Over the course of the past college football season, I’ve become a Brady Hoke fan. Oh sure, I’ve rooted for the Michigan Wolverines for many years but Coach Hoke has impressed me not just with the wins.
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Something he said was quoted in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated and it was such a great business point I wanted to share it. Of course, Coach Hoke didn’t think about it that way but we sure can.
This was what SI had to say:
The Penn State scandal and looming Ohio State sanctions could give other Big Ten schools a recruiting edge, but Michigan coachBrady Hoke said he wouldn’t touch those topics. “If we’ve got to talk about the negatives of other schools,” Hoke said, “we don’t have enough positives.”
Great business point too, Coach. I don’t know about you guys but I’m always suspicious when someone who is trying to sell me something spends a lot of time on their competition’s shortcomings and far less on their own product’s advantages. I used to try to provoke that behavior by asking potential vendors about their competitors. The smart ones didn’t take the bait knowing that any good executive is going to be doing their own evaluation and your best bet is to put your best foot forward rather than using it to try to trip up someone else. They’d answer a direct, specific question but the best ones kept their answers factual. I even remember one guy who knew his product wasn’t any better than others out there: he was just there to compete on price, which he let me know quite clearly while praising all his competition (since his product was pretty much the same).
Credibility is a key asset in business. How would you feel about discovering that negative reviews of a restaurant were posted by a cook from the place next door? You’d probably ignore the review, good or bad. That’s the one thing no salesperson, marketer, or executive can afford to be – ignored. Go Blue!
Consult Keith 