Handling price shoppers on the phone is something that is very important to me. You see, back in 1998, I became a partner in Procare Automotive which operated 104 auto repair and tire stores with 1,000 employees. I raised 36 million so that the Sullivan Group could purchase the company. We took over the business in the fall of 1998.
It became clear to me pretty quickly that we were not really
in the tire and auto repair business (which shocked my partners when I said
it), but rather we were in the customer service business. Thousands of
prospective customers called our network of 104 stores which consisted of about
500 phone lines being answered by about 400 people at any given moment.
Given that I was already experienced with “The Language Of
Commitment”, I became fascinated by how our phones were being handled. I
started listening very closely and started gathering data about the
conversations taking place. I was curious about;
- How many calls were we receiving at each location?
- What were the callers requesting?
- How many different types of requests were being made?
- How did our staff respond?
- What was the result?
- What was the appointment closing percentage?
Customers Have
Problems!
The conversations were pretty much the same, day in and day
out. That is, our customers and prospects called us because they had car
problems which resulted in transportation breakdowns. They had to see grandma
or go to work to pick up the kids or go on vacation, but they had car problems
which prevented that from happening.
Information and Data!
- Recurrent Conversations!
Thousands of times each day, callers entered our world on
the phone and had the same conversations with our staff (I called these
conversations, recurrent mission critical conversations). They would state
their ‘breakdown’ and then request a ‘price’ to fix same. Our staff would
answer them every time in the same way. They would always give a price and
since they were experts in auto repair, would spend enormous amounts of time
talking about what the technical issues might be. It was of course ‘pure
speculation’ given they didn’t have the car yet in the shop.
Mission Critical
Conversations!
It became immediately clear to me that these ‘recurrent
conversations’ were the source of all our business and the source of all our ‘lost
business’ at the same time.
What’s Missing –
Across The Board – All Industries!
After ten years of research in the following industries;
- New car dealers
- Auto repair
- Tire
- Propane
- Glass
- Paint
- Financial Services
- Water
- Medical
- Dental
- Marine
- Wholesale Supply
I offer the following findings;
- Most people are stuck in the information age and feel that giving out information in the name of customer service is what they are supposed to do.
- There are no standards for effective communication in business today and this is a problem.
- The educational system has prepared us for NOTHING in the domain of communication. That’s why marriages fail and people can’t find jobs. Very few people are truly experts in the domain of communication.
- Employees show up for work and for the most part, don’t know that the game is to generate commitment, on behalf of the company, in an effort to take care of customers and prospects. Not knowing this or understanding how to generate commitment, by design, is a huge problem and at the same time, a big opportunity for astute business people.
My Offer to You!
I invite any of our blog readers to contact us so that I can
continue this conversation with you personally because communication as it
relates to handling price shoppers is the heart of the issue for many
companies. I can show you during a 15 minute discussion exactly how we improve closing percentages and improve communication skills in a dramatic fashion. The
Molloy Team is committed to improving communication skills with our clients. So…
if you want to improve performance in your company… We can help you with that!
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| Dan Molloy Founder and CEO of Molloy Business Development Group |
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