Five Fingers to Success

"Show me your hands!"

Like a veteran SWAT team raid commander, that's a superb way to capture your team's attention at your next Monday morning sales meeting.

With a little luck and some love shining down from above, most of the meeting's attendees will have two arms, two hands and ten fingers.

Just Five Fingers

No, not the seasoned chicken fingers ordered for lunch, but any five fingers on any sales consultant's, service advisor's or parts advisor's hand. Ditto for all their managers present. Five fingers. Nothing more. Nada mas. Just five fingers. Five fingers to success.

Ask your valued employees to hold up a different finger and answer "yea" or "nay" each time you ask one of the following five questions:

1. Finger One: Do you have immediate access to the preferred mobile phone number and the preferred email address for each of your current clients, every one of them? Conversely, does each client, every one of them, have the very same contact information for you?

2. Finger Two: Do you know the names of all your current clients' significant others and children? Their interests? Their schools? Recognition for excellence?

3. Finger Three: Do you follow the career paths and know the current occupations, titles and workplaces of each of your current clients, every one of them? Just as importantly, do you know and recognize those same clients' favorite "off duty" hobbies and pursuits?

4. Finger Four: Do you know the type, gender and name of the pet (alligator, bat, cat, dog, ferret, hyena or python) owned by each of your customers?

For retail people, do they keep pet snacks, primarily for canines and felines, handy by their desk? (Paying close attention to dogs and cats in your service drive and lounge = big time sales success!)

5. Finger Five: Do you know where each of your clients, every one of them, has an alternate home or chooses to vacation every year during the four different seasons? Do you have that second or even that third home complete address accessible in your files?

How much of the aforementioned information that your employees actually have on file is stored in your company's CRM to promote instant "on the spot" recall to generate tangible, recurring "wow" reactions from your amazed clients?

Or how much of the same information is written down on index cards that are filed neatly in boxes on your employees' desks? (In blackberry nation, sending handwritten, personalized notes to customers will blow them away.)

The U.S. Treasury Department mandates …

… That Financial Services Managers must "know their customer" to comply with applicable federal statutes. And OFAC (Office of Foreign Asset Control) inspectors don't care about fingers, chicken or otherwise.

But you should care. Because human fingers are free. And all of your employees have them. Most should have five. They just need to use them while counting from one to five as they make sure that they can answer "yea" to each of the incredibly vital and powerful, yet simple questions listed above.

Your employees, using five fingers, can eat seasoned chicken fingers every day, or they can use the very same five fingers to fatten their paychecks and to propel their sales, finance and fixed operations departments to achieve increased gross. In the end, the choice of appropriate finger usage is entirely up to you.

All it takes for you to get started is five fingers

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