Today, I want to speak to you about your unrecognized sale force. This is everyone that works for you that doesn’t see themselves as a salesperson. But I want to tell you something, everybody is a sales person. Here’s a little story many years ago, I belong to an organization called the Professional Speaker Association of the UK and we we’re looking for a new venue for our convention. We spent 50-100,000.00 pounds. And we found a hotel in Birmingham, so there's five of us on the committee walking to the hotel, it feels good. We think this is the place.
We go sit in the lounge and we want to order some coffee and we look over to the bar, there’s a waiter in a white dress and they’ve just come back from a course that has taught them, “If you don’t make eye contact with your customer, you don’t have to serve them.” Have you ever come across those?
Eventually, I'm shouting and this is what happens, young waiter comes up to me and he says “What!” Well, I was shocked and I said, “Could we get some coffee please?” Mumbles and off he goes. Lunch time we go through the same thing and I said, “I’d like to order some lunch please,” and we’re dress the way I'm dressed now. And he looks me up and down and he says “I want you to pay cash,” I said “Why?” He said, “Last week we have some people dressed fancy like you and they ran away without paying cash.” Now, guess where we didn’t have our conference. You know what it's not the fault of those two sales people, it’s the fault of the person who owns that hotel. They just lost a 100,000.00 pounds. That’s just us, how many more people has recruited the wrong kind of people that got no training. They have no management and they're losing an absolute fortune. How well do they know ourselves, people got unrecognized sales force.
Here’s a different story, I do a lot of work in Dubai. I'm out there three, four times a year speaking and training and I know all of the hotels, they're are all five star, they're all superb. Couple of years ago, I was going to take my wife on a holiday there. I phoned a friend of friend of mine and is said “Please, book me into this hotel.” And he said “No!, no.” Go to Royal Méridien. I said, “Why?” He says, “Because you’ll see the unrecognized sales force in action.” So I booked it and I booked on a bed and breakfast basis only. I don’t like the hotel food, I said to my wife, “We’ll take a hundred quid.” And we go to the different restaurants, great restaurants all over Dubai.
Anyway, we arrived there and I got to tell you, I do a lot of work in the hospitality and with hotels and most of the times I walk into a hotel and I’ll be standing at reception for five minutes until they're ready to serve me. Immediately, young lady came up from behind the counter, took us into the lounge, “Would you like some orange juice, would you like some champagne?” made us feel good. She looked down and she said “I see you booked on a bed and breakfast basis only, we’ve got eight restaurants in the hotel.” They're all incredible, because it's your first time here, all of your evening meals, free.
Now I've got to tell you, there's not many words that motivate me, but “free” is way up there, I love that word. I said to my wife “This is great.” That night, we go down to the Italian restaurant, I said to the waiter, “What is the steak cassoulet?” “Oh, the steaks melts in your mouth.” I said to my wife ,“That’s it, were not moving out of this hotel, if you're not, we’ll go to a different restaurant, the hundred quid, we’re going to go and spend, we’ll now buy best wines. We’ll buy some liquors.” Where does a hotel make their biggest profit? On the booze.
Next morning, I'm down on the swimming pool I talk to everybody. There's a guy laying next to me, I said, “You know how lucky I am? Booked in bed and breakfast basis, all my evening meal is free, what do you think of that?” He says, “He me too”. And I just realized what an incredible strategy they brought in. Under promising, over delivering.
I want to tell you the service was wonderful, within two hours everybody knew our names. I've never seen this before, it was scary. At the end of it I wanted to meet the person that built up this brilliant unrecognized sales force. Her name is Pam Wilber, and I write about him a book called, “Walking With Tigers, Success Secrets of the World’s Top Business Leaders.” And she spent an hour with me, 32-year old lady from Missouri that had gone and taken over this hotel that was at the bottom of the Méridien group, when we we’re there it was number one. And she just shared some of the strategies. And these are some of the things she said to me is make an incredible first impression. When people walk into that hotel, that first impression is fantastic, when somebody phones the way they answer the phone, the enthusiasm has got to be there.
She says we got to be customer-focused rather than task-focused. Somebody walks down the passage ride, they see the chambermaid, the chambermaid stops walking, working smiles, looks them in the eye, “Good morning Mr. Smith, how are you doing this morning?” “Good morning Mr. Jones, how you doing this morning?” Got to be customer, rather than task focused. She also say, “We have a buddy system, everybody that joins us is assigned of buddy for the first three months and brings them into that whole service excellence thing.” She says, “You know, we also don’t have customer service, because customer service is really banded around. What we have is an excellence program. Everyone of our staff, buys in to excellence.”
Here’s another thing, at the end of each year she has her Oscar Awards evening. The whole staff, 800 people get dressed up, they have a big band, and this is like the Oscar Awards, and the waiter of the year is … I just want to thank my mother and my father for sending me to Dubai, everybody gets recognition. They have fun days, everybody is having fun.” She says, “Most people spend so much of their life at work, if they're not enjoying what they're doing, I don’t want them working for me.” Well, I learned a lot from that young lady 32-years old.
Another experience I have, I've done a lot of work in Kuala Lumpur, and somebody said, “Why don’t you try the Traders Hotel?” Good business,” they’ll tell us, stayed there. And at the end of it, the day before I was leaving, there was a looking note pushed under my door. It was a handwritten note by the room cleaner.
“Dear Mr. Furness, Frank, it was been my pleasure to look after your room. We’re so sorry that you're going away and we really look forward to seeing you in the future again.” Signed, Roe your room cleaner. I mean this is a room cleaner, who would actually taken the time to find out who was leaving and then handwrote that note. I want to tell you, I went and I found this guy and I gave him a big tip. He’s most probably one of the riches room cleaners, room attendants in the hospitality industry. But this is really my examples of the unrecognized sale force, this is your account’s clock, this is your chemist, this is everybody that doesn’t see themselves as a sales person. Maybe they don’t like word “sales,” bringing relationship marketer, but everyone of them has a huge influence on all of your people and the success of your organization.
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