I hate the story of The Sword in the Stone. If you aren’t familiar with the story, it kind of goes like this: The legendary sword Excalibur was magically stuck in a stone and only the rightful king of England could pull it out. Men from across Europe came and tried but no one would succeed until the rightful King Arthur came to claim the sword. My problem with this story is that all these people came to try to remove the sword from the stone by pulling on the sword. Not a single person tried to use a chisel to remove the stone from the sword. Point being that there is always another way, and sometimes that other way is the smarter way.
The other day I was having a conversation with a customer. We had a miscommunication about a load and she was upset. She told her customer that the freight would deliver on a specific date without checking to make sure that date was possible. It wasn’t. I pulled out all the stops and was able to come up with a solution that works for everyone. However, during the conversation, the customer started venting to me about issues she was having with a portion of her business we did not control. Without hesitation, I asked why she didn’t just use us for that portion. I hadn’t even come up with a solution for the problem yet but still wanted to let her know that we could help with more of her business. She was a little taken aback for a moment. I know she probably thought “is this guy really asking for more business while I am complaining about service issues” but after the initial shock of my request faded she started thinking of the advantages. She loves our pricing and other than this particular case our service is normally outstanding. She told me she would work up some lanes for me to quote.
The point of this story was to explain how I used listening as a tool to develop more business. Because I was willing to listen, I was given the opportunity to add to our business. Too often when negotiating, following up, or dealing with issues we are just waiting for our turn to talk. We aren’t really listening.
Have you ever been in a meeting with a customer, trying to secure more business, and they tell you there isn’t any? It could be that the don’t or it could be that they don’t know you have the capacity to do more for them. Get them talking about their day to day routines. Listen for subtle clues that they have more business and use that to let them know you can help.
7 words that will haunt every business person “This is how we’ve always done it”. If you aren’t willing to look at innovative ways to accomplish a goal; if you let laziness, pride, or ignorance get in the way of finding the best way to do your business, then you will have a tough time surviving. It is not just thinking outside the box, sometimes it is thinking outside of the box doesn’t even exist. To be successful you cannot be held hostage by conventional thinking. You need to chisel at the stone.