From a February 12, 2012 report released by some folks in Washington…

The official unemployment rate excludes those individuals who would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks as well as those who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work; if those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent.

– “Understanding and Responding to Persistently High Unemployment,” Congressional Budget Office, (link to PDF file)

I know how it feels to be unemployed.  In September 2001, four days before 9/11, I was called into a boardroom and informed I was being laid off.  At the time, I was living in an area with unemployment percentages about 30% higher than the rest of the country.

I was angry.  I was hurt.  I screamed and yelled and cried.  I knew I worked hard and worked smart.  I was thirty-one years old and I was scared.  There were people I knew who had been unemployed for months.  No company of which I was aware was hiring.  Even if any company was hiring, I felt that I wouldn’t be hired because I didn’t (and still don’t) have a college degree.  And so… the day after the layoff… I did what any “reasonable” person would do.

I stayed in bed until mid-morning.  Then I got up and ate something.  Then I moped around the house.  Then I spent the afternoon in a bar.  Then I went home, ate, drank some more and went to bed.  Then I woke up the next morning and contemplated repeating the same process.

But I didn’t.  Instead, I drove into the city and started cold calling people I knew to see if there were any possible opportunities.  Like most of us, I remember the morning of 9/11 vividly.  I was in the city and stopped into a pizza place to get something to eat.  The big screen television was tuned to CNN.  I sat there watching over and over the clips of planes crashing into the World Trade Center.  At that point, it truly felt like the world was ending.  I’m unemployed.  Terrorists are attacking the United States.  People are dying.  Life as we knew it was over.

A few days after, I called Mama.  It ranks as one of the most important conversations to date in my life.  Mama can have a nonsense level in negative numbers.  She grew up in tough times.  She’s lived through more “recessions” than I have.  She’s wondered how she was ever going to make ends meet.  Mama… gets it.  And Mama was very direct.

She reiterated a belief… a fact… that many have forgotten.  You can recover if you work hard and work smart.  And if you persist in doing both of those things, you will thrive.

Flash forward eleven years.  I’m employed.  I’m employed with a great company that places high value on working hard and working smart.  My company has given me an opportunity.

And that is where the 15% need to start so that number goes down… opportunity… seeing it and capitalizing on it.

If you’ve been employed before, you have at least some modicum of skills.  You know stuff.  You know how to do something.  Start there.  Consider finding a way using your skills to generate income that does not depend on an employer.  You’ve been there before.  Do you really want your livelihood dependent on someone else?

It’s way past time to start figuring this out on our own.  Government (big or small) isn’t going to solve your problem.  You are responsible for solving your problem.  Turn off the television and the radio.  Quit listening to the mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) media.  It’s not all gloom and doom out there.  Look around you.  Individuals and businesses are spending money.  The economy may be in rough shape… but there’s still an economy… a very huge economy.  The Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2011 was estimated at $14.5 trillion.  That is almost 25%… one quarter… of the world economy.  The opportunity is out there.  What you do about that and how you act upon that opportunity is up to you.

If you don’t know what to do, find someone willing to give you advice.  If you need to update your skill set, go do it.  It’s up to you to figure out what you need to do and how to do it.  Along the way, you’re going to make mistakes.  You’re going to hopefully learn from them and not repeat those errors.  It’s going to be painful at times.  But you’re going to grow and you’re going to learn.

Find a way to earn that first dollar.  You’ll find it will be easier to earn the second one.  Life becomes a lot easier when you hustle.

It’s not that you don’t understand.  You’re just not seeing.

Selling before the “recession” was difficult.  Selling IN the “recession” was more difficult.  Now that we are allegedly out of the “recession,” selling feels even more difficult.

I spend the vast majority of my time either selling or thinking about the art of selling.

Anyone who tells you “even a blind squirrel can find an acorn” is wrong.  Blind squirrels often die.  They plummet to their deaths from a treetop.  They are crushed by oncoming traffic.  Blind squirrels are… blind.  They die horrible deaths.

In the span of three days, three different salespeople in three different industries related three similar stories to me.  All three stories had different circumstances… different factors… different details.  All three ended the same way.

They weren’t given an opportunity to compete.  Their “prospects” decided to do business with one of their competitors.  In two of the three cases, the “prospect” continued with an existing relationship.  In one case, the “prospect” changed course, terminated an existing relationship and entered into a new one.

In each of the three cases, the respective salespeople called me to express their frustrations.  When I encounter situations like this, I have a set of questions I ask in the hopes of helping the blind to see.

QUESTION 1:  How long have you been calling on the prospect?

If the answer is ninety days or less, the relationship lacked both longevity and depth.  This is not to say that a sales professional cannot develop a deep relationship in this amount of time.  However, most sales professionals I observe have not developed and sharpened their approach skills enough to overcome the initial distance between them and the prospect.

QUESTION 2:  How many times did you call on the prospect?

Question 1 deals with time.  Question 2 deals with frequency in that time period.  If you called on the customer only once or twice in any time period, the relationship lacks touch point frequency.  If you’re attempting to develop deep conversations with the prospect but you’re being prevented from doing so, this is an early sign that you’re prospect isn’t interested in doing business with you.  It might be best to just move to the next call.  If there’s no interest in your offering no matter how valuable it might be, you are wasting your time and energy.

QUESTION 3:  Is your message compelling?

With increasing and alarming frequency, the answer to this question answers the larger question of why the sales representative was not given the opportunity to compete.  A solid, well-crafted message can overcome your greatest competitor… status quo.  In a time of instability, customers want reliability.  They’re not willing to entertain a new solution, a new provider or anything new at all.  It’s not broken and they don’t want to fix it.  If your message doesn’t reveal a hidden problem and then solve that problem, the natural fear of change and reliance on the status quo will prevent you from moving forward.  Take the time to develop your message.  Sharpen it.  Refine it.  Make it relevant to your prospect and your chances of advancing will increase.

QUESTION 4:  Were you calling on the right level?

It’s so basic… calling on the right person at the right level in the organization.  Yet, it astounds me how many sales professionals approach the wrong level.  They’re stuck with some mid-level (or worse) individual who is either gathering facts for someone higher or doesn’t have the authority to make decisions.  There is often a fear of calling higher in the approach stage.  If you drop back to Question 3 and have confidence in your message, then you should have no fear calling higher in the organization.

QUESTION 5:  Was your message tailored to the right level or right function?

A Chief Financial Officer doesn’t care that your widget will organize their sock drawer.  However, they do care about cost reduction.  A Marketing Director doesn’t necessarily care about reducing costs.  But, they probably care about how your widget will enhance or improve the quality of the organization’s marketing message.  If you are not tailoring your message to the specific goals of the individual and their position, you will probably lose the opportunity to compete.

QUESTION 6:  Did you challenge the status quo?

Just because an organization has always used a particular product or solution or process doesn’t mean it’s the right product, solution or process.  Countless times, I have heard prospects say, “This is the way we’ve always done it.”  If you 100% believe in your offering and you know beyond any doubt that your offering is a better solution, you have the right to challenge the status quo.  Yes… you can respond by saying, “I understand this is the way you have always done it.  But, there is a better way.  Let me show you how.”  Then, be prepared to prove how and why your offering is superior.  So often, sales representatives back down from this objection.  If you believe, don’t back down.

These basic six questions provide starting points for understanding why the opportunity to compete was not granted.  You may find the answer after asking second or third-level questions related to these initial six.

Whatever you do, don’t ignore the postmortem process and walk away from a lost opportunity without understanding why.

And, don’t be a blind squirrel.

Ah… Adventures In Bad Customer Service… Episode 1.

I don’t do mornings very well at all.  The minimum coffee requirement for me to even acknowledge the rest of the world is approximately seven cups.  Then the fog lifts and productivity begins.

Most weekday mornings, I swing through the drive-through of a location of a worldwide fast food chain to order three large iced coffees and something to eat.  Over the past few months, this worldwide fast food change has undergone the process of revamping their menu.  Kudos to them.  It needed revamping.  And this chain is offering healthier choices on their breakfast menu.  Kudos again.  Well done.  We need more healthy offerings in the fast food arena.

However, over the past few months, I’ve become disgusted with the level of customer service.  Once I make it to the little speaker to place my order, I am continually asked the following question.

“Try uh oatmeal?”

Oatmeal is a healthy choice.  One day, I might like to try this product.  But I’m not likely to try this product when the person on the other end of the line presents this option to me with the enthusiasm of a slug and the pronunciation of a two-year old minus the cute voice.  The order taker isn’t asking me if I would like to try the oatmeal.  The order taker isn’t being impolite.  Rather, the order taker just doesn’t care… which makes me not care about the oatmeal at all.

There’s a larger issue with this “oatmeal incident.”

The death of customer service in the United States.

We’re living, working and breathing in the toughest, most competitive economy we’ve seen since the 1930s.  Jobs have vanished for what I believe to be forever.  Businesses that once thrived are no longer in existence.  Some of these businesses needed to go under.  They lacked vision, mission, principles, commitment and a host of other admirable characteristics vital to weathering tough times.  As we entered the recent crash some time in 2007, the focus on customer experience became much more intense… as it should have.

There is no doubt in my mind that most large companies are focusing on customer experience.  But, I wonder if companies today are clearly communicating the importance of customer experience from the beginning to the end of the transaction to the front line employees.  These are the people interacting with the customer on a daily basis.  This is an initial matter of training and reinforcement… which falls to front line management.

However, it’s further still a matter of basic pride.

Yes, I understand it’s a minimum wage job.  I’ve held a few of those early in my career.  When I was much younger, that minimum wage job was the means by which I supported myself.  It was in that minimum wage job that I learned customer service skills.  Those skills were noticed by someone who eventually gave me an opportunity to begin a twenty-year career in an industry I love.  Had I been a robotic drone who demonstrated no pride, I doubt that individual would have seen past the lackluster performance.  One never knows who is paying attention.

If we’re not going to manufacture anything anymore in this country and we’ve made the decision to become a service industry nation, then our economic survival might very well depend on being brilliant on the basics.  The basics should be taught at home, at school, at church, in the workplace and in the community.  The basics should also be reinforced at every turn.

I hope we start demanding better and get some pride back in our work… even if it’s a minimum wage job asking people if they would like to try an oatmeal.