Everybody is a potential customer

The last four days have been quite an interesting experience in dealing with corporate UK. Most of the time it hasn’t been pleasant! But let’s paint the scenario first.

A magazine publisher has set up a one day Summit with some fairly respectable speakers. I have been tasked with bringing more delegates to the event. The good news is that the tickets are free.

My target market is national and local government such as police, health and universities. Add to that a broad selection of large companies from financial institutions, telecoms, manufacturing and hospitality and it’s a good representation of organisations and businesses in the UK.

I’ve been given a list which should mean that the people I’m about to phone have heard of the magazine and if they have read it will know about the Summit.

The experience? It was a matter of gauging how rude the people were going to be! With other words I would anticipate at each call where on a scale of one to ten, ten being the rudest, the person on the other side would fall.

During four days of canvassing the number of times the needle smacked ten was fairly regularly. Mostly it hovered around 8. I phoned about 300 numbers. I must just say that there were a few polite people. And a handful were almost friendly.

There was one exception. The Low Wood Hotel group. It could be that their friendliness and total commitment to helping could be seen to be normal in the hospitality industry. Isn’t that what it should be?

However, I have had some mixed receptions phoning small B & B’s while planing for a short trip in the UK and I haven’t had such friendly service before.

So I am going to award the Low Wood Hotel group a five star rating in terms of friendliness. They went out of their way to help and I wasn’t even asking for information on accommodation. In a way they had nothing to win from this phone call.

Well actually they did. If I ever visit the Lakes District in the UK, guess where I will most definitely stay? You got it. It’s a no brainer.

What does that say for your own small business? No matter who you deal with, the good will you can build up by being friendly and helpful even on non-core business issues can assist with building your business.

No matter who the person is who contacts your company, whether it’s a health inspector, the post delivery person or even somebody from a telemarketing company welcome these people with open arms.

Be friendly, accommodating, patient, helpful and more. It will impact on your business in a positive way. You might not see it straight away. It could be an investment that might not pay too much dividend.

Of course it could give you a return such as the Low Wood Hotel could see if I ever book a holiday with them. If I don’t manage it, the least they got from me was a glowing mention in a blog read by a couple of hundred people.

Isn’t that a great return for just being friendly?

Now you might think to yourself that sure you can always be friendly but you have no control over your staff. Wrong. Very wrong. Instilling a culture of friendliness and helpfulness in your organisation is possible.

I spoke to five people at the Low Wood Hotel, that is one of their hotels in the group. Each one was superb. It can be done.

Thinking of the response by people working for the other 299 it amazes me that these businesses are still in operation. Of course the authorities probably don’t need to worry too much. They will be around while the taxpayers fund them.

Still, a very sad state of affair with respect to businesses in the UK. Could it be that some major attitude cleansing needs to take place? Could be. And could this kind of bad behaviour be contributing to the economic gloom? Could have!