Last year, a North Carolina fire chief met with his city council to discuss a code that would require residential fire sprinklers. He countered their argument that sprinklers cause extensive water damage by stating that firefighters would cause far more water damage than just one sprinkler head. The council heard that message loud and clear and pushed forward the sprinkler code.
Every organization needs to sell projects and promote ideas, but few company officers are prepared to embrace that “sales” role when they become chief officers.
During the course of a day, a chief might speak to city managers or politicians about the department’s need for new equipment or staffing, address a community gathering about the benefits of residential fire sprinklers, and explain to fire-department personnel the critical importance of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation’s 16 Life-Safety Initiatives. Each discussion requires some level of salesmanship.
My brother-in-law is a highly effective salesman, so I asked him what chiefs could do to improve their selling skills. After much discussion, he suggested a couple things.
First, despite the thousands of available books touting the latest and greatest sales-delivery techniques, he said that listening is most under-rated selling skill. “If you listen carefully, you’ll find the key to what people really want or need,” he said. “Fill their need.”
Second, it’s important to note that there are two different kinds of selling — products and intangibles. Chiefs sell intangibles, almost like life insurance, and those are more difficult to sell. A chief can talk about needing new, safer PPE for firefighters and more staff to handle exploding emergency medical calls, but these really are intangible — until there is a need for the service.
I told him the story of a city manager who told a gathering of fire chiefs what the residents in his community expected and in what order: “First, when they turn on the tap, water comes out; second, when they flush the toilet, the stuff goes away; third, garbage is removed and fourth, if they dial 911, help arrives immediately.”
Fire chiefs are competing with other public agencies whose services — or lack thereof — are immediate. Most residents never need to call the fire service, but when they do, the service is priceless.
So how do you sell these intangibles? If you’re selling the idea of increased staffing, for example, focus on data and facts — the first five minutes after a heart attack can make the difference between life and death; the first few minutes after a stroke are critical to administering the drugs needed for recovery — rather than threaten that reduced staffing could create 20-minute response times.
When my brother-in-law first started selling, he heard this tale:
A long time ago, several Persians gathered around the village well before their journey. An old man at the well advised the travelers to pick up the pebbles on the ground and fill their pockets before their journey. Some travelers did and some did not. That evening, when they arrived at their destination, they reached in their pockets for the pebbles and found the pebbles had turned to diamonds. Some of the travelers wished they had filled their pockets with more pebbles and others that they had picked up some pebbles.
What are you selling — leadership, trust and safety? While it may seem like you are selling pebbles to the city council, community or members of your fire department, each life you save can turn a pebble into a diamond.
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