Quote of the Day: Booker T Washington

"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."


I pay attention to words because I was an English major and I'm in sales. They are of the utmost importance in most areas of life.

For instance, yesterday my co-worker sent a prospect an email that said, "I know your current solution does not do X and my solution does so we should talk." The guy angrily emailed back, "How do you know we don't do X?" The guy got even madder when my co-worker replied, "Because we are the only company that does." The funniest part was the my co-worker was surprised by the whole thing. I wasn't. I told him it comes across as arrogant when you act like you know everything about someone and what's better for them. I suggested it might be better to write, "A lot of companies like yours have shown considerable uplift using our X solution." I don't think my advice was well received. Perhaps, because it was not asked for.

Stacey and I had a similar experience yesterday on the customer side. As you may know, we have decided to buy a house and the first part of the financing gauntlet we are required to run though is getting pre-approved for a loan. Since we are first time home-buyers, we are having to learn a lot in a short amount of time and can use all the help we can get. We talked to two mortgage bankers yesterday about the possibility of getting financed by them and the two calls could not have been more different.

The first guy said things like: "I might recommend.. " "A lot of first time home-buyers..." "You might want to consider..." "I am here any time if you ever have questions."

The second guy said things like, "You should..." "You need to..." "You're going to want to.." "That time does not work for me."

Guess who got our business?