How I Got My First Job By Quoting a Classic Christmas Movie

Serve first. Sell second.

Christmas tree lot in Glenn Mills, PA. Photo Credit: Colin Black

Ok, so if you ask my former boss, she’ll tell you that she hired me because I was the only candidate with relevant work experience. I was just out of college, applying to work at an online high school program, and I’d spent senior year working for my college’s online distance learning program.

That’s the official story.

The unofficial story, the one I like to believe, is this.

I got my first real job out of college by quoting the Christmas classic, Miracle on 34th Street, in my interview. To clarify, we’re talking about the black-and-white 1947 version, not the 1994 version. Please. I do have some class.

If you’re not aware of the plot of this 80 yr. old movie (I think we’re a little late for a spoiler alert), the real Santa Claus comes to NY to observe the state of the world and see whether people still believe in the true Christmas spirit, or whether the holiday has been taken over by crass commercialism. While in NY, he unexpectedly gets roped into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then becomes the official mall Santa for Macy’s on 34th street in Manhattan.

While at Macy’s, he asks children what they want for Christmas and then promises they’ll get the gifts they want. When he is questioned by angry parents who can’t find these gifts anywhere, he points them to the correct store and tells them where they can purchase the present for the least amount of money. The kicker: he starts sending people to other stores.

The Macy’s staff understandably panics, until Mr. Macy himself decides this is a great policy. His rationale is that shoppers will think Macy’s is the “store with a heart” and will consequently spend more money at Macy’s than ever before. So, Santa gets to keep his job, and everyone is happy except for the people who aren’t. But telling you more would definitely spoil the rest of the movie. So you’ll have to see for yourself.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I’m not exactly sure what question I was asked in the interview. Maybe something along the lines of “describe your view of customer service.” Here I was, 20 yrs. old, with no real experience in customer service aside from working as a hotel bellhop, trying to think of something clever. So, I shared this scenario from one of my favorite Christmas movies, and basically said “I think the goal is to be as helpful as possible, even if it means losing an immediate sale, because your long-term reputation as a company is more important.”

Over the next 2.5 years, I learned exactly what this looked like in practice.

I took thousands of phone calls from homeschool parents or high school administrators looking for supplemental classes for their students. I had people cry about family struggles, laugh about jokes I made, yell at me, threaten to sue my company, ask to talk to my boss, beg for discounts, ask me for help choosing a college, and even ask for help ordering textbooks on Amazon.

From all these thousands of calls, I learned one key lesson: serve first, sell second.

Whenever I tried to sell first, it came back to haunt me. I distinctly remember selling about 6 classes to a family with two students. I knew they were a difficult prospect, and I was so excited to tell my boss

“I just made us $3000 over the phone!”

Her response:

“They’re a really difficult family to deal with, so let’s just see what happens. Sometimes when you have to work so hard to get the sale, it’s not worth getting the customer.”

She was right. I spent hours on the phone with the family over the next few weeks, helping with technology, changing their class times, dealing with complaints about the teacher, only to have the family drop all the classes one by one. I’m pretty sure we gave them a refund several weeks after our normal refund window had passed.

I had tried too hard to sell, and I forgot to think about what the customer really needed.

Contrast this to when I did it right.

There were many times when I spent untold hours on the phone, walking customers through their students’ ideas for their college majors and trying to help them determine which classes would provide good preparation. Sometimes this translated into sales worth thousands of dollars. Sometimes this translated to me referring the family to another program that was a better fit.

The best moments were when a parent would use some of my favorite words: “you don’t have the right classes for my student, but you’ve been so kind and helpful, I’m going to tell all my friends about your program.”

Or, better yet, when I heard these words from one of their friends later: “My friend is so-and-so. She’s never signed her student up with you, but she told me how great you were on the phone, so I decided to sign up my student.”

See, the thing is, you need sales now to keep the doors open and the lights on. But you need sales later to keep the business growing.

In my opinion, the best way to get both is this: Serve first. Sell second.

Ask your customers what they need. Truly listen.

Determine whether you can offer it.

If so, great. Sell as hard as you can.

If you can’t, send them to the company that can meet their needs.

And if you can offer what they need in the future, take notes and get to work making changes.

You might not make money doing this.

Or, like me, you might help your company go from a 10% annual deficit to a 12% annual profit.

This Christmas season, ask yourself, what kind of company do I want to work for?

Do I want to work for one that practices kindness and puts customers first, or do I want to work for one that puts the almighty dollar above everything else?

You can make a lot of money just making the sale.

But you might also bring yourself a lot of headaches. And you’re not really helping the customer.

Plus, maybe, just maybe, you can make more money by building a reputation of honesty and service.

Your mileage may vary. Results not guaranteed.

But it will certainly feel better.

And you know what they say.

Good vibes only.

Merry Christmas.