Life is not always easy. Repairing machines and running a business isn't easy. Well, actually it is easy, compared to some things. I think it's easier than being, a professional boxer. I think it's easier than driving a taxicab and wondering if someone is going to shoot you in the back of the head. It is probably easier than working in the animal shelter. Being a technician and/or a businessperson is certainly harder than being born into wealth. There are all types of ways of describing easy and hard. Let's accept the fact that the business of servicing and selling office machines and their related products is not too hard, but not too easy.

I once attended a seminar given by an internationally known sales trainer, Tom Hopkins. Although I constantly make jokes about salespeople, and their techniques, I must admit to employing some of those tricks myself, as needed.

Some are not direct aids to selling, but are ways to stay motivated and avoid discouragement. One that he used went something like this. A door to door salesman had a 10% success ratio, which was acceptable. Every time he did not make a sale, he would cheerfully thank the person who bought nothing. Why? Because, he felt that he was now one more 10th closer to his next sale and this person had just helped him towards that next one!

Another anecdote. After Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he was being interviewed by a reporter. He mentioned that he had made about 1000 attempts, before he hit on the correct way to create a successful light bulb. The amazed reporter questioned how he could have the patience to work through 1000 failures. Mr. Edison is said to have replied "I didn't have 1000 failures. I learned 1000 ways not to make a light bulb."

If you have many days that don't go well, you may be in the wrong business or occupation. In most cases, you do your work and/or run your business successfully. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes, you have several bad days. If they're all bad, that's a different story. If you are a service technician, you absolutely cannot expect things to go well too often. The nature of broken things is that they are broken. Furthermore, the nature of the human being is too make some mistakes.

When working with hands and tools, mistakes will happen. Things that are done correctly will sometimes cause mistakes to happen. You remove something to clean it or show a customer, and when you put it back, a piece of plastic breaks and the machine is down. You turn a machine on after doing a repair, and the heater lamp chooses that moment to fail. You are no more at fault than the person who walks in a room, turns on the light switch, and sees the light bulb burn out. Wrong place at the wrong time.

You probably do that already, but accept that you do not have to feel guilty, even if you are the cause of the problem. When talking to the customer, whose machine you have just condemned, you might have to act a bit depressed, as if it were a living creature, not just a piece of machinery. But that is salesmanship. It is not a reason for you to suffer.

You make a decision to try something and it ruins the customer's machine: Pop a scan cable, short a circuit board, etc. You have to make a decision; objectively, not emotionally. Should you feel guilty, or are some accidents unavoidable and inevitable?

For example, one manufacturer has a reputation for producing low end fax machines that cannot be disassembled without a high risk of breaking very expensive parts. This design is the reason why the customer can buy the machine so cheaply. The manufacturer made a decision to use cheap manufacturing processes, which result in fragile machines. Therefore, in my biased opinion, you should not subsidize that by replacing the machine for free if you are the one who breaks it while doing routine repairs.

There are times when you make a stupid mistake or ruin a machine with your own sloppiness. Assuming this happens rarely, accept it as part of the territory. There are days (and sometimes weeks) when I have what I call the "Midas touch." My description of this is when everything I touch turns to something (which is not gold, and you would prefer not to step in it.)

There have been times when I have completely refunded a repair or even replaced a machine at no charge. I am not proud of these incidents. I don't brag about them. I don't think it means that I am a really nice guy and love these customers and want them to be happy no matter what. It means that I have to accept certain mistakes. It means that I have made a decision to do the right thing, and I do it, even if it makes me unhappy. When it is done, I breathe a sigh of relief. It is over, finis!

And you know what? Sometimes the customer is still unhappy. But I don't let that ruin my day.

When my children were younger and I was having a bad day, I would sometimes call my wife at 4:00 or so, and let her know that we were going out to dinner. We would go to one of those places with really great salad and dessert bars. The whole family was happy, and it was a great way to end a bad day. I would say to my family. "Good news. I had a bad day."

Jim Intravia