A recent conversation on the front lawn with our sprinkler-system repair guy, Ricky, had my wife ribbing me pretty hard. Over the years, she has frequently teased me for getting in the way of the contractors and service people we have hired for projects around our home.
I admit I have a habit of asking a lot of questions of these folks about the jobs they are working on, their individual businesses and their industries in general.
My wife kids that they only humor me because they are on the clock and make as much money yapping with me as they do actually doing the work we hired them for. I like to think that even if I run up the billable hours slightly, it is money well spent.
Whether it is talking to carpenters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers or any number of fields, there is rarely a time when I don't learn something useful from getting folks to talk about their work. And with rare exceptions, most folks actually enjoy talking about what they do and the field they work in.
I've found that when many of these folks learn I work in banking, they are equally interested in asking questions about our industry.
Truth be told, it's a habit that was drilled into me by John, the first community bank president I worked for. Like many rookie branch managers/calling officers, I had a tendency to do a bit more talking than listening.
In one of my more teachable moments, a friend of mine had lined up a meeting for me with a large shipyard. The owners were looking to finance a possible expansion project. The proposed deal was above my limit, and John decided to accompany me to my initial face-to-face meeting.
After we made our introductions, I prepared to begin a recap of why we were there and to share what we could bring to the table. Before I could get the first words out of my mouth, John jumped in and asked if our hosts had the time to give us a quick tour of their operation.
We left the boardroom and made our way through and around hard-hat and sandblasting areas. Even a slow learner like me knew to keep (mostly) quiet during the tour and let our hosts talk.
Every now and then John would ask a question that got the owner telling a story about how something or other came to be. I soon noticed that the owner and his sons were pretty proud to brag a little about what they had built and appreciated our recognition of that fact.
As we walked around and listened, I realized that I had probably not been told the whole story about their plans in my initial phone calls. It wasn't that they had intentionally held anything back. But it seemed that they had some new revelations as they answered John's questions and told their story.
In the end, we helped them come to the realization that they would be better off breaking the project into phases that they could digest a little at a time.
And it was indeed completed in stages that required no outside financing.
We did, however, end up with sizable deposit accounts from the family.
Later on, John made the point to me that when you have more information about a situation than the competition, you have an advantage. "But it's hard to learn very much when you're doing most of the talking," he said.
He pointed out that if I walked away from a meeting with a current or potential customer without learning something that I didn't know before I got there, I was probably talking too much. I needed to listen to more stories than I told. (John wasn't one to beat around the bush when coaching.)
Since those days, I've found that one of the great things about being in the banking industry is that it gives us both opportunity and reason to learn about how various businesses operate. The things we are able to learn have personal and professional benefits. And there is often as much useful information to learn from the independent contractor and small-business owner as the conglomerate.
My recent conversation with Ricky gave me new understanding of what it takes to eke out a living in his profession these days. Fuel prices and increasingly desperate competition are really squeezing these guys.
Efficient job scheduling can be the difference between profitability and a loss.
And smarter operators like Ricky are going out of their way to stay connected with and be extra responsive to their long-term customers.
That sounds like pretty good advice for all of us.
How many folks' stories will you and your team put yourselves in position to listen to this week? The more you hear, the more likely your organization will help shape those stories.
