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Apr 6, 2009 
Picking up on the “ABCs of Business” series I started last year,
I got stuck on “K” because I couldn’t think of a great K word I wanted to discuss in the context of small business.
I thought of “K is for Kids” and how they should be incorporated into your business and taught the basic principles. I thought of “K is for Kevin” as in Kevin Hogan but felt that this was a better topic covered under the topic “M is for Mentor” (coming in a short while).
Last night as I was watching The Celebrity Apprentice it came to me…
Karma.
Karma can be described most simply as the eastern religion’s version of the Biblical “as you reap, so shall you sow” and the Golden Rule- “Treat others as you would like to be treated”…
(but the Eastern religions extend the concept across multiple lives and our initial situation in our “present life” can be explained by our behaviors in “past lives”)…
Whether you believe in an afterlife or multiple lives, or not, the concept of Karma has strong effect on business…
What is Karma as it applies to business?
Every action has consequences. When a pebble falls into a pool, it produces rings that spread across the water in the form of waves. A butterfly fluttering its wings can produce a typhoon under the right conditions. In much the same way, our actions and the way that we treat people sends out ripples from ourselves and our business that can interact with the world and our customers in many unexpected ways.
We create a powerful Karma around us when we treat others with respect and when we deliver more than what we promise. If we treat people well then. more often than not, we will have that same feeling reflected back to us. If we rip people off, or treat them as something to be leveraged only for our financial gain, then this will come back to haunt us.
Early in my sales career, I had flown across the country to see a company about a project. We spent several hours discussing his needs, and at the end of that time I told the man that I didn’t think that my product– even though it would work marginally– was the right one for his particular needs. Then I suggested a product from one of my competitors that I knew was perfect for his application.
This man looked at me for a minute, incredulous, and said that in his twenty plus years of doing business he had NEVER had a sales person do such a thing, I told him:
“I’m not in this for the short haul and I don’t think you are either. There are other opportunities here to sell things to you that you need, and if I give you a bad experience with the wrong product right off the bat, then I’ll never get the chance at all that business in the future that WILL benefit both of us”.
Needless to say, I lost the short term order, but I did end up doing over $3 million dollars in sales with that buyer and his company over the next five years and we became good friends.
Then,
there is a the story of the man that moves to a new town and as he approaches the town he pulls into a gas station and asks for directions… After he gets the directions, he asks the attendant, “I’m moving to this town, could you tell me what the people here in this town are like?”.
The attendant thought for a moment and said, “Can I ask you, what were the people like in the last town you lived in?”… he answered “Sure, those people back there are a bunch of idiots, liars and they never had a nice thing to say about anyone”.
The attendant said, “Well I’m sorry to tell you that you can expect the same from the people in this town as well, you are going to be very disappointed if you expect things to be better here”…
A little while later, a young couple came along to this town, and went to the same gas station and asked the same question about the people in this town, but the young lady answered his question differently…
She said “Oh, we hate to leave our last town, all of the people were so nice and warm and friendly, we will really miss talking with them” and the attendant told them, “Well don’t worry because this town is full of the same sorts of people and you are going to love it here.”
Always remember…
The people that we interact with, and our customers, are like mirrors… They reflect back at us what we look like to them. Try to send our positive waves of energy whenever possible. You never know what they will cause…
Rob
PS: Can I ask a small Favor? I’m doing an experiment… Please click on this link ( http://budurl.com/54cp ) and it should bring you right to one of my reviews of one of Kevin’s books at Amazon with my review title “Classic Salesmanship…” Just click Yes on “Was this review Helpful to you?” below the review and you are done…
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Karma
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• Apr 6, 2009 @8:56 am
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