Rebecca Harris is the General Manager

Have we forgotten already?

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a column in our publications for a while, the decision was finally made after a trying morning recently cold calling companies to purchase products. The experience was frustrating to say the least and finally pushed me to write about the things that irk me and the frustrations faced trying to manage a company in an unaccommodating climate. If you agree or disagree with my comments, or need to vent, write to me; put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

I’m confident everyone will agree, at some stage over the last year or two we did one or all of the following:

• Put one’s nose to the grindstone and worked our arses off
• Thought outside the square
• Returned to basics
• Asked “how high?” when clients asked us to jump!
• Wrote and re-wrote the standard sales pitch.

The list goes on…

With an event looming I needed to purchase branded products — what a struggle. All I was faced with was excuses:

• We only do quantities up to 500.
• We only do quantities over 5000.
• Orange isn’t a standard colour.
• You don’t want to air freight.
• You’ve left it too late.
• The lady who deals with that is away.
• Consequently not a single product was bought.

Has everyone forgotten how precious every single sale is? It was a cold, unsolicited incoming call. It’s clear from my experience this particular day we’ve slipped back into our old hum-drum ways of not working hard to make a sale. Not one iota of passion, enthusiasm or even helpfulness was experienced.

My day ended with a trip to a mall to return a watch for repair, only three months into the warranty of a well know brand.The counter sales person said to me “I’m not sure the warranty will cover it, they only cover the watch, not the strap.” You have got to be kidding me, this lady got the death stare - I think she knew how I felt!

This was followed by a visit to a jewellery kiosk. I asked to try on a costume ring, would you believe it, the sales person took it out and popped it on the counter, promptly turned and walked back to where she was standing in the middle of the kiosk to do… nothing… just stand there. No one else was at the kiosk!

At the end of a very frustrating day, I realised the hard work our nation has put into customer service and sales over the last year or two has been forgotten. The lesson here is, it doesn’t matter in tough times or in good times, we still need to be at the top of our game. There needs to be a continuous strive to go above and beyond, or the tough times will get tougher and the good times will never eventuate!