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Newsletter: Volume 2, Issue 2
Outside Sales
It’s funny how so many people are fooled into thinking that marketing and sales don’t influence them.
In the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly (played brilliantly by Meryl Streep) and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. New hire Andy (Anne Hathaway) snickers because she thinks they look exactly the same.
Miranda: Something funny?
Andy: No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.
Miranda: “ This… ’stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.
You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.”
Marketing is so prevalent in our society we don’t even realize it anymore.
Marketing lays the groundwork for sales. It makes selling a lot easier. But companies that don’t have a huge marketing budget often rely on personal selling to close the deal. Salespeople have to sell themselves before they sell their product. Often the larger the price of the product, the more of a factor personal selling is. Laundry detergent is mostly sold before you enter the store. But automobiles, on the other hand, are sold at the point of display. Customers want their hands held when they make a big purchasing decision.
Customer Service
I once asked a clerk in Nordstroms where the Cold Stone Creamery was in the mall I was in. She not only told me but, seeing how directionally challenged I was, walked me down to it, pointed at it and said “There it is.” Granted, I had been shopping in Nordstroms, but I thought she went above and beyond the call of duty.
In the book, The Nordstrom Way, the authors, Robert Spector and Patrick D. McCarthy, write “What makes Nordstrom unique? The chain is geared toward middle-to-upper-income women and men. It offers these customers attractive stores with a large, varied and competitively priced inventory of shoes, apparel, accessories and cosmetics and a liberal return policy. But a lot of stores do that. What separates Nordstrom from its competitors is its army of highly motivated, self-empowered people who have an entrepreneurial spirit, who feel that they’re in this to make more money and to be successful.”
New employees are given a copy of the famous Nordstrom’s employee manual- a single 5 x 8 inch gray card containing 75 words. A copy of it follows:
WELCOME TO NORDSTROM
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.
Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.
Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
Telephone Skills
I stopped calling directory assistance years ago because I got fed up with it. First there were surly operators who wouldn’t even give you the time of day, let alone a phone number. Their attitude shrieked “You’re bothering me.” Then they limited the number of listings they could give you to two. Okay, I can live with that. But they’d often give you the recorded voice of the first number before you could tell them you had another number.
After that, it all became automated. You no longer got to speak with a person. Or, if you did, they’d ask you the same questions that the automated voice had already asked you and that you had enunciated very well, thank you. The “voice” would say “City and State,” then “Name,” you’d provide that and then a human being would come on the line and ask you again as if you hadn’t given it to begin with.
Then they started charging you ridiculous amounts of money for directory assistance. And it was never real clear to me what the difference between 411 and 555-1212 was. With the latter, sometimes they wanted the 1 and other times they didn’t.
Now, with voice recognition hitting its stride, there’s free directory assistance again. Google provides it for local businesses. You call 1-800-GOOG-411 and say, for example, “restaurant” and the location and within a few seconds an automated voice will list the top 8 choices and also give you the option of receiving a text message or being connected to one of the restaurants.
In April, Microsoft acquired Tellme Networks Inc., a leading provider of voice services. Start-up Jingle Networks Inc., one of the first companies to offer a free directory assistance service, has been doing so since 2005.
For now, the free search services are experimenting with simple ad techniques. Jingle Networks runs a general ad before users state their request. After the request is made, the Jingle service plays an ad that’s more related to the query. Only then is the information dispersed. Microsoft’s Tellme service runs the ad after the number is provided. Google’s automated-search service is in testing mode and is still free from ads.
The access number for Microsoft’s Tellme, which provides information regarding business, stock quotes, news, sports, entertainment and travel, is 1-800-555-TELL. Jingle Networks, which offers business and residential listings, is 1-800-FREE-411.
Posted by frank on June 29th, 2007 under Newsletter
