I regularly hear from sales people that they don’t know why they bother with helping people because they go off and buy from the internet. I have regularly rebutted the comments and gone forward in recommending to all that they should offer awesome service so that in turn their customers will buy from them instead of an online retailer.
This was proven to me the other day with a friend who is planning a holiday. He told me that he had been ripped off on a previous holiday so he would be booking it all online, but in the mean time he would drop into a few travel agents to get some ideas and maybe some brochures.
He went into the first travel agent who clearly had the same idea as so many other sales people. She told him to “take these brochures and work out where you want to stay and what dates they wanted to fly and then they could put something together for them”.He walked out of the travel agent saying “well that was a waste of time”.
He went on to a second travel agent who was a little better, she offered a couple of recommendations but still didn’t really get an understanding of what they wanted.
The third travel agent changed everything. She listened to everything they wanted. She spent the first 20 minutes asking questions about what sort of activities they would want to do, what dates they wanted to go and what style of accommodation would they prefer. That travel agent made them feel like they were special.
She then put together a package that was the sort of thing they really wanted and without a thought for their “I’m booking this holiday online”, they booked their holiday through this travel agent…and they have been singing the praises of this lady to everyone who will listen.
That difference here is that the travel agent who listened easily got the “impossible” sale. I asked if she tried to sell to them and they told me “No…she just offered us great suggestions and the price seemed good.”
Have they gone online to check the prices afterwards – yes – have they paid more – very slightly but that isn’t worrying them because they got amazing service and she found a tour for them that they don’t think they would ever have thought of.
Service is the difference!
