Is Your Front Line Team Selling or Un-Selling Your Center?
You know we work with many clients all around the globe… OK mostly in North America. People ask us every day, “What should we be charging for our parties, group events, or attractions in general?”
There is a ton of discussion about value. I personally focus on “integrity” in pricing. What I mean is, that if you feel like you need to discount all the time, have you’ve charged the right prices to begin with?
Anyway, I don’t want to get off track with the message today. I want to share a concept that I think is pretty simple. I read this “sales guy’s” stuff weekly. I really like him. His name is Anthony Iannarino and I found him on linkedin.com. He runs a group called the sales blog and you can also find him at http://thesalesblog.com/. This week’s newsletter had such a profound statement that I thought it would be great to share with you.
“It doesn’t matter how much value you can create. You cannot create that value until your dream client says yes.”
His overall point for the article was that companies continue to position themselves as… “my words”, the Fun Center, the Entertainment Complex, the Skating Rink or Bowling Center… when in fact you are a SALES ORGANIZATION that has bowling or skating or laser tag.
I thought that was a wonderful positioning statement. I’m completely aware that we have to be GREAT at operations first and then sell the facility second. I also believe strongly that everyone in the organization is either selling or un-selling your facility all the time.
The obsession with value and pricing is the wrong focus. Teaching our teams how to communicate with the guest must be the new obsession. You CAN’T sell on price long term. You CAN’T discount your way to profit.
You CAN get your team on board and teach them how to be nice to people. Teach them how to find out what the customer wants so you can sell them that! Here’s a great example:
Guest comes up to the counter…
Your team member smiles and speaks to the guest first! “Hello, and welcome to ABC Fun Center. I’m Beth, how may I serve you today?”
Guest Says, “Well hello. I’m here with my family and we would like to see what specials you have.”
Your team member says, “AWESOME-everything we do is special! How long can you all stay at our center today?”
Guest Says, “I think we’ve got 2-3 hours.”
Your Team Member, “That’s great. Seems like that will be long enough that you are going to want eat as well. I’m going to recommend our Pizza Bowl. It comes complete with Pizza, a pitcher of soda, and all you can bowl for 2 hours. I would also encourage you to get everyone in your party a $10 game card so that after you’re finished with bowling you could play games in our arcade or even use the card for laser tag or go karts. How’s that sound?”
Guest says, “That sounds great… let’s get going.”
Many times a guest won’t even ask for “the special”. On Friday and Saturdays you shouldn’t have specials! They are coming those days anyway.
Listen, I hope you’ll print the dialogue part of this newsletter out and have a 15-minute training with your team. It’s time to start teaching your team that you are a “sales organization.” If you aren’t selling you are un-selling. Keep that in mind.
If you would like to dive deeper we have a wonderful FEC Sales Bootcamp that lives in our IOL (Interactive Online Learning) portal at http://www.trainertainmentonline.net. This is a great class with training that we can do for you; and you can access online it right away.
Let us know if you worked with your team. I’d love to hear how that goes.
