At least during business hours. Please forgive me if I seem irritated. I just finished making eighteen calls to caterers to find those that would like to be interviewed by our editor Linda Picone for an upcoming magazine article. Out of the eighteen, I only got a human being answering, or the ability of getting to a human being by pressing 1, four times!
My simple point is that a shopper of catering who is calling caterers can't buy unless someone answers when they call. The thought of them leaving a name and number to call back makes me cringe. I realize that being busy and concern for budgets often makes it hard to answer phones, but this is the basic way we make many of our catering sales. This is how we pay the bills. Caterers need to solve this problem.
Note: I am placing this comment for Patti:
ReplyDeletePatti Jean Zylstra
Phones Need To Be Answered
Hi Mike,
I tried to post this under you blog post "Phones Need To Be Answered" but blogger was down and would not let me.....
Amen Mike! I have a story about just that point! The Tues night before Thanksgiving 2009 I was just standing up to turn off the light above my desk and go home. The phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it because I thought it was another annoying robo sales call. But I answered.
On the other end was a southern gentleman that wanted to know if we were available on Thanksgiving. I politely told him we were closed for the holiday. I could hear the disappointment in his voice, so I asked him what he needed. He said he had 25 guys who had to work and were all from out of town and away from their families and he would like to provide them a nice Thanksgiving meal. How could I say no! So we did the job, he paid a premium price and all were happy. He mentioned to my husband when he delivered that he would call for another order after the first of the year.
In Jan. he called and asked if we could do a daily lunch for 100 guys 7 days a week for 6-8 weeks. Hell yeah! That was $10,500 per week for what ended up being 7 weeks! When I asked him what made him decide to book with us he said this, “Back in Nov I called 4 other catering companies and NO ONE answered the phone. You were the only one who did” Mike, it was just that easy to book over $73,000 worth of business! All I did was answer the phone.
Since I dropped the answering service a few years ago my sales have risen steadily. "Press 2 for..." was easy for me but was torture for the customer.
ReplyDeleteI can think of numerous occasions we got the business because we did what we are supposed to do...answer the phone.
If you want to grow, answer the phone, no matter what!
This has absolutely got to be my biggest problem. I am guilty of consistently letting calls go to voicemail. For smaller caterers, often times the phone number for the business is our cell phone, and I feel like if I answer the phone and am not sitting in a quite place and in front of my computer, it would be unprofessional to answer. ARGH!!!!
ReplyDeleteWow! This is my first three (3) comment post! Thanks Jessica, Rick, and Patti Jean.
ReplyDeleteAs a small caterer, I have sort of the same problem as Jessica. While I answer many phone calls, some go to voice mail. The converse issue is that even if someone is hired to answer the phone, they will not have the answers that many callers want, which is "How much?". Often times, I don't even know that answer right away until I get more information. Quite a conundrum.
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