In the Lagerquist household, setting foot (or ski) on the slopes of Boyce Park was an important rite of passage. When you were five or so (or as soon as the kid one spot older than you mastered the art of skiing solo), Dad would take you along for an evening of skiing at Boyce Park. At that age, four hours of attempting to balance while Dad skied backwards and held you up was enough of a challenge – we couldn’t even imagine going for days on end.
But other than getting to ride the plate lift and spend a night with Dad, skiing at Boyce promised another special treat – hot chocolate and Keebler cookies half way through the evening. Although we loved the outing, I’d be lying if I said that the special Keebler cookies didn’t help sell us on the adventure. We knew that even if our fingers were freezing in our mittens or we just wanted to sit down and sled on our skis, we had to put forth good effort to earn that special treat in the ski lodge.
In class we’ve been talking a lot about how hard it is to find the real pain that customers are feeling so we can sell them the product in the most effective way. I highly doubt that any salesman could have figured out that the best way to get the Lagerquist kids to endure cold
fingers and ski all evening would be to let them eat Keebler cookies in the ski lodge halfway through without really listening to us talk about our experiences first.
So I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that as a salesman, you can’t just assume that 
you understand the pain points and drivers in each situation unless you take the time to not
only listen, but actually digest what your customer is saying and see the experience from their perspective. A night on the slopes with his kids was enough to motivate my dad to go through all the hoopla of dragging us all out there, outfitting us with gear, and listening to all the ‘I’m sooo cold!’ complaints. But for myself, Elsa, Karsten, and Britta, we sure needed that Keebler Elf too.
BoweryJE22