Hard sell, no sale
Hard sell, no sale
Updated 01:59am (Mla time) Dec 17, 2004
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the December 17, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
"BILI na, bili na, libreng kanta."
I was amused by the “tiangge” (bazaar) vendor. She was obviously doing this tongue-in-cheek, offering a free song for anyone buying stuff from her, but she did remind me that even with the influx of cheap goods from China, there are just too many sellers these days, and not enough people buying. Times are hard and people are careful with their shopping budgets.
Since it takes so much more now to catch a potential consumer's attention and to keep that person interested enough until a purchase is made, you're going to find more and more marketing gimmicks, mostly hard-sell tactics. Sometimes they work but more often they don't.
I thought I'd compile a few tips for my friends in business, as well as Bong Austero and others at the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) who train the business people, my way of making up for not being able to speak at their last convention.
Song-and-dance routines
The vendor offering a free song with purchases was probably kidding, but the other week I saw a literal song-and-dance routine used to attract customers.
I had just delivered a lecture at a convention and was on my way home, when I noticed the record store, and thought I'd drop in to pick out some Christmas gifts. As I drew closer to the store, I was greeted with really loud hip-hop music blaring away. Right at the entrance was a young couple, dressed punk-style, gyrating away like the world was coming to an end. I stood by to wait to get in but the music and the dancing continued, and eventually people drifted away, as I did. You just couldn't get into the store.
The hip-hop dancing was an example of marketing overkill. You catch people's attention then prevent them from moving on to browse and buy. These fancy marketing song-and-dance routines attract people but the novelty wears off easily and you lose potential customers. In other cases, as with this loud hip-hop display, people may actually be driven away.
Not quite a song-and-dance routine, but a totally wasted routine nevertheless, is the insistence of tiangge vendors on using obsolete hawking techniques, calling customers to buy. You see it all the time, vendors singing out every few seconds, "Sir, Mam, bili na, rubber shoes." Goodness, I want to tell them, everyone in the entire block is selling rubber shoes so it serves no purpose to call out your wares. In fact, I avoid those who call out because I suspect they'll be too aggressive in trying to sell their goods.
Airheads and stalkers
Rather than expending so much energy to call in customers, business people should invest more to improve customer assistance. Again, whether it's a sidewalk stall or a large department store, many of our businesses make the mistake of emphasizing quantity: hiring too many people and not training them properly.
You get several varieties here. Again, maybe it's because we're such a musical nation, I've been in several business establishments where the sales clerks are idly sitting in a corner singing away. Okay, so I'm being unfair; they're not totally idle, some will sing while filing their nails.
Then you have the cell-phone addicts. I was recently in a shop where the manager suddenly swooped in and confiscated all the employees' cell phones. Apparently, a customer had complained about poor service because the sales staff members were all busy talking or text-messaging away.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the busybodies who stalk you as you browse, telling you this yellow polka-dotted, itsy-bitsy bikini is really cute (favorite adjective with our sales clerks) and will look great on your wife. Okay, thank you, goodbye. Sometimes, if the store does have good products, I stay on, but I have found that when some product does interest you and you need to ask for more information, the busybodies turn out to be airheads who know nothing about what they're selling.
Quality standards for customer assistance should apply as well to phone inquiries. Local businesses pour so much money into ads announcing new products, with phone numbers to call, and yet invest so little on the people who will receive potential customers' calls. For a country that prides itself with so many call centers, we're really very bad with phones, even with basic courtesies like asking customers to hold the line.
I'm going to have to name one company with a particularly bad record when it comes to phone customer assistance: Globe Handyphone. I've had people who can't speak in English but insist on doing so; then when I ask them to switch to Filipino, it turns out they can't speak Filipino as well.
Management bottlenecks
It isn't just the bad starts that get you into trouble. Don't think that you've got it made just because someone finally reaches for his or her wallet. You can still botch a sale at the last minute, even as the customer is about to pay.
Again, we overdo things here. I was in a long queue at a National Bookstore branch the other day and counted nine women cramped behind three cash registers. It's the same thing with SM and many other large chains, where they hire someone to handle the cash register, as well as a checker and a wrapper. The women at National are fine. They're courteous and helpful, and I mention them because they really deserve better working conditions. In other business establishments, I've seen staff who are adversely affected by the crowding, which translates to slow service and grumpy faces. There's always the temptation to dump what you wanted to buy and look for another shop with shorter lines and more pleasant service.
Problems can crop up anywhere along the marketing process. I call these management or business bottlenecks. All you need to ruin a business is one incompetent person handling a vital function. That includes marketing people hatching up schemes like hip-hop at the door.
Make sure you have staff who can quickly take over when there's a weak link, like a good manager who can crack down on the cell-phone addicts. I would have given up on Globe a long time ago if it were not for the efficient staff in their service centers (thanks, Patrick, at the Rockwell center), who I would turn to after battling a call-center operator.
To sum up, you don't need to sing or dance to make a sale. Hard sell can mean no sales. Stock quality items, hire a few good people who can work as a team and who know more adjectives besides "cute," and you'll have customers coming back for more.
Last chance for Christmas shopping
Last call before Christmas: Drop by Market One, the weekend market at the Lung Center (near the Quezon Memorial Circle) where you should be able to complete your holiday shopping with food items, plants, handicrafts, toys, clothes. For the holidays, coordinator Susa Arcega tells me they're open as well Saturday mornings although it's still Sunday when they have the most stalls.
Updated 01:59am (Mla time) Dec 17, 2004
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the December 17, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
"BILI na, bili na, libreng kanta."
I was amused by the “tiangge” (bazaar) vendor. She was obviously doing this tongue-in-cheek, offering a free song for anyone buying stuff from her, but she did remind me that even with the influx of cheap goods from China, there are just too many sellers these days, and not enough people buying. Times are hard and people are careful with their shopping budgets.
Since it takes so much more now to catch a potential consumer's attention and to keep that person interested enough until a purchase is made, you're going to find more and more marketing gimmicks, mostly hard-sell tactics. Sometimes they work but more often they don't.
I thought I'd compile a few tips for my friends in business, as well as Bong Austero and others at the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) who train the business people, my way of making up for not being able to speak at their last convention.
Song-and-dance routines
The vendor offering a free song with purchases was probably kidding, but the other week I saw a literal song-and-dance routine used to attract customers.
I had just delivered a lecture at a convention and was on my way home, when I noticed the record store, and thought I'd drop in to pick out some Christmas gifts. As I drew closer to the store, I was greeted with really loud hip-hop music blaring away. Right at the entrance was a young couple, dressed punk-style, gyrating away like the world was coming to an end. I stood by to wait to get in but the music and the dancing continued, and eventually people drifted away, as I did. You just couldn't get into the store.
The hip-hop dancing was an example of marketing overkill. You catch people's attention then prevent them from moving on to browse and buy. These fancy marketing song-and-dance routines attract people but the novelty wears off easily and you lose potential customers. In other cases, as with this loud hip-hop display, people may actually be driven away.
Not quite a song-and-dance routine, but a totally wasted routine nevertheless, is the insistence of tiangge vendors on using obsolete hawking techniques, calling customers to buy. You see it all the time, vendors singing out every few seconds, "Sir, Mam, bili na, rubber shoes." Goodness, I want to tell them, everyone in the entire block is selling rubber shoes so it serves no purpose to call out your wares. In fact, I avoid those who call out because I suspect they'll be too aggressive in trying to sell their goods.
Airheads and stalkers
Rather than expending so much energy to call in customers, business people should invest more to improve customer assistance. Again, whether it's a sidewalk stall or a large department store, many of our businesses make the mistake of emphasizing quantity: hiring too many people and not training them properly.
You get several varieties here. Again, maybe it's because we're such a musical nation, I've been in several business establishments where the sales clerks are idly sitting in a corner singing away. Okay, so I'm being unfair; they're not totally idle, some will sing while filing their nails.
Then you have the cell-phone addicts. I was recently in a shop where the manager suddenly swooped in and confiscated all the employees' cell phones. Apparently, a customer had complained about poor service because the sales staff members were all busy talking or text-messaging away.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the busybodies who stalk you as you browse, telling you this yellow polka-dotted, itsy-bitsy bikini is really cute (favorite adjective with our sales clerks) and will look great on your wife. Okay, thank you, goodbye. Sometimes, if the store does have good products, I stay on, but I have found that when some product does interest you and you need to ask for more information, the busybodies turn out to be airheads who know nothing about what they're selling.
Quality standards for customer assistance should apply as well to phone inquiries. Local businesses pour so much money into ads announcing new products, with phone numbers to call, and yet invest so little on the people who will receive potential customers' calls. For a country that prides itself with so many call centers, we're really very bad with phones, even with basic courtesies like asking customers to hold the line.
I'm going to have to name one company with a particularly bad record when it comes to phone customer assistance: Globe Handyphone. I've had people who can't speak in English but insist on doing so; then when I ask them to switch to Filipino, it turns out they can't speak Filipino as well.
Management bottlenecks
It isn't just the bad starts that get you into trouble. Don't think that you've got it made just because someone finally reaches for his or her wallet. You can still botch a sale at the last minute, even as the customer is about to pay.
Again, we overdo things here. I was in a long queue at a National Bookstore branch the other day and counted nine women cramped behind three cash registers. It's the same thing with SM and many other large chains, where they hire someone to handle the cash register, as well as a checker and a wrapper. The women at National are fine. They're courteous and helpful, and I mention them because they really deserve better working conditions. In other business establishments, I've seen staff who are adversely affected by the crowding, which translates to slow service and grumpy faces. There's always the temptation to dump what you wanted to buy and look for another shop with shorter lines and more pleasant service.
Problems can crop up anywhere along the marketing process. I call these management or business bottlenecks. All you need to ruin a business is one incompetent person handling a vital function. That includes marketing people hatching up schemes like hip-hop at the door.
Make sure you have staff who can quickly take over when there's a weak link, like a good manager who can crack down on the cell-phone addicts. I would have given up on Globe a long time ago if it were not for the efficient staff in their service centers (thanks, Patrick, at the Rockwell center), who I would turn to after battling a call-center operator.
To sum up, you don't need to sing or dance to make a sale. Hard sell can mean no sales. Stock quality items, hire a few good people who can work as a team and who know more adjectives besides "cute," and you'll have customers coming back for more.
Last chance for Christmas shopping
Last call before Christmas: Drop by Market One, the weekend market at the Lung Center (near the Quezon Memorial Circle) where you should be able to complete your holiday shopping with food items, plants, handicrafts, toys, clothes. For the holidays, coordinator Susa Arcega tells me they're open as well Saturday mornings although it's still Sunday when they have the most stalls.
posted by Dante at 11:36 AM
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