?=$, from Enquiry to Sales

When a customer calls (Phone or F2F) an organization seeking information about a product or service that they offer, it is an enquiry - rather a sales opportunity. Most organizations at the senior management level do understand the importance of converting every one of these calls or interactions into sales i.e money. Are the frontline teams trained and ready to translate ? = $

We are still not through with the recession and I decided to check how the front line staff (reservations) in hotels of different categories deal with telephone enquiries. I found the results of this exercise a bit disappointing even with some popular five star hotel chains and hence a gap between the senior management's thinking and the reality with the front line teams.

Everyone of the calls had a similar opening and infact the same scenario. My friend made a call as a foreign national staying in a hotel where she was not at all happy with the service. She said that she was going to stay for 2 more days in chennai and that she was returning on the 19th September for a week. She was calling to make sure that her stay during that period was more comfortable in a better hotel. A couple of hotels asked her to send an e-mail requesting the hotel to make the booking and that they would reply to her mail. This I thought was utter nonsense. The agent could have very well said - "we dont need your business miss". With a million choices out there, remember no customer is going to send you an e-mail request just because you want it that way.

In most cases, the agents did not seem motivated by the new business and just took the reservation down for the stay starting 19th September insisting on credit card details. This is good but just not good enough. I am not even talking about recommendations and upsells at this stage. Not a single hotel had a reservation agent who empathized and said "I am so sorry to hear that Madam. I understand you've had a bitter experience but you have just called the right place." - despite the fact that she mentioned in the beginning of every call that the hotel in which she was right now staying was lousy. In fact there was no attempt to invite her to stay the last two days of this visit and make it better for her. She had two more days and that is pretty decent business.

Most of the agents were not trained to listen. This is exactly the gap and the reason for many enquiry calls not getting converted. Great reservations agents listen to their customers first. If you ask them they say, "We look at why they called and what they need, not what we have and what we offer".

If you are a reservations / sales manager reading this blog, then I recommend that you close this gap by:

•Making agents realize how much of a difference they can make by handling these enquiries efficiently,
•Boost their confidence and train them to listen,
•Make random audits of not just your team but also of the competition
•Compare and review performance during these audits regularly with your team.

In my opinion, if you listen carefully - you can also sell why they need what you have.

There is an old saying - "Customers dont care how much you know until they know how much you care".

Delight yourself first to delight people around you. Most importantly, make your choice NOW!

Meet me at: www.gettingtodelight.com

Take the first step and everything else will follow

A very good friend from Germany was visiting Chennai last week and I must admit that it was a fantastic, fun filled, happy experience introducing her to my family and getting her to feel the culture and traditions of South India. I was amazed by the compromises she would make to adjust with the situations that were extremely unfamiliar to her and under normal circumstances would have made a European rather uncomfortable. When we tried to help her be a European, her statement to get going was "I am in an Indian family now and I do exactly what you do" - and that humility I admired a lot.

Back to the title of this blog, she actually was on a world tour covering different countries, India being the last one. One of the days while we were having dinner, I raised this question about how she planned the world tour at such a young age. In fact I was intrigued to ask this as I found her facebook page filled with envious comments. It all triggered off at a birthday party few months back where she met a common friend who mentioned about something called as "Round the word tickets". Getting back home she googled to find some great deals and thought she must make it and put that down in her "Dream list". She tried her luck filling up the vacation form (6 weeks vacation) and got a pleasant surprise from her boss - "Approved". In the meanwhile, the bank loan that she had applied for the World tour got processed as well. It was all falling in place and suddenly she was feeling like Phileas Fogg of Around the world in eighty days. Unlike Mr. Fogg, she did not have to prove a point to anyone that she could cover the world within a specified time and of course she did not have a man servant like Passepartout travelling with her. Well, she is such a nice person that her friends around the world decided to be Passepartout's. I am happy I was one of them who helped in her a small way fulfill her dream.

To me, her first step was to google and write down this desire as a part of her "Dream list" and the dream came true in no time. I am not amazed by this because I find this happening all around me and I firmly believe that if you take the first step...everything else will fall in place - Whatever you dream to do.
Dream BIG and Take the FIRST STEP!

Deilight yourself first to delight people around you. Most importantly make your choice NOW!

Meet me at: www.gettingtodelight.com