Harry Tran’s Daily 101

Who said we can’t learn valuable lessons through watching TV?

If some mortgage lenders had watched some more TV than maybe we would not be in the mess that we are in at this time. I was watching some television for the past hour and they aired an episode of The King of the Hill called The Miseducation of Bobby Hill and realized that there was a very important lesson being told through the episode.

The episode begins with Hank Hill (the dad) taking his son Bobby Hill to his workplace, and teaches him the art of selling propane. Hank Hill while slow to make a sale, has virtue in him and wants to make business fair and honest. His own son looks at him and asks why he doesn’t make the sale when the customer comes in, to which the father replies he wants the customer to understand the grill, and the importance of what they’re going to buy, and at the end of the month they will return which is when Hank Hill makes a killing selling propane grills.

But Hank Hill has competition in the form of a salesmen named Joe Jack who his own son takes a liking to. Joe Jack teaches Bobby the art of selling, which Bobby himself starts to do. Soon after you see Bobby selling grills to all kinds of customers, often with misleading and false information.

Hank: Joe Jack, what’s with the hat?
Joe Jack: Sorry honey, but this year I’m gonna be selling more grills than you. In fact, you’re winning streak’s about to go up in flames - KAZAM! (snaps his fingers and a flame appears) Oww dear God that’s hot!
Hank: You know why I sell the most propane every Grillstravaganza? I educate the customer - that’s my magic trick!
Joe Jack: Uh-oh, (takes off his top hat) rabbit done peed on my head!

Fast forward to the end, and you will see that the result of all those sales Bobby made to his customers, they all came back to him demanding a refund, one customer was told to bang on his propane tank to fix it which almost killed him, another was sold a grill which wasn’t strong enough to cook his meat leading to who knows what kind of mess eating that would of been. And when Hank’s original customer returns at the end of the month, informed of what the grills can do, he decides to make a huge purchase and once again push Hank into the top sales position for the month.

Hank: I can sell propane upside down and blindfolded, but not with my integrity tied behind my back.

Following Hank’s philosophy would have been great for business, great for our economy, and definitely would have prevented us from being in a credit crisis. It begs me to question why most of these lenders didn’t get proper training in ethics, and only got training in sales. Magic tricks can get you the money, but does it satisfy your customers, and isn’t that sign on most of the CEO’s walls written to say that the customer is number one. They were definitely good at being salesmen, they were pushing mortgages, subprime or jumbo, ARM or Variable like never before, but were they really informing the customer on what they were getting into?

According to this article while up to 400,000 homeowners may not have been properly informed of the product, the saddest news of all is that only 20,000 may actually receive any help this year even though our government has dedicated $700 billion to programs that are suppose to help.