So, I bought a new driver! Did I buy it from the place I mentioned in my previous blog post…… no!

 

I actually went to the local driving range which has a golf shop run by an independent retailer with a few outlets in the east midlands.

 

Why did I buy from this retailer?  The chap I dealt with did 3 things which meant the I was more likely to buy or at least be interested in buying. These were:

 

  • He didn’t try and sell from the outset
  • He asked good questions to understand what I needed
  • He listened to what I was saying and gave me options/solutions based on this

 

Sounds simple and obvious but I think this approach is quite rare.

 

What really made me buy from this retailer was that I was offered to the chance to try out the drivers we had identified. The sales assistant spent about 30-40 mins with me in a high tech fitting bay which allowed me to try a number of different drivers in different specifications. He got to understand more about what I was looking for and therefore he could provide better solutions. Throughout, the level of service was really good and it didn’t feel like I was being sold too. I bought from the person serving me not the retailer.

 

Granted, that this post and my previous one have been a little off topic but I think many comparisons can be drawn with the recruitment agencies and how they operate.

 

So how is my purchase of a Driver comparable with the recruitment industry. Well, its not really anything to do with the Driver or the game of golf – it could be any product or service, it just so happened that I experienced a marked contrast in service when I tried to buy a driver.

 

And with that one word…. ‘service’ or more specifically, the phrase, ‘quality of service’ we can draw comparison with recruitment agencies.

 

Those agencies that provide the best service and forget about their targets and commission will invariably do well. The revenue generation and attainment of targets is a bi-product of delivering a good service and meeting the expectations of the customer (both candidate and client). This is what the sale assistant in the second retailer managed to achieve with me.

 

However many recruitment agencies take the approach adopted by the sales assitant in my previous post; focus on the sale and forget about delivering a good service. He even tried to sell me a product I didn’t want and missed the opportunity to sell me what I actually wanted. This was clearly due to a ‘focus’ (no doubt from management/head office) to sell a certain product and underlying this were targets – of that I’m sure. Targets are all well and good and can certainly give some focus and direction, but they shouldn’t be at the expense of good quality service. In this case they lost the sales assistant a sale!

 

One of the key observations and conclusions is this. It’s about the individual you deal with and not necessarily the company they represent. People invariably base their buying decisions of a product/service and therefore the company, on the person they deal with and the quality of service they receive from that individual. Good service reflects both positively on the individual but as importantly on that company. Poor service reflects badly on that company, more so than the individual.

 

This is an area where many recruitment agencies can really improve. Train consultants properly, give them the tools they need to do their job and give them targets around the quality of service they provide – not just monetary targets or how many visits they’ve booked or phone calls they’ ve made. Focus their attention away from selling but ask them to listen to their customers….. I think they will sell more.