What has happened to creativity? The changes that have been taking place in the marketplace are a disgrace. What has always been a great cat and mouse game has turned into nothing more than a shell of what it once was. Today it is built in, it is right there on the desk, it is in their in their pocket or purse, we all have the same darn thing and yet, we accept the unacceptable. Oh sorry, I have gotten so worked up about this that I forgot to tell you what I am so upset about. One word, EXCUSES!
Today it seems that everyone has a built in excuse for why they haven’t done what they were supposed to do, TECHNOLOGY! Today I have had 2 separate incidents where technology was used as an excuse. It happened first with the bank. I logged onto my account this morning and noticed that my balance was a little lower than I expected (when I say a little I mean A LOT!) After looking over the transactions I noticed that the bank posted 2 mortgage payments instead of one. I called the bank and the first thing the person said to me after I told them what had happened was, “We have been having computer problems”. I told the person that I didn’t really care about their computer problems but I did care about my MONEY! I was told to hold on and in about 10 minutes the money was back in my account.
The second incident happened at the pharmacy. My doctor was supposed to have called a prescription into the pharmacy for me 2 days ago, when I went to pick it up today there was no prescription waiting. I called my doctors office and spoke with her assistant who was supposed to have done the calling, and as soon as I told her I was at the pharmacy and there was NO prescription waiting she told me that she couldn’t check on if she had called it in because her computer had locked up. She then told me not to worry, she would call it in again right now so I could still take it with me.
Imagine how unlucky I was today to have had 2 problems and both times there was computer trouble. Let’s face it the excuse of computer trouble is a natural today. Everything is on computers and we all know that we have trouble with computers.
Here is the problem that we face as sales reps. Because of this readymade excuse our customers and prospects are able to blow us off at will. They have a built in excuse that we can’t argue with. Or can we? One thing we can do to help minimize this technology excuse is to think of action items that don’t take technology which will help us get to the close of the sale.
This sounds like a giant step backwards, and in many ways it is, but if we can give our customers action items that only require reading hard copies of material we leave them, or filling out forms that are written rather than online we can take the technology excuse away.
I am not saying that technology is bad, actually anyone who knows me knows good and well I LOVE technology and embrace its use. What I am saying is we need to help ourselves by not giving into the new ways until we know better ways than the old ways!
I guess until we have computer that don’t lock up or crash, until we have cell phones that don’t drop calls, and until we have signals that are strong everywhere we need to do what we can to avoid giving our customers another reason to say NO!
Lorin
No comments:
Post a Comment