How ONE salesman cost McDonald’s a media outrage

On Jan 10th, 2015, IBNlive reported the news of a young destitute boy ill-treated in McDonald’s Pune outlet spurring media outrage. What followed was an angry debate of how sales executives in retail outlets must be trained to treat every customer with respect and empathy. What McDonald’s had spent millions of dollars and many painstaking years to build was questioned and tarnished due to one employee’s behavior. We are speaking of the premium brand, goodwill and TRUST that I, as a customer, feel when I enter the outlet. But now every time I go I may look at how the executives treat me and the people around me with microscopic judgment. If I get annoyed by one of them I may feel irritated enough not to go back and tell 5 of my friends that perhaps, the shutting down of the Pune outlet was treatment well deserved. I will add fuel to the fire. How does McDonald’s and any other retail outlet including your Kirana store round the corner, ensure that the lowest rung of its field salesmen- GET this point?

I initially started this discussion here in part 1 of this blog where we spoke of how 1) Making your customer “feel” important and valued, erasers barriers and helps you relate to their needs better.

2) We also spoke of the ability of customer to spend on single transaction is less important than his/her Lifetime value and ability to spend cumulatively.

3) And we thus saw how a customer can help grow your business by positive word of mouth and how you in turn can help grow him by building an aspirational journey, and then him/her achieve it along with revenue for your business.

I received some great insights from my blog readers. The most intriguing summary of all of them put together was that the organizational management is to blame for Salesmen not understanding the value of how to treat their customers. The root causes are

• The way organizations train and evaluate their salesmen

• The way they measure and commission their salesmen

Let me address part 1 of the problem in this blog.

On what skills are organizations training their sales people?

The WRONG WAY to train

It was Jan 2013, when we stepped into a Subway outlet in Noida. I must now clarify that I am loyal Subway fan and had survived on only sub sandwiches for 3 months in row in 2006 and then again in 2009 and that too with only vegetarian options. When I go to the store, I feel a sense of familiarity that I “know” their products and I know exactly how “MY” sub should be like. On that day, we asked the executive to put extra “Olives” in my salad. My request had been refused in any other outlet prior to this. Subway was second home. But that day the person behind the counter made faces and added two pieces of broken olives reluctantly. My cousin immediately got irked and asked him to add a few more.

To that, the executive, said, he had been strictly instructed to add ONLY “TEN” olives per order. “Is this what he is really being trained for or he said it out of the blue?”

My cousin got angry. It was not the olives, honestly if he had told me politely that it was charged beyond a quantity, I would have paid. It was the sensitivity of the executive. FOOD is highly personal business; especially when it is charged at a premium. Any sense of hostility, judgement, a smirk or reluctance from the person serving you immediately touches a raw spot. It makes you feel that you are “BEGGING” the guy when in actuality you are PAYING a Premium.

When you train the executives to stick to ten olives, also teach them HOW to handle exceptional requests for more. Just 2 more olives would have made a subway loyalist happy.

Long story short, we got into an argument which neither the executive nor the store manager could resolve. Not even the Facebook India page. I refuse to step into that Subway store till date.

THE RIGHT WAY

Jan 2015, Subway outlet, Connaught Place, New Delhi. I step into the store on working day, hungry and tired. An employee surprisingly held out the door for me and the entire staff behind the counter shouted “Welcome to Subway Ma’am”. I was pleasantly intrigued. While I sat down with my Sub, I heard the lady behind the cash counter consistently greet every single customer with an upbeat tone, genuine enthusiasm and question or two about how their day was. When I was leaving, I went and made it point to appreciate her and Thank her personally. That is when she fished out a book and requested me to “write down” my feedback.

I saw from the corner of my eye, it was the store manager encouraging these employees to measure themselves through this demeanor. They were specially appreciated for these efforts. And they felt genuine enthusiasm.

I have a colleague in IBM Retail marketing who was a McDonald’s store manager prior to his MBA. Nihit Sharda shares his surprise when he looks at the McDonald Pune’s story. He shares his experience of how he shared burgers, multiple times with destitute kids and sometimes even at half price and then ended up paying the remaining amount from his salary.

He encouraged every employee of his store to be kind to every single customer.

We may have conscientious managers like Nihit or smart franchise owners like the manager of the enthusiastic Subway store. But this should not be left to matter of chance. Retailers need to set systems in place to make it happen. Retailers like Mcdonald’s appreciate their employees in multiple ways such as Wall of fame visible in their stores. However information says parameters of evaluation are speed of service within 2-3 minutes and quality. But it is evident that while sellers maybe driven by commissions for number of sales closed, they also respond to verbal appreciation for good behaviour with customers.

Like the customer’s immediate value is not evident to the salesman and the organization, the value of good behaviour is not evident to the salesmen. If treated well customers buy more in the long run.

If they genuinely develop relationships, sales people make 35% more and easier revenue from existing clients and repeat sales than acquiring new customers.

So as a manager or a person running an organization it would be good to ensure

1) Consistent training and communication to your sales people to “Treat” customers well, they statistically make more money, repeat and volume sales and longer relationships.

2) Create an ecosystem of recognition and appreciation for their good behaviour NOT just highest SALES.

3) Recognize employees on titles such as “Most kind executive”, “Most liked executive” or “Most friendly executive” based on customer feedback and measurement.

As Bob Phibb says in the Retail doctor’s blog here that “if the conversation stays focused on price, it’s nearly impossible to upsell or suggest useful add-ons. As long as the customer is focused on cost, they can’t see value”.

It is one part to get your employees to treat your customers well, it is another part to help them understand the next step if this journey- to empathize and humanize the conversation to realise the life time value of the customer. 

This post is second in series emotional connect for building superior client experience. You may like to read on part 1- Acquiring the customer and part 3- on building the personalized client experience

Your Salesmen are losing your customers and you don't know it!!

I remember an incident back in the November of 2002 when my mother and I visited a Gold shop in Vishakapatnam, India for the first time on our own accord. It is a story about how middle class Indian families approach to buying aspirational products such as Gold Jewelry. Jewelry shops always scared my mother. She would usually visit with a veteran like my grandmother in her hometown and she would trust only the family jeweler. She had never ventured out individually into a glassy and shiny showroom for the fear of unaffordability and also due to the fear being ignored or worse overcharged.

However, we were in for a surprise when the showroom owner’s son, a 28 year old young man, apparently an MBA, immediately greeted my mother with smile and asked her what she would like to collect for her daughter, which was me. This one statement melted the barriers between “Rich shop owner” and “scared middle-class consumer”. He “understood” her. An Indian middle class mother likes to “collect” Jewelry for her daughter’s wedding over a period of ten years, primarily because she feels she cannot afford heavy purchases all at one time.

He showed her low value items and made her feel comfortable with her budget. He did this in a subtle fashion anticipating our immediate need was for maybe was a low value product.

In fact he also served us cold drinks and tea along with another groups of customers who were purchasing expensive diamond wedding Jewelry. He made her feel “important” and valued irrespective of the monetary value of her purchase.

With his encouragement, my mother made her maiden purchase of Rs.5000 ($ 80). But he did mention that within a year she could “plan” and save to purchase a necklace worth Rs.10,000 ($160). The aspirational value encouraged us to save more and save sooner. We purchased that necklace within 6 months. In our third visit, we took my elder sister along with my brother-in-law who in turn purchased few small items of jewelry for my sister and niece.

And within just one year of enrolling us as a customer, the seller had converted a middle-class skeptical housewife to a proud jewelry owner, had gained 4 additional customers within the family, 10X times of total sales value (as compared to our humble first purchase),and plenty of goodwill.

The reason my mother remembers this particular experience till date is because he led us through an aspirational buying journey which she had never imagined she could afford. The Jewelry purchased at that time has appreciated in value and created genuine personal value to the buyer.

How was this man able to achieve this? He stood out by anticipating and empathizing with how the customer “felt”. He identified a customer’s psyche and won complete loyalty and repeat purchases without any additional marketing investments. It is very important for marketeers to understand that a consumer who purchases for an amount as low as Rs.500 today may be able to purchase for Rs.20,000($ 320) tomorrow. Additionally he or she can create a circle of influence through positive recommendations and thus may be worth much more times than his/her first low value purchase (OR one time transaction value).

EVERY customer and EVERY purchase is key irrespective of the monetary value it holds.

Unfortunately most organizations do not get this. Even if the management does understand this fact, the client facing employees may not be able to realize the depth of the value of the customer to the organization.

Do your sellers know how important your client is to the organization?

Let me share another incident, more recent one in the November of 2014. My mother and I entered a saree showroom outlet in a high-end mall in Hyderabad, India. My mother likes to look at latest patterns of Sarees (an Indian outfit worn by women). If she likes something she may just buy it. But this kind of indulgence and off-hand purchases are usually towards low-value and regular wear clothing priced below Rs.1000 ($ 16). However, when she visits a shop she also likes to see expensive sarees and make a note of the store. She would later go back when she actually intended to purchase an expensive saree.

Now, that day the salesman in the showroom looked at me and my dressing sense and automatically assumed I could “afford” to spend on an expensive saree. He never cared to inquire on whether or not we “wanted” to. He showed us four Sarees priced at Rs.5000($ 80), Rs.3000($ 48), Rs.1600($ 27) and Rs.800($13) respectively. My mother immediately picked up the one priced Rs.800($13) and asked for more colors. Three times she asked him for less expensive sarees and three times he brought higher valued items and categorically insisted that unless she is willing to spend more money she can’t get good sarees.

At one point of time he cornered her verbally and literally asked her to STATE how much she could afford to spend.

Clearly, she was uncomfortable. She did not want me to spend money. Yet she could have thought of purchasing had he been patient to help her find something she wanted.

He upset me deeply and I vowed I will never step into the store again.

The salesman had just ensured the management had lost a potential consumer. Unfortunately the management is not aware of it.

What do we learn from story 1 and 2?

1. Making your customer “feel” important and valued, erasers barriers and helps you relate to their needs better.

Making them feel “small” and making yourselves feel big can lose a customer

2. Value every single monetary transaction whether it is for Rs.500 or Rs. 50000. The Lifetime value of a customer is more important than one time transaction.

3.A customer can help your business not just by purchasing but by “speaking” about it. Be wary what experiences you give them to speak of.

4. If you help your customer build an aspirational journey, they will truly remember you.

Do your salesmen believe in these? Do they practice these?

This post is first in series on emotional connect for building superior client experience and speaks of acquiring the customer. You may like to read on part 2- retaining the customer and part 3- on building the personalized client experience

Fake it! Disguise helps grow faster than self-image can.

In 2008, India cinema saw a film under the famous Yashraj banner-“Rab Ne Banadi Jodi”. The film starred the Indian actor SRK as “Suri”, a simpleton working for a Public Sector Unit. Suri spoke little, dressed in dull formal clothes and sneakers. He was reserved to the extent of appearing socially awkward. Suri gets married to “Tani”, a beautiful, vibrant and extrovert girl under sudden, unavoidable and not preferred circumstances to the bride. But in spite of his non-flamboyant personality, Suri is deeply in love with Tani and wishes to woo her. And so he disguises himself as a strange loud character “Raj” ( apparently unrecognizable) , joins her dance classes to be her partner, dates her, woos her and eventually makes her fall in love with him.

So what was unique about this film? Not that it was predictable; certainly not the obvious plot. But definitely one significant feature of this film was the trademark Bollywood concept of “Disguise”. The protagonist “Suri” lives a double life. His alter Ego was “Raj”. The only visual difference between the two characters was a moustache and their choice of clothing. So Raj had no moustache, wore Jeans and florescent T-shirts, sported colored spikes and walked with a stupid gait. Raj was loud, ridiculous and wore anything and everything. Raj was everything which his real life personality-Suri was not.

Why would a person act so stupidly and differently when playing Raj from what he was in reality as Suri?

What stopped him from simple acts such as wearing Jeans and cracking stupid jokes in his life as Suri?

Why did he have to adopt an imaginary character to be what he wanted to be?

Because, pssst… Raj was incognito…!! He was a non-existent character. He had no past and no future. He had no relationships. He was a figment of fiction. Today he was Raj, a dancer; tomorrow, he could be Rahul a biker; day after tomorrow, Rohit, a Para-glider.

BUT Suri, was real!! Suri had a life, a job, relatives, a wife and an image. He needed to protect the image, the image that he had built for himself. Let us take a pause here.

Ask yourself, what image have you built for yourself? Does your image limit you? When I dream of who I want to be, I always draw lines of limitations. I start filtering out possibilities. And then come out with solutions within the limited space. But if YOU stick to the canvas provided, how will you ever build a picture larger than life; than the canvas in itself?

Let us conduct a mini-exercise. Imagine that you were alone. No relationships. No past education. No financial constraints. No nationality. No expectations from your educational qualifications. Imagine you could live in any country, work on any job, do anything. What would you choose?

Do you have an answer? Well, whatever you would have wanted to do then, however ridiculous, DO IT NOW, RIGHT HERE, TODAY.

Let me share my example. Why do I work in India? Because I was born here. I have my family here. Why do I work in Marketing? Because, I pursued an MBA and it feels justified to pursue a marketing job. Why did I do an MBA? Because I come from an academic family.

Had I come from a Business family, maybe they would have encouraged me to be an entrepreneur. The moment you come across this phrase “Had I”… stop and pause. You need to because the “Had I” never ends. Had I known I like arts, I could have studied journalism. Had I not studied engineering I would have worked in advertising. Had I been 20 years old, I would have taken up travelling or taken up a sales job. Had I……..Had I….Had I……

You see this phrase only pushes you back to your image. Suri’s image was to be simple and reserved. He needed a disguise to be loud and to wear Jeans. My image through childhood was academic, I probably need a disguise to break that and discover if I can be more. And if I break that, I can do everything I wish to- right here right now. So can YOU. Do what you heart and mind tells you to, do what YOU feel is the purpose of your life. And do it without judgment and without an image to live up to. Strangely when guided by purpose, constraints make way. But if guided by constraints purpose makes way.

Raj was creative and Suri was constrained. Raj was uninhibited. He had nothing to lose. So he tried something new, something wild and something crazy.

His lady love wanted to dance, and he knew nothing about dancing. But well, he figured out enough to stand in the race. Often, it is quite strange how many Suris out there harbor a Raj inside themselves. Are you living Suri’s life? Do you have a Raj within you? Set him free!!

Be the Raj of your life now. Do everything you always wanted to. What you want to do. Without Inhibition. Without Fear. Be ridiculous. Laugh loudly. Chew aloud in public. Wear funny sandals. Ask her out! And give speeches! WITHOUT Judgement. Without fear. Because remember, you are Incognito. No one knows you. You are just a character, playing a part. Unleash yourselves, today. Go Incognito.