SME Owners…What a difference 3 minutes can make!
So, true story, yesterday I’m sitting in a well-known coffee shop that doubles as a restaurant in west Dublin waiting for a client to arrive. It’s 11:57am (please note time, it’s important) and I overhear a conversation between the waitress and two potential clients that went like this:
Potential Client: Hi, we’d like to have lunch
Waitress: Hi, we don’t start our lunch menu until 12 noon
Potential Client: Is your breakfast menu available?
Waitress: Sorry, we stopped serving breakfast at 11:30am
Potential Client: Ok, we’ll try somewhere else [and proceeded to leave]
Business Owners I meet are constantly looking for ways to generate leads and increase sales and it got me wondering how many are fully in touch with the prospects that are at their doorstep already and are the correct processes in place to convert them.
I think its fair to assume that the restaurant owner has no idea that this is happening and the waitress is simply following the rules that they have been trained on, albeit to the extreme, but it does raise the question is their enough flexibility set out for employees to convert prospects and are employees empowered to make the right calls? Three minutes later and there would have been a sale.
As business owners we are the captain of the ship and the visionary for the future of our business, so having a clearly defined plan that includes customer service and having this vision communicated and bought into by all employees is paramount.
If you’re having a hard time deciding on what this plan is and disseminating your vision so it gets implemented efficiently, then consider getting support from a business coach, just like us 😉
To Your Success