A few days ago I had to place an order for 500 printed t-shirts for a political campaign. To a small local business that’s a pretty good size order, not to mention likely future orders. Guess what I did? I called two local businesses that sell these types of t-shirts. One business was very nice on the phone, they gathered information on what I needed and offered to call me back with a quote in a few minutes. The employee returned my call pretty quickly with a price that was in the ballpark of what we were looking for. The employee at the other business, when the call was transferred to her, answered the phone “hello?”. I told her what I needed and she said “It’s probably going to be around $10 a shirt I think, something like that.” I’m paraphrasing but that’s pretty close to what she said. Any guesses on who got the business? After placing the order, the owner of the other business called me saying he thinks I called the other day about shirts. I informed him that I did but that I had already ordered the shirts from someone else.
People use the phones to conduct business every single day. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t seem to realize this, based on the fact that most don’t have expected standards where employees are held accountable and amazingly most businesses don’t even conduct phone shops to see where they stand.
Make it your business to be remarkable on the phones. Your business depends on it!
