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Businessspeople Should Avoid The Secondary Gain Trap
By: Dr Gary S Goodman
In movies about the Cold War, such as ?Fail Safe,? starring Henry Fonda, the Strategic Air Command issues orders to attacking pilots that contains primary, secondary, and tertiary targets.
If they are precluded from striking the primary or top priority target, they are to move on to the secondary, and so forth.
In business, we only have a primary target: getting customers and keeping them.
Everything else, for our purposes is secondary or tertiary, or even less of a priority.
Unlike pilots, businesspeople shouldn?t even think about diverting their focus from what?s number one. It?s simply a waste of time.
For example, a lot of salespeople try to avoid rejection by using weak, counterproductive language, that, I detail in other articles. By seeking interpersonal acceptance, the apparent opposite of rejection, as their primary focus, they?re seeking a secondary gain.
And this is a waste of time.
They shouldn?t be thinking of rejection, at all. The running back who gets the football may know he needs a yard for the first down, but his legs are prepared to carry him into the end zone, if he can break enough tackles.
His primary target is always SCORING. He is a scoring machine, not a one-yard at a time machine.
I knew a marketing manager who was excellent at his job, but who would have made a terrible salesman. He shared his philosophy with me, one day.
?Life is too short to deal with unpleasant people!?
So, he would avoid unpleasantness at almost all costs. In business, this is definitely a secondary gain, and putting it first, is having your priorities out of whack.
The next time things aren?t clicking for you in the sales or customer service process, or your productivity is declining, or you?re just feeling ambivalent or listless, do a check up from the neck up.
Clarify what?s primary, eliminate everything else, and prosper!
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone? and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com. |  |
