As I hurried up the stairs to the radio station, I checked my watch. 

8:27a. 

Not good.  The sales meeting started at precisely 8:30a and although I wasn't late I hated going straight from the front door into the conference room without having a chance to get situated at my desk. 

The front door was unlocked and there was nobody guarding the receptionist's desk.  The security door was wide open and I breezed down the hall.  In the early 90's, security at radio stations wasn't such a big deal.  Pretty much anyone could march in the door and commandeer the studios for their nefarious purposes.  No one ever did.

I chucked my Franklin planner on my chair, shrugged out of my suit coat and headed into Conference Room A.  There was no particular reason to name the conference room because we only had one.  We only had one computer, too, but that is a different story for a different day.

There was the usual chatter as I took my not-really-assigned-but-I-sat-there-every-time-seat.  Tommy was talking about the Tarheels.  Nancy was counting the minutes until her next cigarette.  Pandora was checking her teeth in a make-up mirror.  Dick called for everyone's attention and we drew to order.

Sales meetings with Dick Harlow were often intriguing, sometimes inspirational and never boring.  I was eager to find out what was on his mind today.

"There are many traits of a good sales person", Dick began.  "Call out some of those traits that you think are important."

Our sales manager, Cheryl, had opened a cabinet on the wall to reveal a white board and now, with marker in hand, she was prepared to document our answers.

"Persistence", yelled out Paul.  Cheryl wrote it down.

"Determination", said Nancy. 

"Persuasiveness", I added.

And so it went until Cheryl had written fifteen or so traits of accomplished sellers.

Dick looked over the list and he said," While there are many traits that excellent sales people share and while an argument could be made for any one of these traits being the most important or valuable for any given sales process, the trait that I believe is the most important for the next ten years is this one."

And with that pronouncement, Dick circled  Problem-Solving.

"Sales people used to primarily be product pushers and, of course, there are still many of those both inside and outside of media.  Their sales are characterized by long speeches describing the features and benefits of their products.  They believe that most everyone is a prospect and that the sale begins when the customer says no." 

Dick looked around the room to make sure that his audience was still tuned in.  As usual, I was on the edge of my seat.

"The traits most important to being a successful product pusher are courage, determination and perseverance.  That's not to say that these don't remain important traits for the professional sales person of the future - they do.  But, the professional sales person of the future needs to understand that the game is changing and they need a multitude of skills to succeed.  Those skills include pipeline management, qualification of accounts, listening carefully for both spoken and unspoken needs of the prospects and problem solving."

Dick's collar was open.  He had long ago thrown his suit coat over an empty chair and now he was rolling up his sleeves.  The body language said that it was time to get to work.  I clicked my pen on and flipped my legal pad to a new page.

"Problem solving skills will benefit you more than any other selling skill over the next decade because the nature of selling is shifting from product pushing to 'needs-based' or 'consultative selling'.  These expression are just seminar-speak for understanding and solving customer's problems with customized sales solutions.  For us to succeed, we need to embrace this type of selling.  While we've been customizing solutions for years, we need to get better at customizing solutions to solve specific problems.  To do that we need to become better problem solvers. 
Today we're going to work on a problem as a group to demonstrate that when we really think hard about a complicated task we can solve it.  But, not only that - by thinking hard and understanding the building blocks of solving problems we can learn how to solve infinitely more complex problems.  When we do that successfully we'll be far more valuable to clients than the typical media seller."

The room was filled with doubt.  Many of us were in sales because it wasn't rocket science or brain surgery or "rocket surgery" as one of my friends was fond of saying.  We  sold access to an audience.  We understood the audience but not necessarily the science behind marketing to them.  Now Dick was telling us that we had to become skilled problem solvers.  Thinking our way through the challenges faced by a customer and customizing solutions that addressed those challenges?  Frankly, it was a little scary.

While dread was filling our hearts, Dick was whistling nonchalantly as he erased the white board.  Now, he drew a diagram in the center of the board and it looked like this:



"Assuming that I drew this correctly, the diagram is a square with squares inside of it.  My question for you is how many squares are represented by this diagram.  Don't say anything out loud - just write down your answer."

After a minute of staring and counting we had written down our answers. 

"How many of you saw sixteen squares?"

No hands.

"Seventeen?

Dick named every number between sixteen and thirty and for twelve of those numbers someone raised his hand.  We looked around the room in total amazement.  The diagram didn't look the least bit complicated but fifteen of us had come up with twelve different answers.

Then Dick split us into four groups and assigned each group a more specific task.  Group #1 had to determine how many 1x1 squares were in the diagram.  Group #2 had to determine the number of 2x2 squares.  Group #3 had the 3x3 squares and Group #4 had the 4x4 squares.  To help us out, Dick added numbers to the diagram as shown here:



Group #1 had no trouble determining that there were sixteen 1x1 squares since Dick had numbered them.  Similarly, Group #4 saw clearly that there was only one 4x4 square.  Groups #2 and #3 had quite a bit of debate but they eventually decided that there were nine 2x2 squares (note the nine dots acting as the center of those squares) and four 3x3 squares (squares #6, #7, #10, #11 are the center of those squares).  Dick wrote the answers on the board like this:

1
4
9
16

Then, he added them up and came up with 30.  So, the answer to the question:  How many squares are represented by the diagram?  is 30.

Dick's lesson was this:  complicated problems can best be solved by breaking them down into their component parts.  The number of squares is a function of the number of each of the different sized squares within the diagram.  By understanding how to solve the problem and by solving each component before coming up with a final answer, we were all able to agree on the best answer to the problem. 

But, the lesson didn't stop there.  Dick then asked us this:

"What about if the diagram was five columns by five rows?  How many individual squares would be represented by that diagram?"

We wanted Dick to draw the bigger square and let us break into groups again but he refused.

"You have learned all you need to learn in order to solve this problem without drawing the diagram.  Let me give you a hint.  Look at the numbers, 1, 4, 9, and 16.  What do you know about those numbers and how they relate to each other?"

We stared at the white board and then it dawned on Charlsie.  "They are the squares of the first four numbers.  Look!  One squared is 1, two squared is 4, three squared is 9 and four squared is 16."

"Yes!" Dick exclaimed.  "So, if the square was five columns by five rows how many squares would be represented by the diagram?"

Within seconds two or three people said, "Fifty-five."

"Yes," Dick agreed.  "That would be the sum of the squares of the numbers one through five.  We know that the sum of the squares one through four is thirty and we add the square of five, twenty-five, to get to fifty-five. What if the square was eight rows by eight columns?"

Dick didn't wait for us this time. 

"Then the answer would be the sum of the squares of 1 through 8 (204).  The point of this exercise is not just that you should break down complicated problems into their component parts but that you should learn patterns that allow you to build on the problems you've already solved to solve infinitely more complex problems.  Learn how to do this and you will be a valuable resource for all of your clients and prospects.  Not just for the next ten years but for as long as you choose."

Dick would be the first to tell you that he's no rocket surgeon but he sure did open our eyes to new worlds on that day and gave us the confidence to believe that we had the brainpowrer to be effective problem solvers.