Calling all Time Thieves

Throughout the course of any given day I will receive email for a bunch of stuff I don't want. Now I'm not talking about all the offers for enlargement, weight loss, stamina and all that stuff that only a moron would buy, I'm talking about invitations to conferences, special offers for hotels, updates to software that I don't actually own anyway, and all the other crap but falls just to the right side of 'polite' spam. But it is still spam. All of our in boxes are stuffed and we spend so much time every day simply clicking on the delete button.

This blog however, is not to complain about these people. It's never going to stop, and at least the reputable ones offer the facility to unsubscribe. This blog is inspired by a conversation that I just had. I called to introduce my company and the very nice man told me that they don't ever buy merchandise but that I was welcome to send him an email.

Now I've talked about this before - people that ask us to send in catalogues when they tell us that they don't buy. Well this is no less offensive to me. You see this very nice man was under the impression that he was letting me down easy, and of course email is free, so there's no real damage done right?

WRONG!

Let's look at all of the negative things to come out from this:

• I have to take time out of my day to write an email that is not likely to ever even get opened, let alone read.
• The client will receive an email that he will not read and will almost instantly dismiss as another piece of junk.
• My database will log communication with a potential customer which will come to nothing, hence I have to make notes to that effect so that neither I, or any of my colleagues will waste any of their time on calling this company.
• The client's nose is put out of joint ever so slightly when an email comes in that he does not want to read, thus interrupting his day, his workflow and his thought process.
• I feel a sense of resentment towards said client for showing no respect for my time and a complete lack of ability to simply say thanks but no thanks

Let's take a look at the positives

At least the email was not unsolicited.

Hardly an even balance is there? Why are we so afraid to just say no? Thanks but we don't buy merchandise. Listen, the worst thing that could happen is that any skilled salesman might start asking some good questions that cause you to think about your marketing strategy and perhaps even improve upon it. Oh no! How awful - you might actually benefit from the call after all!

Look, if, when you get a sales call, you can honestly say that you've considered all of your options and are simply not interested, then just say so, and go on about your day. Any professional sales person will not take it personally and will, like you, move on. Anyone less than professional will be delighted to send you that all important email. What a shame.

Feel free to share this with your colleagues, associates and clients - but only if they've asked you to do so!

My favourite objections

As a salesman, I am met with countless objections on a daily basis. Many are given in a polite, dare I say, apologetic manner, and those people are just plain lovely. Seriously, I get off of the phone, fully aware that I will not be doing business with that person but at the same time, slightly uplifted at having had a pleasant conversation.

Others, are just plain rude. You know the sort – people who say “We're all sorted thank you” before you even tell them why you're calling. It's fine, I've no reason to take it personally because these people don't know me, and they may well just be having a bad day, which instantly puts up a barrier to any type of sales call, whether they need the service or not.

Either way, there are some objections that I just love hearing, essentially because they are not really objections at all. As sales people, we learn to tell the different between a genuine objection and a person just trying to get us off of the phone. A less experienced, or even less confident sales person will thank them very much, hang up, look at their shoes, mope for a few minutes and then get back to work. A more experienced sales person will take the time to understand the true nature of the objection and then continue with the call if he or she feels it is warranted.

Let me make one thing clear – not all sales people are pests. Oh sure, the kid with one GCSE interrupting your dinner to tell you you've won a free kitchen makeover is a pest, but we're not talking about that guy today. No, we're talking about people offering goods and services to your business. Naturally, that is where we come in.

I was inspired to write this blog because I was on the receiving end of my favourite objection this week. “We already have a supplier thank you”. Well of course you do! How else would you get the stuff? If you didn't already have a supplier, it would mean that you don't utilise the service I'm offering anyway, in which case we can just as easily leave it there.

Clearly what you're probably saying to me is that you're not in the mood for a sales call, or that shifting suppliers is just too much of a hassle so you'll just leave things as they are. Listen, that's fine, and if your supplier is giving you the best service, the best prices, the best creativity and the best commitment to your relationship then of course you shouldn't shift. But ask yourself, when was the last time you ran a little checklist to make sure that they were giving you all that? What's more, how much damage would it do to try an alternative, just to see if they're any better? The worst that could happen is that your faith in your original supplier is reinforced, and that can only be a good thing.

Now I could wax lyrical about all of the other objections that are out there, just waiting for me to overcome, but I don't want you thinking that I'm sat here with a big book of scripts. I don't work from sales scripts because I don't like to think of my call to you as a typical sales call. I'm offering my help – yes it comes at a price, but the promotional merchandise surrounding what I do is just the tip of the ice berg. I am offering the chance to improve the outcome of your marketing, and surely an offer like that sells itself.

Courtesy Calls are Anything but..

You know, a good sales person needs a good opening line. Perhaps more important than that though, is the way in which they deliver it. Face it, if some bloke calls me up in the middle of dinner to tell me I've won a free holiday with all the enthusiasm as a balloon with a hole in it, then I'll very quickly switch off.

The problem with our call centre society is that the people calling us don't actually care. Why should they? They're targetted to make a certain number of calls within a certain number of hours and are likely to have no incentive to close more business or even foster a new relationship.

The worst offenders are the newcomers - thrown into a cubicle with a script and a list of numbers, they're poised for one of the two responses that you can give them - either that you are interested, or some reason that you’re not. And let's be honest, how often does the first one come up for them? I imagine the response of "Why I'm so glad you called, please do tell me more" almost never happens.

I had a terrible one the other day. "I'm calling from Kitchens Direct, we're doing free quotes in your area if you're interested." Simple response - I wasn't. Length of call, 10 seconds and have a pleasant evening. However (and there's always a however with me isn't there?) if there’s one thing that aggravates more even more than having my evening kebab interrupted, it’s people that flat out LIE.

Best example? “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling from insert faceless call centre here and it’s just a quick courtesy call to...........” Now the dots aren’t there to act as an ‘etc’ or an ‘and so forth’, no, they’re there because once I hear the words ‘courtesy call’ then all I hear after that is white noise. Give me an extra couple of seconds and my brain will actually start playing reruns of iconic TV shows from the eighties just to stop me lapsing into a coma. It’s sad really, because on reflection, Knight Rider really was rather weak.

Let’s take a look at why this happens, ideally without the use of an MRI to understand my brain. It happens because I don’t understand how any company with whom I have never done business would want to call me simply out of courtesy. It would make a nice world wouldn’t it? “Good afternoon Mr Rose, just calling to say hello and see how you are, no other agenda whatsoever”. Wake up genius, it’s not going to happen.

All these so called courtesy calls are sales calls, so why not just be honest about it? Don’t call to tell me I’ve won a prize in a competition I didn’t even enter. Don’t tell me that my home has been selected for a free conservatory before you’ve established that I live in a flat on the first floor (I don’t any more, but that actually happened), and don’t tell me that you’ve got ‘people in my area’ when we both know that they’ll be in my area just as soon as I agree to an appointment.

What I just don’t get is why all these telesales people are trained in believing that their target customers are all complete idiots. It’s like they just don’t even want to try any more - a cheery disposition and a slick script is only going to work on the thinnest slice of the population, so why bother using it?

Just level with people - “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling on behalf of XYZ and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to see if we can be of any help to you with regard to life insurance”. Crisp, polite and to the point, that person will not get the phone slammed down. They will get told that I already have an insurance broker, but I will not feel as though my time was robbed from me by some liar in a call centre.

But why not make it even more powerful? Send out a gift in the post and then call to see if they received it and what they thought of it. It's honest and a great way to lead into a conversation that could turn into a sale. Oh sure, most people throw junk mail away - but aren't they the same people who are going to turn down your 'courtesy call' anyway?

Targetting fewer customers with a slicker campaign will yield a better result - it's not rocket science, so why are so few people willing to try it. Sales is not a mere numbers game - quality will win over quantity.

Well that was this week's courtesy blog. Did I say courtesy? Let me try again. I hope you enjoyed this blog and took something away from it. If you did and would like to return the favour, I would be much obliged if you would contact me to talk about your next marketing campaign and how I can help you with it. See? Honesty.

I have a million things to do today

Miss me? Well, that's something I suppose. The fact is that with organising our stand at Confex, working on our stand at Confex and then following up all the enquiries we got at Confex, this blog has taken a bit of a back seat for the last few weeks. To my loyal fans, I thank you for your patience. To everyone else - good morning.

And now to this week's blog

We all know the feeling. We get into the office a little bit early because we know that we have ‘a million things to do’ that day. So we write our list, put things in order of priority, assign a set amount of time to each task and then set to work.

And then the phone rings, and the whole plan goes splat.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because we’ve all been there, but the fact is that our approach to the situation is invariably wrong. It all starts with the frame of mind that we bring into the office when we arrive. A million things to do? Hardly. Chances are that you have a lot of tasks to take care of and you already know that there is just no way that you’re going to finish them all before the day is through.

Except that you don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that because nobody can see into the future. The trouble is that you’ve created this mountain of work in your mind that you genuinely believe cannot be conquered, but it actually can.

Now this isn’t some motivational talk designed to tell you that ‘if you think you can, you will”, accompanied by a smile the size of Wales and jet fighters flying overhead shooting T Shirts at the crowd with a rockin’ sound track. Nope, this is just some bald guy telling you how his day is panning out.

I’ve got a lot of work today. I’m thrilled about that. Having nothing to do means that I am not only bored, but I am also not in a position to feed my family. What I don’t have however, is a mountain of work. What I have in front of me is a road – paved with tasks.

This road is long, but it is flat, smooth and straight and best of all, I can see the end of it. I pick up task number one – it’s the task that absolutely must be done right now. The task didn’t tell me when it needed doing – I decided that when I told the customer that I would have the information with him in the early part of this week. I didn’t say ‘Monday’, even though that would have made me look fantastic in the eyes of the client. I told them ‘early next week’ to allow for any distractions.

When I first thought about this task, I figured that it was going to take all day to get through. It didn’t. It took a few hours yesterday and then about half an hour on Tuesday morning. Forward thinking as I sometimes can be, I got into the office at 8.30 that morning, so by the time I was finished, my (and everyone else’s) working day had only just begun.

Then it was on to task two. This task required about 80% total focus, so whilst I will have made myself available to answer the phone, I didn't check my email until it was done. Now I was not expecting any urgent mails – but then, how can anyone expect something urgent? By its very definition, it is unexpected. None the less, if I’m worried that my clients don’t think I’m coming back to them immediately, I can always turn on an ‘out of office’ assistant and tell people that I am away from my email for the next hour and if the matter really cannot wait that long, that they should call me. Remember, I said that I was still answering the phone.

The moral of the story? Relax. You don’t have a million things to do today and what’s more, you don’t necessarily have to do everything on your To Do list today. What would happen if you took care of some of it tomorrow, or even asked someone else to help you take care of something?

Think about that for a moment before you move on to your next task. Your day will fly by and I promise you that you will feel productive at the end of it.

Previously...on Merchandise Mania

Don't you hate that? When a show that you've been loyally following since episode 1 feels the need to catch up all the new viewers with everything that's happened so that they might make sense of it? I mean, it didn't help with 'Lost' did it? More importantly, the longer they take catching you up, the less new story they have to write.

It's bloody lazy writing. If I wrote a top telly show it would start like this:

"Previously on Paul's Show - stuff happened, and if you forgot to tune in or set your Sky Plus box, then go and download it - just don't ruin it for everyone else.".

Anyway, here's the next installment on Merchandise Mania TV. It's not really important to know what happened previously, as it's not really a serial drama, but it's still fun to watch. Enjoy.

It's Time to Switch

For quite some time now, I’ve been with the same energy provider for both my gas and electricity. It’s not really a question of loyalty, it’s just that they set up the direct debit in such a way that leaving them would cost me an absolute fortune.

That was up until recently, when I discovered that my account was no longer in arrears. Naturally, I went straight on to the nearest price comparison site – well I say nearest, obviously their location is of little consequence to me – and decided to see if I could get a better deal and unsurprisingly, I did.

Naturally I put the wheels in motion to get my supplier switched over, whilst simultaneously dreaming about what I would do with the £348 I had saved, until I realised that £348 is about 2 weeks’ shopping at any mainstream supermarket so my plans of an exotic holiday or a new X Box Kinect flew straight out of the window.

A few weeks later, I received a phone call from my current supplier- I think we all expected that didn’t we?

“So sorry to hear that you want to leave us Mr Rose”, well don’t take it personally love, I mean you’ve got a few million customers on your books, surely one of us leaving won’t make that much of a difference.

“Can I ask why you’re leaving?” What does she expect me to say? I’m just not sure the relationship is working out? I want to see other providers? You’re smothering me?

“Someone else is offering me a better deal.” Obviously.

“Well we’ve got some great deals on at the moment so if you just give me a second I’ll see what we can do for you”.

NOW STOP RIGHT THERE. At this point I actually got quite angry. This woman has just effectively admitted that her company are ripping me off. They have better pricing structures available but it is only at the point of my leaving that they’re prepared to offer them to me?

Then the letter comes – please call our freephone number to discuss your transfer. Except they don’t want to discuss my transfer, they want to have another crack at keeping me on their books. I put forward the same argument and they point out that, as a company with several million customers, it’s not possible for them to keep everyone advised of their best options.

CRAP. No, sorry, but that really is crap. OK – calculating the best deal for everyone every quarter is not practical, and I accept that. However, how about putting some information on the bill that sends me to a website where I can check that I am paying the best price? If that was an option, surely everyone would take it wouldn’t they?

It got me thinking about customer service. Are you giving the best service and prices to your customers at every single opportunity, or do you up your game when they’re about to leave you?

The fact is that if you have room for improvement, then your new and improved way of working should become policy. We can all strive to be better in what we do, but our default should not be to be regularly working at 80% capacity, holding on to that 20% for when the proverbial hits the fan.

The beginning of the year is an excellent time for you to review all of your client relationships, and just how powerful would it be to call a customer and tell them that whilst you were pleased to have helped them in 2010, that you’re looking for ways to help them even more in 2011. Don’t try and sell them more stuff – just offer them more help and the rewards will create themselves.

So here we go with 2011 – I realise I should have said that last week but I figured I would give you all a bit of a break from my incessant ranting, just for a little while. And now that your break is over, who wants to be my next victim?

I don't have all the answers

Well, I promised you at least one more blog before Christmas, and here it is. Despite the fact that the majority of our customers are now relaxing for the holidays, we will be on hand to help those poor souls who forgot to order their important January merchandise and have nowhere else to turn – so if that’s you, feel free to give me a call.

I want to talk about something interesting that happened to me in Tesco the other night. Now when I first started this blog, all those years ago, I mentioned how I was unlikely to ever shop in somewhere like Lidl – and not for the reasons you think either.

Well since then, I’ve discovered the joy of Lidl shopping, and it really can be a joy. The quality there is superb, the prices are fantastic and what’s more, it can be an adventure comparing European brand foods with the more recognised UK stuff and realising that, more often than not, it tastes exactly the same and in many cases – a lot better.

However, they don’t stock everything and I needed to pick up some chestnut puree so that Shelly could make her chestnut stuffing. It was her mother’s recipe and she really does do it proud, so darling, if you’re reading this – here’s to another great stuffing!

So back to Tesco, where it’s late at night, snowing and altogether unpleasant. After roaming the aisles of where logic dictated I would find the chestnuts, I was still sporting an empty basket. At that point I decided to ask for help, and I use the word ‘help’ in its broadest sense here.

“Excuse me”, say I, “can you tell me where I might find the chestnut puree and also the whole chestnuts – you usually sell them in vacuum packs?”

“Well you’ll find loose chestnuts in the whole foods section but I haven’t really seen any other chestnuts come in so I expect that we’re not doing them.”

STOP!!!!!!

So you’re one of the biggest supermarket chains in the country, and my local has expanded to such a ridiculous size that you can now by light aircraft in Aisle 37, next to the beans, but you’ve not seen chestnuts A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!!???!!!

Obviously my real response was a little more reserved but it did get me thinking about something. Why didn’t she just tell me that she didn’t know?

Seriously, the lady is working in a shop that sells literally thousands of products. If she had the mental capacity to remember all of them, along with their location, then one would argue that she is woefully over qualified to be stacking shelves in the middle of the night in Tesco wouldn’t they?

I am perfectly happy for people to not know the answer, just as long as they take a moment to tell me where I might be able to get the help that I need. Bluffing your way through an answer is just plain wrong – the customer will not end up getting what he wants and will be more irate for the extra hassle of following up on bad advice.

So what do you tell your customers when you don’t know the answer to their question? Are you terrified of being thought of as less than an expert in your field? If so – why? A true expert opens himself up to new pieces of information every single day, and every once in a while, a vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle will be missing. Well, it’s not really missing, it’s just that someone else has it and we need to give them a call and get it.

We’re told of all of the truly powerful words in sales like YES and THANKS, but I’d like to add another phrase to that list – the phrase I DON’T KNOW. Going that extra mile to find out things for your customers is what separates you from the people who offer up a guess and then cross their fingers that there aren’t any follow up questions.

Here’s a clue to those people – there won’t be any follow up questions – because your prospective customer has already walked away.

On behalf of all of us here at Merchandise Mania, I’d like to wish you all the best of whichever holiday you choose to celebrate and I look forward to hearing from more of you in 2011.