The Why Factor: What Makes You Different in Business and Life
Although I am happily retired, the one thing I do miss is the thrill of the hunt. There was nothing like having your heart racing while barely beating a deadline in submitting your final proposal.
Mine was generally several pages deeper than most, as I always had a story to tell. I considered it the “Why” factor. Just throwing a price on a piece of paper wasn’t going to work for me; instead, what did work was explaining why we quoted what we did and, especially, what made the company I was employed at the time unique in the market and why that particular customer should care.
Why Your Reputation Is Often Your Greatest Sales Tool
This began decades before I founded Burgess Computer Decisions in 1999. As much as that Why Factor was the company I was at, its value-added differentials, and its product line, pardon if this sounds arrogant, but that Why Factor was also me, and for that matter, my motor.
That motor became my reputation, initially as someone who could find anything. I grew it from there, at numerous companies, and incorporated it into my arsenal as a salesperson. The numbers don’t lie; customers certainly took to them.
As our business went through seismic shifts in marketplaces, we had numerous first-time uses of the Why Factor each time we entered a new marketplace. For instance, when I first opened the company and needed to open a bank line, and, well, you can imagine that scrutiny, as I had no previous history in running a company. All those hundreds of millions of dollars I recently sold meant nothing to them.
How Relationships and Trust Open Doors in Business
Luckily for me, my cousin Rick, AKA “my brother from the same grandmother,” had connections everywhere, including banking. He hooked me up with a local bank, and we were off to the races. Granted, that just got me in the door, and I still needed to go through the litany of “why” questions, and that relationship certainly worked favorably for roughly a decade.
As I began opening up my distribution partners, primarily Ingram Micro, based in Williamsville, NY, and Tech Data, based in Clearwater, FL, the “Why Factor” was front and center. Both companies were protective of their territories and their approved partners and did not want someone new coming in and usurping that process. This was very understandable, and I appreciated what they were trying to accomplish. It only made me want to be part of the club even more.
Luckily, in this case, the local area sales representatives for both companies were very familiar with me, so I decided to let them do my bidding. The last thing either one wanted – or needed – was for me to be approved by one but not the other. So, I met with both individually and told them the very same thing.
I mentioned that they have known me for years, that I was going to sell a lot of the brands they carry that are going to land in their territory, and that, to no fault of their own, without my being authorized, they will not get any commission credit for it. And that there is nothing that’s going to sell in the territory for both companies; why should one person get all the revenue credit?
What can I say? I’m a closer. Both companies signed us up as an authorized partner.
Even five years into it with the bank, the “Why Factor” still came into play.
I literally had to fly that same banker to Hewlett-Packard in Houston, if only to bump my credit line to support what would be a $14M sale of HP goods back to HP in a six-month period.
Go ahead, read those last fifteen words again. No one would blame you.
Bill and I flew out to Bush Airport in Houston the following Thursday and drove to Building 10 at the HP campus, which housed the production factory as well as the sales/operations mezzanine on the second floor, offering a circular tour of the factory floor. Ron Pope, the person at HP we met, spelled out The Why Factor succinctly to the banker when we returned to his office.
In a nutshell, ** WARNING, hang on for the ride; may need to read twice ** HP was in the middle of an SAP clusterfuck (Ron’s term – you should hear it in a Texas twang!), HP had prematurely moved their purchasing to Thailand, and could not find any of their orders in the new SAP (Stop All Processes?) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Through a random connection at General Electric (GE) Capital, whom I had never heard of before, Ron found me.
At that point, I turned to the banker and asked, “Do you get it now?” “Oh, yeah, I get it,” he replied. You really can’t make this shit up. It’s in the book.
One could easily say that GE was the most important customer I ever had. In fact, I said that very same thing on my very first blog post on May 12, 2025. Two years after striking oil with Ron Pope, we began our foray into video surveillance with GE Security, one of the 13 GE Capital companies, this one based in Salem, Oregon.
As we continued to grow and enter these new markets, we needed to increase our lines of credit; thus, the Why Factor continued to come into play, even though it was the same bank we had been with for not seven years, without issue. I never minded this, other than it seemed to slow us down.
What’s Your “Why” Story and Why Does It Matter?
Out The Fucking Door businesses like BCD aren’t themselves when they slow down. Someone must have neglected to do their homework.
What’s YOUR Why Story? What makes you, well, you? Whatever your passion, whatever your interest, whatever you hope to accomplish in life, have an answer ready should someone ever randomly ask, “What’s your why?” Or “what makes you tick?”
They’ll be amazed that you have a comeback, as if you’ve been preparing for the question your whole life.
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To learn about this entire journey, pick up a copy of 𝙄𝙩 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙈𝙚: 𝙈𝙮 𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙞𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙊𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 today! Also available now in audiobook format!
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