by Tech Support | May 28, 2015 | Sales
I just got back from a Caribbean cruise with my girlfriends. It was an absolute blast. I can’t say enough wonderful things about the ship I was on, the food we were served, and the service we received. Wait- almost all the service we received.
You see, there was one customer service experience that sticks out like a sore thumb, and it’s really nagging at me.
We had a port of call on a small island, and chose to spend the day relaxing in a comfortable cabana. The host who greeted us at the island was helpful and friendly, the tram driver was enthusiastic and charming, and the man who took us to our cabana and saw us settled in was downright chipper. There was a small snafu with the electricity in the cabana not being on when we arrived, but the maintenance worker corrected that in a hurry. Things were fantabulous.
My friends and I napped and read books all morning, and finally ordered drinks from the waiter around noon. Things seemed great until the waiter came back to check on us a bit later. We were doing well, and didn’t order anything, but he proceeded to tell us that he was irritated to still be working, and that his shift was supposed to have ended 20 minutes earlier, but here he was, still taking orders. It was bizarre, and in the circumstances of the serene setting, it was very jarring.
It was so out of place, in fact, that the four of us sat there and talked about ways he could have handled the situation differently.
You see, no one wants to hear that you aren’t having a good day.
Your guests show up for a pleasant experience. They want good service, attentive staff, and the bottom line is that, even when you’re having a bad day, it’s so important to check your irritation at the door. Putting your personal issues upon your patrons isn’t fair. People may feel sorry for you and your plight, but they may also feel angry at you for burdening them with issues they shouldn’t have ever had to worry about.
Look at me- here I am going on and on about one small interaction that clearly colored the way I look at an entire 4 day vacation. Don’t be the person that does that to your own guests. Don’t give someone a reason to feel negatively about your center.
Instead, choose your attitude. If you’re working with a guest and are ending shift, or turning them over to an event coordinator, etc., simply introduce your guests to your replacement and thank them for allowing you to serve them. (Chances are, they will ask to tip you for your stellar service before you go!) Let them know that they can expect the same level of service from your team member. They probably won’t even remember the whole interaction later, but they’ll be left with the sense that they were taken care of. Who could ask for more?
Have you ever had a small incident color the way you remember an otherwise wonderful event? OR had a great moment turn a negative experience around for the better?
by Tech Support | May 13, 2015 | Education, Leadership, Management, Performance, Sales, Service
I love working with our coaching clients and watching them grow their business. It never gets old seeing someone learn new sales techniques, or observing them develop great connections and closing more and more sales.
Last week, while working with one of our amazing coaching clients, one of the salespeople asked me what marketing material they should take when going on an outside sales call. I answered, “Just a business card and a notebook.” They were amazed, and followed up by asking why they wouldn’t need marketing material. The answer is simple, if you go into a business with flyers, you have already made it about you – not about them.
How many times have you gone into a business with your notebook full of marketing materials or a handful of flyers? And then did your prospect say, “Well just leave us your information and I will look it over.” We then end up spending hours calling and emailing (that is, IF we were lucky enough to get their contact information), trying to see if they are interested in what we were selling. We lose control of the sale when we bring flyers, again, because our flyers are about us.
The number one rule of selling is, “Find out what the customer wants, and sell them that.” When we go into someone’s office with a product on our mind for them, we’re not qualifying, we’re setting up for the ‘pitch.’ Sure, marketing material can be great, but it isn’t the first thing we need to present when we go into a business to speak to someone face to face.
Instead, I recommend that you take notes when you are onsite, and ask for one of their business cards when you are trying to find out who the decision maker is. When you get back into your vehicle at the end of your meeting, jot down any information you might need for your next step while it’s fresh in your mind. It is easy after that to go back into your center and get that information into your CRM or database for future reference.
Just the other day, I spoke with a proprietor who told me that one of the best promotions his center had ever run happened when his managers went out with no flyers– just business cards. I also think business people are more open and less guarded when you don’t walk in with a handful of marketing materials. People are more likely to speak to you, the person standing before them, when there aren’t flashy flyers standing between you!
I hope that you’ll try this, and that you’ll let me know if it works and makes your day of sales so much more fun and productive. I think it will.
by Tech Support | May 6, 2015 | Education, Personal, Sales, Training
I’m sure you have heard, as has most the world, that Derek Shepard, AKA Doctor McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy, is dead. It has figuratively shaken the world to its core. Yes, I am one of those avid viewers that has watched over the past 10 years, and I absolutely love McDreamy. I went through an entire box of tissue, ugly crying that he is gone and has left behind a wife and kids. There was something that really stood out for me in the whole situation.
For those of you who missed the episode, let me give you a little background. (Spoiler Alert!) Dr. Shepard is a world-renowned neurosurgeon, and is incredibly dreamy (hence the name). Being the perfect man that he is, when he witnesses a horrible wreck in the middle of nowhere outside of Seattle, he stops to save everyone from the wreck. He is the hero of the day until he gets in his car to leave. His phone rings and he gets hit on the driver’s side by an 18-weeler. They take him to a little hospital that is not a trauma center, which does not have the best doctors available. A young female doctor wanted a head CT while an older male doctor took charge and wouldn’t listen. Then the neurosurgeon took 1 ½ hours to get there because he was at a dinner! Because they did not have the knowledge of what they were doing, and weren’t ready for this type of trauma, they killed him.
Later on in the show, the female doctor is crying and apologizing to his wife, Meredith, explaining how sorry she was and telling her she wasn’t good enough to be a doctor.
Meredith replied with this:
You weren’t good enough. But do you know what tomorrow is? It’s Friday. There’s gonna be more patients who come in who need you to save them. Someone’s mother, someone’s kid, someone’s husband. They need you to save them because they can’t save themselves. So learn from this, better yourself, and you will be better for next time.
He will haunt you, the hard ones always will. And it only takes one. But that one will make you work harder, and they make you better. Or they make you quit.
So this really had me thinking about those of us in sales. We need training to be better, to be prepared for situations that we aren’t ready for. We are going to have bad days where we lose a sale, and probably a big one that we will not forget, but tomorrow is another day and we move on! We learn from it – what to do and not to do next time, and we become better for next time. There isn’t room to quit; we can only get better. In order to do that, we need a strong foundation– and that foundation is training! I mean, could you imagine being a general manager, a chef, a mechanic, a team member, or even a doctor without having the proper training? No way! So how can we expect our sales team to be ready when they don’t have the proper training?
So this is a new week. I’m not as sad, but will certainly miss McDreamy. As they say– the show must go on. And sales must go on too!
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