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How often do you find someone who just provides a good idea without any expectation of reward?  Karen Hoffman of The Idea Coach is such a person!  She came up with “baggie’ envelopes that she passes out at networking events so people can put the cards they collect inside the bag…and remember WHERE they collected that card!  Cool idea and she just hands them out.  Her information is inside on a card that says Turning Contacts into Connections and it has the event printed too…but that’s fine to remind us of her great idea!  Kudos to Karen.

 It is so nice when something that could have been a terrible situation is fixed so quickly and graciously by the company who made the mistake.  Wish we all respond like this to the situation below in this manner.

I was sitting with a woman who had organized her annual golf tournament.  She had ordered 72 DOZEN golf balls with the company logo.  The balls needed to be in her office by mid-day Friday, in time for the Monday morning tee-off of the event.  When she checked the status Tuesday of the prior week she learned that the balls had been printed…and sent regular mail.  The printer was NOT sure they would arrive by Friday.  Of course, they hadn’t arrived by Friday at noon, so the woman called the company and explained that an order MUST be delivered by Saturday.

The company reprinted the 72 DOZEN golf balls and overnight shipped them to her for Saturday delivery and the event tee-ed off as scheduled!

That company 1) accepted the problem was their problem and 2) fixed it!

That’s all we can expect from a provider, and what we must promise to deliver to our customers.

Bad Sales

Everyone wants more business, right?  And everyone wants to see a good ROI on their advertising dollars too, right?  Well here is a situation where I was a prospect READY to buy and the company lost the sale. 

I called an ad in the Ladue News (not inexpensive to put an ad in there) about resealing our patio.  It’s poured, crushed river rock and I was told it needs to be resealed every 3 years.  It was time.  The ad was there when I needed it.  I called and talked to a lovely young lady who took my name and number and said a sales person/estimator would call to set up the appointment to come out and give a quote.  I NEVER heard from that company.  Why would any company waste valuable advertising dollars and then drop the ball when an inquiry came in…just the result they wanted?  And, I’m sure she never put me in a database to email me periodically.  Of course, we don’t know if she ever gave him the message or if he got it and forgot to call me.  I found another company.  The job was $650.  I would think in this economy any small business would welcome a $650 sale.  The lessons to be learned:

 1)     Capture every inquiry in a database

 2)     Set up a system for every inquiry to ensure that the prospect is called, quoted, offered, reclosed and sold or added to informational communications (mail or email) to stay visible until the next time.  Don’t drop the ball!  Prospects from expensive advertising are too valuable to waste no matter what the economic environment is!

Welcome to Sam Black’s blog.  Hope you enjoy the stories and learn lessons about excellence in sales and customer service