Bill Guertin | 800 Pound Gorilla Blog on SalesGravy.com

I used to think that every argument had a simple solution. One side is right, the other is obviously misguided and unreasonably wrong. All that’s needed is a little bit of applied reasoning, and the other side will come around.

So how do you explain the current national budget challenge here in the US, and how could we have avoided this big mess?

“As long as we have some Republican lawmakers who feel more enthralled with a pledge they took to a Republican lobbyist than they do to a pledge to the country to solve the problems, this is going to be hard to do,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington), co-chair of the special Congressional budget deficit committee, on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on 11/20/11.

“Unfortunately, what we haven’t seen in these talks from the other side is any Democrats willing to put a proposal on the table that actually solves the problem,” countered the other co-chair, Republican Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

The White House is trying to taze somebody to get them to move, but each side is apparently unwilling to give. “Avoiding accountability and kicking the can down the road is how Washington got into this deficit problem in the first place,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokesperson. “So Congress needs to do its job here and make the kind of tough choices to live within its means that American families make every day.”

When we in our daily lives put off tough decisions — ignoring an overdue bill, putting off a trip to the doctor, waiting to start that retirement savings account — the pain of those decisions is rarely felt right away. To blame others’ inactions for a current problem doesn’t make the current problem any better.

One of the rules for becoming an 800-Pound Gorilla – a company or an individual that achieves dominance in their category and becomes next to impossible to compete against – is that they’re not afraid to do what others won’t. It’s easy to pawn off a tough problem to someone else; it’s smarter to address the problems early on and suffer the short-term pain than to sweep them under the rug until they grow to momumental proportions.

By admitting mistakes early on (i.e., Netflix), apologizing for things that go wrong and fixing them (i.e., Toyota), and taking the high road early vs. staying quiet and hoping it never comes up (vs. the Penn State football tragedy), 800-Pound Gorillas avoid B-I-G problems by making sure they never get to the B-I-G stage in the firs place. The pain is suffered in a controllable way. You take your own lumps, you let people know how you’re going to fix it, and the damage is minimized.

What “small” problem are you wrestling with right now that will most certainly rear its ugly head at some point in the future if it goes unaddressed? Is it financing? Cash flow? Declining consumer interest? Marketing trends? Is it your career growth or direction? Retirement options? Personal issues?

As witnessed by the federal government, the NBA, and many other entities embroiled in last-gasp negotiations, waiting for a resolution to happen by itself only makes the pain of resolution worse.

What is it you may need to address today in order to be more dominant and in control of your own destiny tomorrow?

Let me know what you decide to do.  The first step in moving forward is sometimes telling someone else that you’re going to do it.

– Bill Guertin is a speaker, author, and CEO of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a unique company that helps others improve their sales and service skills through dynamic learning programs.  Check out his book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales, or say hello to him on Twitter. 

There is documented proof in the value of having someone in our lives to give us a gentle, continual push in the right direction.

We know we’re supposed to exercise. Some of us do, and many don’t. Only 48% of Americans say they meet what the federal government says is the minimal amount we ought to exercise each day – 30 minutes – and the actual percentage is thought to be much lower than that. Everyone understands that exercise is good for them, but over half of Americans don’t do it.

Stanford University set out to determine what it would take to motivate the average slug to get up off the couch. Their 3-year research study found that after an introductory session to the benefits of regular exercise, those who received regular, continual phone reminders to exercise produced 78% more exercise minutes per week; those that didn’t get the reminder calls after the education increased their exercise level only 28%.

In the May 18th Wall Street Journal story citing the report, author Kevin Helliker notes that there is a “growing body of research that shows that small amounts of social support, ranging from friends who encourage each other by email to occasional meetings with a fitness counselor, can produce large and lasting gains against one of America’s biggest health problems – physical inactivity.”

We in the sales world know that this is also true in our professional lives, don’t we?

We complain about our managers always riding us about this and that. Call reports, activity monitors, blah blah blah. Why do we need all that?  Do they think we’re babies? Do they not think we can think for ourselves? Do we always have to be watched like a hawk just to make sure we’re supposedly doing what we’re supposed to do?

YES.

“When you knew you were going to have to report back on what you had done, it motivated you,” said Ruthanne Lowe, a 66-year-old member of the Stanford research study who was called regularly and quoted in the WSJ article. “I’m doing more exercise than I ever did in my life.”

Want to make more money as an 800-Pound Gorilla salesperson? The one who dominates others, the one who strikes fear in the hearts of the competition, and who turns in monster orders time after time?

Find a real manager… someone who is willing to invest the time to watch over you.  It works.

– Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company and author of the brand-new book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales: How To Dominate Your Market, now available from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.

Check out his Sports Ticket Sales Newsletter here: http://tinyurl.com/35sanf4

When I was in deep trouble as a kid, my parents would confront me by asking the most incriminating question possible, and then top it off by disarming me from any form of explanation. I would begin to answer their question, and they’d put their hand up and say, “All we want to know is: Did you do this, yes or no?”

“But Mom, there was this… ”

“YES… OR… NO?” they would insist, eyes glaring  into mine.

I hated that question. I knew they were right in asking it, because they knew I would have some wild story that would somehow justify my bone-headed mistake.

Apparently Mark McGwire’s mom and dad raised him differently.

Mr. McGwire, owner of several major league baseball records, including the iconic record of most home runs in a single season, didn’t just confess to us that he took performance-enhancing steroids during his pro career; he went into a long, drawn-out diatribe of why he did it.

“The only reason I took steroids was for health purposes,” he said in an exclusive hour-long interview with TV sports journalist Bob Costas. “I was frustrated by injuries that weren’t healing properly,” he claimed. “The pressure to perform was enormous.”

Once the 800-Pound Gorilla of baseball’s power hitters, McGwire retired under a cloud of doubt and silence in 2001 as rumors of steroid use in baseball began to surface. “It doesn’t feel good to hear teammates walk by and say, ‘Oh, he’s injured again,’ McGwire admitted to Costas in between Kleenexes. “The wear and tear of 162 ballgames a year, year in and year out, was incredibly difficult.”

But, amazingly, during the interview, McGwire insisted that his taking of the illegal substances did not enhance his performance. “It was purely medicinal,” claims the now-remorseful slugger. “I’ve always had bat speed. I just learned how to shorten my bat speed. I learned how to be a better hitter.”

And we’re supposed to believe that your transformation from skinny first-baseman to power slugger had nothing to do with your wonder drugs?

“A pill or an injection cannot help you with the hand-eye coordination it takes to hit a baseball,” he postured to Costas during the interview. “There’s not a pill in the world that can help you to hit a baseball.”

Says who? You? The one without a medical license? The one that refused to come clean in front of Congress because your lawyers couldn’t make a deal with the prosecution to let you off the hook?

Yes, Mark, we’re all curious as to why you did it. But we’ve long since figured it out; your reasons are as insincere as your attempt to come clean at this exact moment – five years to the day of the filing of charges against you, because the Statute of Limitations allows you the immunity from the law you so fervently desire for yourself.

Setting the record straight? Is that what you’re doing, Mark? Seems to me like you’re saving your own butt – and raising more questions in the process.

As business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals, here’s what we can take away from the Mark McGwire debacle:  If you do something wrong, be man (woman) enough to come clean about it in the right way. Insincerity in any form leads to more damaging results than the truth will ever do. And even if the truth does hurt, the ramifications may be less severe, and you’ll still have the respect of those who forgive the honest.

It’s too bad Mark McGwire’s mom wasn’t doing the interview.  I can just hear her now:

“Mark – MARK!  Shut up, Mark!  All we want to know is… Yes or No?”

– Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company and author of the brand-new book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales: How To Dominate Your Market, now available from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.

2009 will go down in history as the month that Tiger Woods became the 800-Pound Gorilla of the media in something other than golf. The most shocking thing about his fall from grace is that this sort of behavior from the ultra-successful has become almost predictable.

My wife once worked with very powerful developers of high-rises in the United States, mainly the Midwest. These were people who dealt in eight and nine-figure numbers daily, with huge risks on every project – and huge successes if they bet correctly. Because of Sherri’s position, I had the chance to get to know them on a level that few others did.

What I found was that these high rollers were always on the lookout for the next big challenge in every facet of their lives. Whether it was skydiving, baccarat, dangerous recreational drugs, or hitting on others’ wives just to see if they could get away with it, these were very powerful people that had to push the envelope in whatever they did. Their work lives were so borderline dangerous, their personal lives had to struggle just to keep up.

And I thought back to those days when I recognized the similarity they have to many of the celebrities, Ponzi schemers, and top sports figures that have fallen in 2009.

To them, being at the pinnacle of their game, there is a hunger to achieve something else in their personal lives that needs to be equally challenging. They’ve tasted the adrenaline rush of supreme victory in their careers, and their home lives are boring in comparison. So they spice it up – because others do it around them, because they can afford it, and most importantly, the temptation to achieve a sordid, secret personal victory on the other side of their lives is overwhelming.

“What can I get away with?” they begin to ask themselves, and start doing things that give them the same sense of danger, thrills and excitement they experience in their day jobs. They can afford to buy the necessary cloaks of secrecy they need to keep their dirty deeds under wraps. And so they go about building their skyscrapers, running their investment funds on Wall Street, and winning their green jackets in the light of day.

It’s the blessing and the curse of success.

As you contemplate the past year and look ahead to how you can be a more dominant player in 2010, I hope you’ll discover success in whatever way “success” is defined for you; that you’ll savor the joys of new accomplishment; and that you’ll recognize and resist the Big Lesson of 2009: that new temptations almost always come with the territory.

– Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company and author of the brand-new book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales: How To Dominate Your Market, now available from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.

From the very beginning of his show business career, Michael Jackson was the center of attention. Not only was he the youngest and the cutest Jackson of the musical family, he was also the most talented, and he proved it over and over again.

As he grew older and more savvy, he hung around the most dominant and influential people of his time — people who knew the ropes, and could help Michael exploit those things he had into something far bigger. Berry Gordy, Stevie Wonder, and many others encouraged Michael to think bigger, and he took off into the stratosphere.

It was only later on that Michael Jackson became less authentic to himself and those around him. As he rose in stardom, however, his creations were uniquely his; the moonwalk, the “Thriller” video dance segment, his trademark high-pitched sounds throughout his songs — those was all his, prior to the many plastic surgeries, the reclusive lifestyle, and the millions of inquiring minds that eventually drove him to solitude.

Michael Jackson did all the things that the dominant players in any business aren’t afraid to do: he thought bigger than anyone else, he was authentically unique, he did what others didn’t have the guts to do, he was quoted often, he got beyond the rejection of some of his greatest critics, he was passionate about what he did, and he mastered the fundamentals of the business.

Wow. What a career.

You can say all you want about how wierd he was, about his warped sense of love for children, the reclusive lifestyle, even the one-glove thing. But Michael Jackson was an 800-Pound Gorilla of pop music, pop culture, and entertainment that will never be forgotten.  

Michael Jackson made the world better.

What will they say about YOU when you finally kick the bucket?  

Resolve as a business professional to make the world better because of your efforts, not worse; to improve lives, not to tear them down; to find mutually beneficial opportunities, not one-sided deals; and to be a friend to those you serve instead of a potential conquest.  It may be tougher to survive in business today using these principles, but these qualities are the ones people remember fondly, and will treasure far longer.

There’s a lot of good that Michael Jackson left behind.  So long, King of Pop – your 800-Pound Gorilla status is safe with me.

Bill Guertin is CEO (Chief Enthusiasm Officer) of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a dynamic sales training and consulting company whose list of clients includes the ticket sales departments of professional sports teams in the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer. He is the author of the Gold Medal-award-winning book Reality Sells, and his second book, The 800-Pound Gorilla of Sales, is due this fall from John Wiley & Sons. Find more articles and valuable information at www.The800PoundGorilla.com, or follow Bill on Twitter at www.twitter.com/800poundgorilla.

“Astounding.”

That’s all I could think as I read the details of General Motors and its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing this week. A one-time titan of industry, the government is spending $50 billion of your money to enter an arena it has never gone into before: salvaging an American icon whose best days may be behind it.

I watched an interview last night on a cable news program with the Vice-Chairman of GM, who reacted to the statement that it was a sad day for the company by saying, “Well, unfortunately, I’ve known this day was coming for about 4 to 6 months now.”

“What??”

That ought to anger every one of us who is working to keep our much smaller businesses alive each day, and who isn’t about to get a bankruptcy bailout.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that bankruptcy protection “should allow GM to pull off one of the most expedient downsizings in the industry’s 120-year history,” shuttering 2,600 costly dealers, closing 14 factories, and escaping the crushing weight of its own union employees’ labor deal. All in all, they’re shedding almost $80 billion in debt, and realizing work-force savings going forward of billions of dollars a year.

If you’re seeing your banker tomorrow, why don’t you ask him or her if they’d be willing to do a “mini-GM”-style deal with you? Tell them you’ve got some employees that have some bad compensation deals, you’ve over-extended your dealer network, and your products aren’t as competitive as some of the others, so you’re looking for someone to finance your “escape” from those bad decisions.

That’s the difference between GM and you.

The dominant players in every category — the 800-Pound Gorillas — get special favors. Because they affect so many others in society, the President of the United States deemed GM to be special enough to get a deal unlike anyone else in American history.

We may not be that big, but as sales professionals, small business owners, and entrepreneurs, we ought to look at the General Motors story as an example of how the dominant players are able to get special treatment, leverage, and “favors” in different ways.

I’m still angry about GM, but I have to admit that it’s one of the perks of being an 800-Pound Gorilla — and it’s reason enough to try to become one in your own marketplace.