WIIFM

I work for a company that shall remain nameless...

Back when I was hired, we were required to go through a six-month, intensive training program in our Dallas office. The six months were actually five months, and the Dallas office was actually in Carrollton. Intensive was about the best way to describe it. Every six (or five) months, a new batch of sales trainees rolls in, and every six (or five) months, at least one of those trainees is unlikely to make it all the way through to "graduation," the company's version of setting you free into the world to accomplish your dreams. Except instead of accomplishing your dreams they want you to accomplish their dreams, and try not to waste too much of their money. The training program, while intensive, is an extremely beneficial base of knowledge for any Sales Representative to have, and I can't imagine how any of our competitors' salespeople get along without something similar.

Part of this six (or five) month training program entails learning how to understand your customers (or "clients," as we were instructed to call them; I've found that the people you work with don't particularly care what you call them so long as you can deliver on what you promise; somewhere along the way I just accepted the fact that "client" instead of "customer" and "account executive" instead of "salesman" were just fancy ways of veiling what we really do). We learned techniques like reflecting (repeating back to the customer what they say to you in a different way to show that you're striving to understand their statements or questions), objection handling (how you can get around those pesky reasons for not wanting what you're selling), and how to ask the right questions (as opposed to the wrong questions which, believe it or not, really do exist). One of the most important portions of the training centered around understanding that, from beginning to end of your sales cycle, customers are always going to have one thought somewhere in their minds:

What's in it for me?

I have the acronym, "WIIFM," scrawled at the top of nearly every planning sheet that I did for the mock meetings in the mock projects that we were mock selling during the training program. Every time that I was going to be in front of someone that I had to convince to like my company, my solution, and more particularly, myself, I wanted to know exactly what I had to offer them apart from my charming personality and devastatingly handsome looks, complete with powerful eyebrows. Considering WIIFM should be one of the first things that any successful salesperson considers before approaching a customer. If you don't have something to offer, why should they even bother sitting down with you? Talking with you? Breathing the same air? People naturally have a negative perception of salespeople, despite the fact that everything they have at some point, somewhere, was sold by one of us. It's that negative perception that makes walking into a superintendent's office on a cold call a potentially nerve-racking experience. But that's a topic for another time.

The WIIFM principle has become something that's crossed over from the customer-salesperson world into the realm that we've come to know as "the general public." It all depends on perception, sure, but from what I can tell, much of the world now isn't interested in anything unless it delivers something for them. There's no such thing as a free lunch, right? People don't just give to give anymore, they want something in return. Personally? I prefer favors to money. It's like that episode of the Office where Dwight Schrute tries to be overly kind to everyone in order to collect enough favors to get Jim fired. People rarely just do kind deeds anymore to do them, there's always strings attached.

This all came to my mind tonight for some reason when my sister came to stay with Meghan and I for a while. She graduated from Southeastern University in Lakeland a few weeks ago, spent the holiday break up with my parents in Dahlonega, and just came down to stay with us in Tampa today. We live in a three bedroom house, one of which is my home office, so when we knew she was graduating and wouldn't really have an abundance of opportunities in North Georgia, we offered to let her stay here until she could find a solid job and a place of her own. So tonight, while just hanging around, I got to wondering why exactly we did it. I remember sitting at our favorite breakfast/brunch spot, Cafe Fresco (A+++, would buy again!), bringing up the subject with Megs and talking it over. We brought it up because we know that we can provide a positive environment for her and that the area has more opportunity and more of her friends around than Georgia would. But really? WIIFM?

When I thought about it, the only thing that comes to mind is that we're getting the satisfaction of knowing that we're helping. We didn't offer up a room because we want to get some rent money or because we want to be owed something. We love our sister, and we want her to be happy. Thinking about all this started to turn my position on the whole subject; it made me realize that if we're doing it, maybe there are people out there doing something for nothing, or at least performing acts of service out of nothing more than love. Those are the kind of thoughts that give you hope, that make you believe you can really make a difference. And who knows? Maybe we will. All we can do is try... and let God take care of the details.