Becoming a Vending Machine

The imporance of realizing people treat us exactly the way we’ve trained them to

When I first started brandivate almost six years ago, any business was good business - at least in my brain. As such, if you had a pulse, could fog a mirror, and a credit card that wouldn’t be declined, you were a prospect for brandivate. And, as you might predict, not every client was really the best fit for me or what I do. In fact, I remember complaining specifically about a client (name redacted) as they were causing me quite a bit of frustration because they were treating me like a vending machine:

• Need an idea? brandivate.

• Need a quote? brandivate.

• Need something outside of the agreed-upon scope of work? brandivate.

• Need it last minute or on a holiday? brandivate.

After a request for something last-minute came in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I asked myself, “Why do they treat me like this? The answer was looking at me in the mirror: I taught them to.

Of course, it wasn’t intentional by any stretch of the imagination. I never consciously thought “here’s how I’d really love for you to undervalue what I bring to the table.” But every time I rushed through the discovery process and jumped straight to a quote, every time I agreed with something I should have challenged, and every time I prioritized being helpful over being valuable, I was training them to treat me as a vending machine.

It took me a while, but I finally realized this issue wasn’t really about my clients and how they “treated me” as much as it was about people and who we are as a species. This has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn in business, and in life: people will treat us exactly the way we’ve trained them to treat us.

Think about the salesperson who immediately adds a discount the moment a customer hesitates. Before long, that salesperson’s clients learn that the first price is never the real price.

Or the leader who jumps in immediately to solve every problem on the team’s behalf (something else I’ve been quite guilty of, but I digress). Eventually, the team stops thinking in terms of solving the issue at hand because they know that the boss will do it for them.

How about the person who responds to emails at 11:23 at night and then wonders why their clients expect immediate responses regardless of the hour?

To be clear, most of these behaviors are well-intentioned. It’s good to be helpful, provide amazing service, be responsive, and exceed expectations. However, over time, our actions create patterns and, subsequently, those patterns create expectations. The real challenge is that people will learn FAR more from what we consistently do than what we occasionally say.

I’ve seen this play out many times during my career, and I bet you have too:

• Companies spend years training customers to buy based on price and then become frustrated when price is the only thing they care about.

• Leaders who create a culture where EVERY decision flows through them only to wonder why nobody will take initiative.

• Salespeople who try to win the title of “fastest email responder this side of the Mississippi” then don’t understand why their clients hound them for a response if a message lingers for more than 15 minutes.

Perhaps a more succinct way to put this is that I’ve seen personal and professional relationships struggle because expectations were never clearly established but were instead silently and consistently reinforced. The lesson here is that every interaction is a form of training:

• Brands train audiences

• Companies train clients

• Leaders train teams

• Parents train children

• Friends train friends

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly teaching people what to expect from us. The good news, however, is that when you accept this, it becomes surprisingly empowering because if we’ve helped create a pattern, we can help change it.

If you’ve trained your clients to focus only on price, start repositioning your conversations from the perspective of value. If you’ve conditioned your team to lean on you for every answer, create the space and distance they need to solve problems on their own. If you’ve established expectations that leave you exhausted, overwhelmed, and frustrated, start resetting those expectations one interaction at a time.

Changing the 'vending machine' dynamic takes time, but it starts with recognizing that our actions have trained others how to treat us. The essential message: we shape relationships by what we consistently do, not by what we occasionally say.

More often than not, it’s time to change what I’ve been teaching them.