A Lesson to Learn (Political and Otherwise)

Negotiations in Washington, D.C. have not yielded an extension of the “debt limit” and because of that Obama has fallen back on an age old tactic of the Democratic Party and its candidates for public office. Since there is no way of them to be using logic and reason to convince the Republicans to go along with the debt limit increase, they have taken up the mantra of “the Republicans are going to starve the Seniors.”

In his interview with Scott Pelly of CBS, the President stated that “he couldn’t guarantee” that Social Security and military paychecks would be mailed out because there just “wasn’t enough money in the coffers” to accomplish that.

Perhaps he should have thought of that before he increased the debt through the stimulus and the auto industry bailouts? Had he been frugal with money instead of letting the Democratic Party controlled Congress go wild with spending, there might have been enough for the actual requirements that government should undertake.

I really have to wonder if people are so gullible to constantly believe the Democrats when they claim that Republican actions are going to harm in some way any given “demographic group.” As long as I can remember, they have used such dishonest tactics because there has not been any proven case of the Republicans intentionally harming any groups of citizens.

Their actions remind me of lessons that I used to teach when I worked in sales and was a manager of an electronics store. I used to instruct my sales staff that if they couldn’t find enough benefits of a product to be able to sell it, they had better start giving a lot of thought to what line of business they wanted to be involved.

Let me give a personal example that occurred about two years ago. I was in the process of researching trucks for a tow vehicle, specifically for a fifth wheel as heavy as the Mobile Suites are. I knew from that research that Ford’s F450 had a GCVW of 33,000 pounds and a towing capacity of 24,500 pounds Since I was not able to find GM and Dodge brochures that listed all of the weight capacities of their truck line, specifically the 4500 series trucks, I had to go to the dealerships for the information.

I had gone to a local GM dealer and spent about 45 minutes to an hour with them in discussing the truck capabilities. I had heard of a lot of RV’ers who had 3500 series trucks that were pulling Mobile Suites, so I wanted to see what they would handle. Once I gave the staff at the GM dealer the information as to what weights I wanted to pull, they studied their manuals and specification sheets. Then they came to me and told me that their 3500 series trucks would NOT be sufficient for my needs. I would have to go to an MDT type truck such as the 5500 series.

At least they were honest with me. My experience with the Dodge dealer was a lot different. Since I knew that the Dodge dealer in another town had the 4500 series Dodge trucks, I went there to do my research. Let me note that this salesman had numerous “sales awards” hanging on his office wall. So, I thought I had a man of knowledge and skill.

We got out his books and spec sheets and the Dodge was also found to be lacking in the capacity of the weight-handling. Now, he started to go on about how this customer of his was doing just great with his 4500 series Dodge pulling his fifth wheel. I asked if he knew the weight of the customer’s trailer and he didn’t. But, he grabbed his phone and called the customer and put his phone on speaker-phone mode.

After the customer talked of how well the truck managed his fifth wheel (toy hauler if I recall correctly), I asked him if he knew how much his trailer weighed. He came back with a quick answer of 14,000 pounds and I could almost see the color drain out of the face of the salesman. He knew that I was looking to pull anything from 18,000 to 20,000 pounds since we hadn’t decided on whether we wanted a Mobile Suites or an Elite Suites at the time.

He had put himself in a bad light by letting a potential customer ask the probing questions that he should have asked first of his previous customer. But, he proceeded to dig himself even deeper. Knowing full well at this point that the Dodge 4500 was nowhere equal with the Ford F450 on weights, he proceeded to try to “knock down” the Ford diesels.

He even went so far as to bring up a YouTube video that supposedly was evidence of how bad the Ford diesels were on regenerations of the particulate filters. I had heard that the particular video he referred to had been a “staged” event and was not indicative of the actual diesel engines.

That was too much for me, and I intentionally asked him if he really thought he had to tear down his competition’s trucks in order to sell his own. I also mentioned that the idea of using a YouTube video as proof really was stretching to make a sale.  In spite of sales awards, he was obviously not a good salesman.

I had always taught my sales staff that I would rather they be honest with their customers and NOT make a sale rather than lie just to make the sale.  Sales made based on lies tend to become either returns or you never see that customer again.

The whole point of this is that if one can’t know the features and benefits of one’s own “product”, whether it be saleable goods or political candidates, in order to “sell” it to the public, then one had better find a better “product” to try to sell. So, it has already been demonstrated that the President and the media haven’t succeeded in “selling” their product.

So, it becomes this: