It Begins with Please and Doesn't End with Thank You

Transforming Business Etiquette into Sales Performance

Edwin Baldry

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781632994592
• eBook ISBN:
  9781632994608
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO "PLEASE" AND "THANK YOU"?
​We live in a world where respect, gratitude, and appreciation have been replaced by efficiency, dismissiveness, and even fear of genuine connection. Sometimes, we don't stare up from our screens and devices long enough to realize there is even another person on the other side of the tweet or email. "Is anybody out there?" One thing is for sure: this speed of life has taken a toll on our basic use of good manners and etiquette. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the decline of professional business communications. But manners and etiquette can be a powerful tool for business and sales success. It Begins with Please and Doesn't End with Thank You will show you how to regain those tools and techniques of bygone eras and update them for the digital today. This how-to guide and go-to resource takes the concepts of "please" and "thank you" into every realm where you engage with clients and prospects-from your first hellos and emails, phone and video calls, to conference rooms and restaurants. With his "return to the personal" philosophy, sales veteran Edwin P. Baldry breaks down the practices, principles, and protocols for successful business dealings and relationship-building. Via tips, tools, and humorous tales, Baldry shows how to tap into the often-overlooked power of manners to improve your business relationships, and how to transfer etiquette into sales performance.

CHAPTER 1

F.A.C.E. THE DAY

EDibles: Only from the Mind of Minolta

“You are only young once, and if you work it right, once is enough.”
—JOE E. LEWIS

In 1991, I was twenty-two and fresh out of college. I had just spent two weeks on the beach after graduating from San Diego State University, having majored in Speech Communications with a minor in Philosophy. By June, I had blown through most of my graduation gift money. It was time to move on from being one of the guys still partying and sleeping on one couch, then another. It was time to give up my dream of a stand-up comedy career, which I had taken seriously in college but now realized was not going to make me any money. It was time to leave town and begin a new life called “adulthood.”

I arrived in San Francisco a few days later, my ’82 Jetta loaded to the gills with all my worldly possessions: shorts, t-shirts, a Mexican blanket, a San Diego State beer mug, and my two new graduation gifts: two business suits, one blue, one gray. In a lucky break, I got my start in “copier sales,” known at the time to be one of the toughest proving grounds for entry-level sales personnel. During the early 1990s, copier companies would pretty much hire anybody with a college degree, a pulse, and a smile. The jobs were all straight commission gigs, so the copier companies at the time—Canon, Xerox, Lanier, Toshiba, Minolta—had little to lose by hiring beginners.

Chuck Maguire, the regional manager for Minolta Business Systems in the Bay Area, called me in for an interview. That day, dressed in my new blue suit, a red tie, and a freshly pressed white shirt (the “Jack Welch uniform,” may he rest in peace), I rode shotgun on a “field ride” with one of Chuck’s top sales guys, his nephew, Chris Spingola. The purpose of a field ride is to see if interested candidates have both the stomach and the discipline for the gig. Chris was spectacular. I loved the way he walked, talked, and operated. He moved with confidence, spoke with purpose and a smile. This guy was smooth. I wanted not only to be that guy but to beat that guy. In short, I was hooked. When we got back to the office, Chuck asked what I thought and I simply said, “I love it. I could kill at this job.” Already I had fallen in love with sales.

I was young. I was eager. But as a sales guy still wet behind the ears, I was also looking for guidance. I needed a mantra. And while I was working for Minolta, I found one: F.A.C.E. the Day.

F.A.C.E. the Day: The Core Principle

“You can’t take over the world without a good acronym.”
—C. S. WOOLLEY

In professional sales, we love acronyms and mantras that help us improve our skills and ultimately our performance. If you’ve ever been part of a team or trained relentlessly for any skill, you’ve seen or utilized mantras.

Originally, in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, a mantra came from the Vedas, a body of Sanskrit religious texts originating in ancient India. A mantra was a sacred utterance—a syllable, word, or group of words believed to have religious, magical, or spiritual powers. It was also a word or sound that could be repeated to aid concentration in meditation. Nowadays mantras are more mundane. They are frequently repeated statements, slogans, formulas, or truisms. Sometimes mantras are merely clichés: “Life’s not fair,” “You get what you pay for,” “K.I.S.S.—Keep It Simple, Stupid.”

“Mantras…help you focus on what you want to create for that day.”
—KAROL WARD

The more original and clever mantras can serve as affirmations, ways to motivate and inspire yourself, your team, or your company. Here are a few such mantras (or acronyms that are mantras), taken from personal, business, and sports contexts. Some you might recognize, others perhaps not:

• “Play like a champion today.” (Team slogan, University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program)

• “Just win, baby.” (Al Davis, general manager of the Oakland Raiders)

• “Don’t let anyone work harder than you do.” (Serena Williams)

• “Victory requires payment in advance.” (Anonymous)

• “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” (Team slogan, from the TV show Friday Night Lights)

• “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.” (Vince Lombardi)

• “T.E.A.M.—Together Excellence, Alone Mediocrity” (Anonymous)

• “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” (Pro golfer Gary Player)

Throughout this book, I’ll be quoting and referencing some of the best salespeople, business icons, and inspirational humans. As in the stand-up comedy business, “borrowing,” or repurposing good content in business writing, is not punishable by death.

As I mentioned, I was at Minolta when I discovered my first mantra, F.A.C.E. the Day, or F.A.C.E. for short. As it turns out… ta-da!…this mantra is also an acronym. It stands for:

FOCUS

ATTITUDE

CONTROL

EMPATHY

Early in my career, I began to use this magic mantra in my own work. Initially I borrowed parts and principles of F.A.C.E. from the marvelous Paul Warshaw (R.I.P.), another regional manager in Los Angeles for Minolta, as well as from the unbeatable Jim Graff, who was in a class by himself in our San Francisco sales office. Over the years, I’ve continued to adapt and hone and perfect the four basic principles of F.A.C.E.

Before we unleash your inner sales beast into the battlefield of business, and before we harness all the superpowers of manners or etiquette, we need to prepare you for success. We need you to zero in on you. That’s why in this section I break down and discuss the impact of each component of the mantra—FOCUS, ATTITUDE, CONTROL, and EMPATHY—and explain how you can apply them to your own life.

For some of you, the precepts of F.A.C.E. the Day may seem hokey. Trust me, I get it. But I hope that, for most of you, these principles will resonate immediately. Throughout my business career, F.A.C.E. has been a frequent touchstone, a rallying cry, and a blueprint for success. Now I want to pass it onto you.

CHAPTER 2

F.A.C.E. THE DAY: FOCUS

EDibles: A Focused Person Is Hard to Beat

“I don’t care how much power, brilliance, or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there, you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.”
—ZIG ZIGLAR

Quite simply, a focused person is hard to beat or deny.

Let me tell you a story about how I used the power of focus to overcome an early and humiliating setback in my formative years.

When I was a teenager growing up in California, I used to race BMX bikes. I was a competitive kid, and I got to be good enough that I made the team sponsored by a local bike shop. My team and I would go to competitions, the shop would pay our entrance fees, and we’d race. That was fun, and we did pretty well. Then, when I was fifteen years old, with a driver’s permit but no driver’s license, I took my big sister Phyllis’s beloved ’66 GT Mustang out for a ride on Saint Patrick’s Day. I proceeded to wrap her car around a telephone pole, banging up the car to the tune of over a thousand dollars’ worth of damage. To repay the repair cost, I needed to earn a thousand bucks. I needed a job, and fast.

Fortunately I had a place in mind. I went back to the bike shop the following day and said, “I need to start working.” Before long, I was working a day or two after school during the week and full-time on the weekends, for a total of twenty hours a week. If my memory serves me, I made minimum wage: $3.25 an hour. After working two weeks, I’d have a check, after taxes, for something like $90.

But that bike-shop gig was critical to me for other reasons than just earning cash. I ended up doing everything in that shop. I dealt with people all day. I learned every inch of the business, from wrenching bikes in the back, to fixing and selling bikes up front, to putting the day’s take in the safe each night. I got to the point where, probably by my junior year, after working there for a year and a half, I was managing the bike shop by myself on the weekends. At the time I thought, “Man, do I have it good. I’m managing a bike shop. How cool is that?” Little did I know that I was, essentially, low-priced child labor. I ran the man’s entire business for about $24 a day.

But aside from being financially exploited, it was a great experience. I had no supervision. I had the responsibility of always having to show up to open the shop (no matter how hungover I was). Hard work equals freedom, and that definitely paid dividends, because that freedom earned me more freedom, allowing me to grow and gradually acquire more and more responsibility. For me, the lesson resonates to this day: the harder you work, the more freedom you get (and the more you’ll get left alone by your boss).

Also, at $90 a week, I could pay back my sister.

How does this relate to F.A.C.E. the Day? In my case, FOCUS came down to identifying my goals—earn money or suffer the eternal wrath of Phyllis. What should a professional salesperson focus on? Hopefully on many things, but let’s begin with focusing on goals. This concept sounds rudimentary: the path to becoming a focused person begins with setting concrete, obtainable goals. But while this concept is talked about a lot, it’s surprisingly rarely used. For the purposes of this book, when I use the term FOCUS, I mean focusing on goals in particular.

I believe there are two types of people in the world:

Person 1: “I have a GOAL, and I’m committed to paying the price and working hard to achieve it.”

Person 2: “I have a WISH, and my plan is to rub a lamp or buy a lottery ticket to get what I want.”

We all know people like Person 2, people with lofty but usually unobtainable wishes: “I want to have a shiny red Ferrari…and only then will I be satisfied and feel good about myself.” No harm in dreaming, but Person 2 has forged no viable path for earning or obtaining that shiny red Ferrari. They just know they want it and hope it will appear magically out of thin air.

Person 1 has a concrete goal: “Not only do I want a red Ferrari, but here’s how I’m going to get one.” Person 1 makes a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: F.A.C.E. the Day
• Part 2: Preparation
• Part 3: Performance
• Part 4: Modes of Communication
• Epilogue
• Appendix: A Planning Guide for Business, Sales, and Industry Events, by Nancy G. Duggan
• Works Cited
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author