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.

Training - it's not just for staff

How much does your company spend on training? OK, that’s a fairly ordinary question and no doubt it will have created a spectrum of responses. Well, I say spectrum, whereas I mean about three.

Well how about this then? Who does your company spend their time and money on training? Chances are, like most sensible companies, the people that you train are your own staff. That would seem to be the smart thing to do.

Indeed, at Merchandise Mania we even set up a training programme where staff could learn about the procedures in play in other departments. It’s an effective programme, because by learning just how much work someone else in your company has to do on a daily basis, you can gain more appreciation for the fact that the favour you asked them to do four hours ago hasn’t been done yet!

But I’ve come to realise that there is a whole group of people that we never really take the time to train. I’m not talking about getting in training companies, setting up seminars or correspondence courses. No, I’m talking about the simple imparting of information which would enable them to do their jobs and communicate more effectively.

Have you figured out who I’m referring to? That’s right (unless you got it wrong), I’m talking about your customers. In a world where knowledge is power, have you ever stopped to think about just how much your customers don’t know about how things work in your organisation?

Seriously, if I had a pound for everyone that called me in the second week of December asking for stuff before Christmas then I could happily fly off somewhere warm. I’m sure you have similar stories but have you ever stopped to consider that it might actually be your fault?

What if, the last time that client ordered from you, you gave them a special price or delivered the goods early or some other ‘extra mile’ gesture. Did you tell them that what they’d received was NOT the norm? Oh sure, good customer service should come with every order but if your very first deal with them was at a discounted price, what’s to make them think that they can’t get a discount from you every time they order?

As for deliveries, if something usually takes 3 weeks and you did it in 3 days, did you point out the extraordinary lengths that you went to in order to make that happen, or did you just tell them it was “all part of the service”?

Your customers need to be trained on how things work around there. Their demands are not unrealistic because history has shown them that you can work miracles when you really have to, so they now expect miracles every single time.

The result? A client that, whilst you’re grateful for their business, you regard much more as a hindrance than a help. It is within your power to change things – you just have to level with them. “I’m delighted that we were able to shrink the lead time on these by so much but please do bear in mind that this was the exception and not the rule. When you’re looking to place your next order, please make sure you leave a little bit more time – or better yet, why not order twice as many and rest easy, knowing that you have enough?

The next blog will be on Christmas Eve – yes we will be here and working hard. Well, I say hard……..well, I say working….

The truth might set you free..remember MIGHT!

I thought I would start this article a little differently than most. You see, in a lot of cases, when people are doing things for charity or asking readers for a little bit of extra ‘help’, it’s shoved in a little paragraph in italics at the end of the article.

In essence that seems fair enough, but if I don’t manage to hold your interests until the end of this page then two things are clear – first, that I’ve obviously run out of interesting things to say, and second, that my chances of getting anything from you are somewhere between slim and none.

Well, none of that nonsense for this bald headed sales person. At the end of April, I shall once again be running in The London Marathon. Now I hate running. I don’t do it in my spare time, I don’t find it “really clears my head” and given the choice, I’d rather sit down and listen to an entire Dido album – and that is pretty damn bland.

None the less, I am running to raise money for Dreams Come True – a great charity which help realise the dreams of terminally and seriously ill children. You can sponsor me – no, you SHOULD – no, you WILL sponsor me (Jedi mind trick – see what I did there) at www.justgiving.com/pauljrose2011 and thanks in advance for your generosity.

And so to the topic of this week's blog. In the last few weeks, our industry has been plagued by scams. People have purchased merchandise on dodgy credit cards, fake addresses, and all that sort of nonsense.

The scams themselves actually got me thinking – not so much about the criminal nature of certain people, but more about the nature of telling lies. You see, when you look a little further, so many people are telling little lies to us, every single day. They’re not evil (well, most of them anyway), it’s just that a polite excuse seems to be the accepted norm.

Think about all of those lies that we sales people have to hear every day. “He’s in a meeting at the moment”, “We’ve got your catalogue and we’ll come back to you”, “Send me your information and we’ll keep it on file”. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!! Why do we just assume that a polite lie is so much less offensive than a little bit of brutal honesty?

In a meeting? Seriously, how many ‘meetings’ can any one person realistically take in one working day and yet still be productive? I have one meeting per week and it’s held at a time of day when the phones are not likely to be ringing. Fact is, we know they’re not in a meeting, but we just blindly say thanks and leave a message any way – what a complete waste of time.

“Send me your information” – WHY? We all know that the ‘file’ your going to keep it in is currently sat under your desk housing three empty plastic cups and yesterday’s sandwich wrapper. Don’t these people realise that it actually costs us money to send out catalogues? That’s the thing – they do, and yet because they consider us a nuisance, they lose no sleep putting us to extra, pointless busy work.

My manner has often been described as ‘acerbic’, the less well read just simply opt for ‘rude’. I don’t really have too much of a problem with that. Sure, no one likes to be thought of as rude, but I just prefer complete honesty with people because it saves us all so much time.

I don’t want brokers to send me their information in the post only to follow up with countless phone calls – I am not interested and I tell them from the outset. They call and tell me that they don’t want to sell me anything, they just want to send me some information. Fine, but I’m not going to read it, so why don’t we just leave it there.

If you’re not interested in taking a sales call, isn’t it better to let the person know that? How about replacing “He’s in a meeting” with “He has no need for your services”? Sure, the caller might get their nose put out of joint, but any professional sales person will dust themselves off and make the next call.

Deep down, you’ve done them a favour – they won’t be wasting valuable call time on someone who is not buying. They’ll never really thank you for being so short with them, but in time they won’t remember you anyway, so who cares?

We are a society obsessed with saving time, and yet we allow some misguided sense of politeness to waste the very thing we’re trying to save. So be direct – I’m not saying we need to start being rude to each other, dropping our manners and generally becoming nasty people – I’m suggesting that the next time you consider telling a small fib just to make things a little easier, that you consider just how much more powerful the truth would be.

A new and exciting product

I'm a cynical bloke me. Anyone who has put up with this blog for long enough will tell you that.

Oh sure, there was a time when a pen with a coloured light inside it could get me all giddy with excitement. When I first joined the promotional merchandise industry, going to trade shows made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Well, on day one at least. By day three I'm very tired and working on the very clear premise that I have seen it all before.

You see, eventually, it's not the product that's important, but what you do with it that counts. A cleverly branded mouse mat can be the start of a very effective marketing campaign, but I've told you all of this before.

Because every once in a while, a new product comes along which gets me genuinely excited. Often my colleagues will laugh at my enthusiasm, and that's fine, because proving them wrong can be a very sweet victory.

Today, I want to tell you about a new product in which I am very excited, mainly because I can see so many places where it has practical applications.

If you work in a busy office, this will improve productivity. If you work in the leisure industry, this will increase customer spend. If you work in the travel industry, this will make your customers happy. Not all of them, I hasten to add - but enough of them to make this a worthwhile investment.

I'm talking about The Vapestick.


This simple stick essentially replaces cigarettes. It uses a small amount of liquid nicotine - which in and of itself is a simple stimulant, and about as harmful to your system as a cup of coffee. Using a micro processor, the 'vaper' can feel as if he or she is smoking a regular cigarette, except that there is no smoke - it's water vapour. There's no smell, no ash, no second hand smoke, in fact none of the negative things associated with smoking, which means it is totally legal to smoke indoors.

Think about it. If you have lots of staff regularly nipping out for ciggy breaks, then this means that they can stay at their desks and keep working. How about a busy casino? Smoking and gaming go hand in hand, but your players can't stay at the tables any more thanks to the smoking ban - well now they can.

Some airlines are now making them available for purchase too, and the beauty of ours is that it can be completely personalised with a full colour print.

Whilst there are full starter packs with a retail value of around £50, we now have a disposable model which we can supply for only £6.99, including branding. One of these is the equivalent of more than two packets of cigarettes - so think of the savings there.

I'm excited about this product and I want to share it with as many people as possible. I can tell you that I am not a smoker. I do enjoy the occasional social cigarette or cigar, but I can take it or leave it, and I find vaping fun.

Call me today and I'll tell you all about it.

Another Exciting Episode

Back by popular demand (my Mum likes it) is another installment from Merchandise Mania TV. Once again I've been roped in to getting in front of the camera, except this time I wasn't in a stripy purple shirt that induces migraines when set against a green screen.

Seriously, Doris in Wardrobe really is skating on thin ice.

Enjoy.

The Level Playing Field

Well, it finally happened. Yesterday I turned 40 years old. To some, I am officially middle aged, whereas to others, I am now a sad old man, mourning the good years that are now behind him and essentially just waiting to die.

Some of those birthday cards were just plain mean.

Well I’d love to suggest that with age comes wisdom, but frankly I just plan to keep on spewing out the same nonsense in the desperate hope that someone will read it, think to themselves “hmm, he has a point there”, and then order a generous amount of promotional merchandise from me.

There it is folks, if you’ve ever wondered why us bloggers do it, the reason it pure – revenue, and lots of it please. These blogs, tweets and all other manner of nonsense simply drive traffic. I could type out a recipe for chocolate cornflake cakes at this point and it would still be useful in the fight to boost my company’s profile.

Fortunately for you, I actually enjoy coming up with something interesting to say and every once in a while, I actually succeed. Sure it’s rare, but if you stick around for long enough you just might find some gold in here.

Today, I wanted to talk about the way buyers compare sellers, and how, in many cases, it seems a little flawed to me.

At the outset, people’s primary focus is price. That’s fair enough, we’re all trying to save money wherever we can. Trouble is that if you start there, then you’re often blinkered to everything else that matters.

The biggest issue, is that at the start of any race, every competitor is equal. Think about it, no one is interested in the runners’ position at the start of the race are they?

People need think more about the end result. What will the service be like? Will someone be taking them through every step of the process? Will they be left at any point wondering what’s going on? Ultimately, will they get the goods on time and will they be of an acceptable standard?

All really important questions, and yet when a lot of people go out to look for suppliers, they still look at that start line and based their decisions on what they see there.

The message here is that you need a better checklist. Yes, price will be on there, but if it’s in massive capital letters at the top of the page, you are going nowhere fast, because what you save today will go horribly wrong if you’re not careful.

A longer term view is crucial in the development of your business, so make sure you have one.