Am I Third Tribe?

There’s been a lot of talk on the web in the last couple of months about the “Third Tribe“. To be honest, despite it being plugged by so many of my favorite bloggers, I’ve pretty much ignored a lot of it. Actually, I’m pretty skeptical of ideas and products that get a huge plug from people all at once. It’s like Opus Dei or some other conspiracy is afoot – everybody is in on something, and I’m not. So I gave Third Tribe a pass.

Until yesterday.

Going through my google reader, I came across (yet another) Johnny B. Truant guest post on ProBlogger. And I realized that maybe I’m a Third Triber without ever having noticed.

…my goal isn’t to create customers, but instead to make friends.

If you’re funny, people tend to like you. (I’m not saying you should be funny if you’re not, but if you’ve got it, flaunt it.)

If you write and talk about yourself as a whole person, rather than a one-dimensional business drone, people tend to be interested in you.

If you answer tweets and emails in a somewhat chatty, personal way instead of going for the sale when it’s not obviously warranted, people tend to enjoy talking to you.

And when all of those friends — and friends of those friends — one day have a need that you are able to fill, they won’t go to Google and look for the first search result or for the guy with the cheapest price. It’s human nature that they’ll come to you — their friend — first.

That’s how I operate, too. I don’t bring the hard pitch. The very idea of working that way gives me gas. Believe it or not, I used to work as a “real estate agent for the recently departed” – in other words, I sold graves. I hated it. I mean granted, my office overlooked my parents’ final resting place, so that kinda threw me off my game. But the biggest problem was the way we talked to and about our customers. Sales meetings were like rape. Seriously. Remember, I had been a customer of their business not long prior to working there, and hearing the way they talked about inquiries and grieving families really made me feel violated.

I just couldn’t sit across from a young couple who had just lost their infant daughter and treat them like they were buying a Pontiac.

That was a long time ago. Since then I’ve realized that I have a gift for unrivaled customer service. I’ve won awards for providing customers with what they needed, when they needed it. And that service, customers have returned to the business I represented. They bought more products and services. Whether it was the flower shop I worked at when I was 21, the sportswear place I worked when I was 23, or the HR company I worked at in Scotland in 2002 – 2004.

I always knew that as “good service”. Now it has a new name – Third Tribe.