father Phil DID know the essence of business, but he did NOT teach it to me.

26) We'll plumb this more deeply in future episodes, but in the early 2000s, internet marketing developed a profoundly simple model:

1) Know
2) Like
3) Trust
4) Purchase

27) What is business trust? It ends up having nothing to do with whose game we're playing. It has everything to do with faith in value. It has everything to do with risk vs reward. Do I trust my reward, should I take this risk?

28) Still, why didn't I already know all this by the time I was attempting to vend an internationally procured luxury vehicle, after having enjoyed successful entrepreneurial and high risk investment sales endeavors?

29) Who remembers the Game of Life? Whose game is it? Would you win? You MUST learn how to win trust. Who teaches such things? No one taught me. I hope to teach you. Sales is the game of trust. Nothing about sales matters more.

30) Be it advertisements in an as yet non-existent magazine, computer books, commodity options, or business and life coaching, sales is about building trust in the value, value over cost. We'll pick up there in our next episode.

Today's thread – 1 October 2021 – ends at #30.