Who gets the last word?

I went to the funeral of an old friend. We have not been very, close over the last few years but he was a friend who taught me much that I have taken with me for several decades. We were fierce competitors for many years and then one day after he left a top position in a global company, he bought my company.

My friend cleaned buildings like many of my other friends but this one cleaned what equaled entire cities. You could measure what he cleaned not in square feet or even in how many buildings but in square blocks of downtown business corridors. People stood at my friend’s funeral because there were no seats left.

So much current conventional wisdom was shattered at the funeral; I had trouble deciding which nuggets of nonsense to disassemble for you. I decided to disassemble just a few here now.

“No one buys quality anymore, they only buy price”.

I sat next to property manager I have known for several decades who most of you reading this would never get in to see. He signs the cleaning contracts for those downtown skyscrapers that make up city skylines. He was there because he did business with my friend for many years. He does not buy according to price; he has no choice but to buy quality. He was smart enough not to over pay but the buildings he is in charge of require quality cleaning. My friend delivered quality cleaning right up to the day he died. Those that worked for my friend are still delivering quality as I write these words.

“There is no more loyalty among buyers of cleaning”.

Maybe that is true for potato chips and underwear but the property managers that came to my friend’s funeral prove otherwise. Buyers that show up at your funeral on a weekday are loyal. I know a few of those buyers had been with my friend through several moves he made from company to company until my friend owned his own company, which he bought from me. Buyers are loyal but they are loyal to people not companies.

“Just get the contract, nothing else matters. So what’s YOUR best “trick” to getting good contracts”?

There is no trick to getting good contracts. Tell people the truth long enough until you are known as someone that can be trusted, do good work at a fair price, and build a reputation. It is not a trick and it is not magic, it is just hard work.

Getting the contract is not the hard part anyway. Keeping the contract year after year is the hard part. I was lucky in that when I was learning the business I worked for a man that did not understand losing a building for poor service.

“Ethics, shmethics, great sales people do or say whatever is necessary to close deals”.

Truly great sales people have an ethical code they live by. They live in such a way that they have nothing to be ashamed of personally or in business, (he was married 46 years). Great sales people keep their word. My friend was a great sales person but he was equally as effective in operations. People trusted my friend. People that signed contracts with him and people who worked for him knew he kept his word.

My friend was an example to me as I learned very early on in my career to keep my word. My friend did not teach me that but someone who we both trusted did, King Solomon (who has been dead now for about 3,000 years).

A few days ago, I saw what happens when you live a whole life that way. People that come to your funeral do not get a seat and have to stand up through the service. In a sense, my friend got the last word but I got a seat up front and I heard him loud and clear.