How Easy Is Sales?

[PostalOfficer]

The inference from 'on high' seems to be "how easy sales are - just recite the mandatory conversation and your customer will be hopping over to the FSS with his cheque book out ready".

How does this square with the following?

1. During the counter strike two years ago the counter was staffed by managers. An ideal oppurtunity to put theory into practice. Did we hear about vastly increased sales on our day off? Nope! In fact as we went out a notice went up saying that passport checking was not available today. Funny, I remember when it came in they allowed us 1 min. 11 secs. for the transacation, so there can't be much work involved AND you are missing a 'guaranteed' credit card off the back of each one.

2. Heard a rumour that the back room helpers who were noticeable by their absence this Christmas only had to sell RMSD and bank withdrawals. Probably sensible, but if management reckon it's so easy to say "We do a credit card" could they not try just one sales conversation?

3. One of our 3-letter-acronyms came over Christmas. First few times she stood about watching us work. Then one day she got a stock out and did a bit of serving in between fiddling with laptop and mobile phone. Did half a day before she went(!) Now surely this sales person should have been stuffing completed applications into her own personal mail bag? No, she sent two referals to the FSS. Heck, even an idiot like me can do one a day!

4. Another 3-letter-sales-acronym regularly comes, sets up his laptop and mobile and 'plays' all morning. Now if I was in his position, what better way to motivate the staff than to grab some application forms off the shelf and whip down the queue getting them filled in? The guy would have my genuine admiration and it would shoot down anyone who says it can't be done.

Is there a common thread to these stories? If sales is really a case of saying the right thing, would some of the managers like to lead by example instead of just critisising us and playing with figures? Until then I'm sticking with my defence - I don't mind having a go but don't knock me when nobody wants to sign up. It's harder than it looks.

[DGP1]

Sales are easy just as long as you're not having to actually do it, there is a complete lack of skill within RM as a whole to enable it even survive (I use to think we where managed by a load of David Brents but I now think that would actually be an improvement )

[Running Man]

This whole sales thing is very easy for all those 'experts' who tell us how to do it but don't actually look into the eyes of our customers day in and day out.
It's even easier for all of those who sit and play about with their laptops while teams are working short due to the lack of overtime to cover any absences. (What did all these managers actually do before laptops were invented?)
It's easier still for our alleged leaders who make massive decisions with absolutely no thought for the consequences of their actions other than how much money our doomed organisation will save.
I'm waiting with baited breath to see the impact of removing 146 ABMs from our network without any explanation whatsoever as to how the holes left by these full time positions will be filled. Here's a clue to the answer...they won't!!!

[The BFO]

(What did all these managers actually do before laptops were invented?)

They 'worked' in Head/Regional offices.

[PostalOfficer]

(What did all these managers actually do before laptops were invented?)

Yes there were some useless jobs at Head Office (did two years there before I escaped back to the counter), but I'm sure that computers and in particular laptops have given scope to managers to "analyse" masses of (useless) data.

In the "old days" if you wanted information from different offices, you had to devise a form, submit it to the typists to cut a stencil and after a couple of days your 50 duplicated forms would come back, which you could post out and wait for reply. Must have taken something like a week if you were lucky.

Now if you fancy some data, 10 mins on Excel to devise a form, email it out and wait for the data to come back. Feed it into another spreadsheet which will divide every figure by every other figure...etc. This is then studied to the nth degree; it must be right because the computer has printed it. What of course they don't appreciate was summarised by a quote on the radio by some famous person who had served in the Indian Civil Service. It went something like "You can quote figures all you want, but realise that they are based on whatever the village watchman fancied writing down at the time".

And so it is with many of our figures and indeed in all walks of life.

Also they come up with wishful thinking like you do x car taxes per day, therefore it's easy to get 50% data captures and 3 quotes. They of couse omit the fact that 50% of my customers are Polish and do not speak English, some more are HGVs or other vehicles that we cannot cover, many took out insurance 3 weeks ago to get their tax and aren't interested in leaving their details ready for next year and the one that is due up in 2 weeks time really can't stop today.