210: Sales Service Debacles Are The Boss’s Fault

<p>Generally speaking, we mainly have failures of follow up in B2B sales.  The conduct of the sale’s meeting is normally done professionally.  Perhaps the salesperson could have asked better questions or presented the application of the benefits of the solution better. Maybe they could have dealt more professionally with objections or closed the deal more effectively.  In B2C though, the troubles start from the point of contact.  Getting this wrong means no meeting, let alone no sale.</p> <p> </p> <p>I blame the managers for these issues.  If they were doing their job properly, then there wouldn’t be these customer facing problems.  We are salespeople and we are also buyers.  We go shopping, we eat out, we buy lots of stuff in the face to face environment.  Maybe not as much as before, because of Covid-19, but we still we do engage in some B2C activities.  When the whole hospitality industry is on its knees, you expect that those survivors still operating, are really maximising their opportunities to build their clientele.</p> <p> </p> <p>Imagine my surprise when I called a restaurant in Midtown for a lunchtime booking and bumped into some idiocy that flies in the face of the current reality.  It was around 11.31am and I was calling to make a booking for a 12.00 luncheon.  The staff member who answered the phone told me that all bookings for lunch close at 11.30am.  I could just show up at 12.00 and take my chances with the rest of the punters. It is 11.31am when we are having this conversation.  I asked him does that mean I should book at another restaurant instead of his.  There are tons of restaurants in Midtown by the way. Irony and sarcasm aren’t really features of the Japanese language, so my obtuse point went straight over his head.</p> <p> </p> <p>He had been told that bookings for lunch close at 11.30am and that was that.  The idea that we are in the middle of a pandemic and that many enterprises in his industry are closing for lack of business, would warrant additional flexibility wasn’t one that had ev