Dear Corporate Guys. . . 

Open minds open doors!

Sometimes, when people and organizations get too big for their britches, they have a tendency to shut down their receiving antennas. They can become especially resistant to the idea of being taught a lesson by the smaller, younger whippersnappers that they once were. But here’s the deal, Neal (Sorry; been writing rhyming verse today). Any entrepreneur will tell you:

You’re missing major sales 24/7

HA! you say, you have a great salesforce, a top-notch explosive website, and wonderful customer service people. That may be true on all three counts, though not likely. Them’s fightin’ words, you mutter under your breath, behind your glimmering smile. That “them is fightin’ words” may also be true. But here…is reality:

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Pick up the phone right now, before you even read the next paragraph, and call (not a number you know) any number for your company that you can find (IF you can find one) on your company website. Start with your homepage and troll around until you think you have a number that could answer your question about what quantity discounts might be possible for major purchases.

Odds are that if you are not put through a barrage of push-this-to-get that instructions, which are unlikely to offer any bulk purchase information anyway, you will be put on hold listening to some imbecilic message wrapped in static, and maybe escape the telltale buzzing followed by: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again.”

Okay, you get past all that. So ask. What arrangements are possible to make if I want to purchase 500 or 1,000 or 20,000 units from you? Who is the person I should speak with about quantity discount options? About custom-designed or packaged versions? Delivery timelines? About how staggered purchases can be when market testing is involved?

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Have you any idea how many sales slipped through the cracks this year because your company only talks user-friendly, but doesn’t leave doors open for prospective customers? Take a guess. Are you willing to admit that customers may have questions that simply can’t be accounted for by a program developed by some geek who doesn’t know spit about how and why people buy what they buy?

I wasted nearly two hours this week calling numbers I had to pry out of websites for three of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. After battling to get past automated messages and static on-hold music from a company that truly should have offered superb listening, I began to feel frustrated. Hmmm, maybe they don’t want to sell stuff!

Then, after getting seven disconnects from one company and four from another, I finally spoke with stupendously pleasant people who –once they managed to slow down the pace of their speech patterns at my request– turned out to know nothing. Although, one did give me the name of a person to call and email. Another promised to “look into it” and would email me; that was two days ago.

Customer service departments should all be deleted anyway. When all employees are trained right, and accessible, there’s no need for separate (and expensive) customer service staff! 

You’re missing major sales 24/7

Oh, the call number I got, by the way (which I double-checked!), was a fax machine. The email address was answered three days later by someone else who said the person I had emailed was long-gone from the company, and how could I have ever gotten that name? (Instead of: “We screwed up, but what can I do to make things right for you?”)

The calls I made, FYI, were legit. I was representing the interests of a client who was actually considering purchasing a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of merchandise for major promotional use (the purchase of which, alone, may afford another hundred thousand dollars worth of unpurchasable positive publicity for the supplier!), but the client wanted answers now, not days from now.

Did you make that call yet? You might be surprised by what you learn.     

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!