Out of the Box

Bedside Manners in Marketing

By Menachem Lubinsky on February 22 2008

Yakov is a good customer at a wholesale food distributor and was always impressed by the way they market their company. “They do everything right, courteous salesmen and staff, beautiful materials and a great Web site,” he said. A significant customer, Yakov receives a fruit basket and other goodies from time to time where the company ostensibly shows its appreciation. But an incident at a trade show completely changed his perception of the wholesaler.

Expecting to receive the royal treatment, Yakov visited the company’s booth at a trade show. He was happy to meet Shelly, his primary salesperson, who offered to introduce his customer to Al, the president of the company. Seeing that Al was busy, Yakov waited patiently, while Shelly tended to other booth visitors, occasionally turning to Yakov to explain the importance of Al’s conversation. After waiting for what appeared to be a lifetime, Yakov was unprepared for the reaction he received when he introduced himself to Al.

For starters, Al did not readily recognize the name of Yakov’s company. Nor was he aware of the volume and the longevity of the account. When Shelly realized that his boss may not know the details of the account, he rushed to intercede, but the damage had been done. Yakov made up his mind right then and there that it was time to change and by the time he left the show, he did. In recounting the incident, Yakov was further puzzled that Al never bothered to call even after many weeks had passed. Shelly did call twice and tried to explain how busy his boss was but Yakov had made up his mind. He even told Shelly that if he ever left the company for another, he would consider giving him the business.

I felt it worthwhile to provide the details of this unfortunate incident. Even if Al is not the hands-on CEO, he should have called Shelly over and made a big deal about meeting Yakov. His callous reaction would have made any customer cringe, not to speak of a customer who is one of Shelly’s biggest accounts.

To be sure, Al runs a good shop, which was evidenced by how impressed Yakov was with the company until he met the boss in person. This might be a case of a skilled surgeon with poor bedside manners, but it is unfortunately common in many companies. Management personnel and other executives relegate the marketing to their marketing professionals and don’t pay much attention to their own roles as marketing ambassadors of the company.

I have heard similar complaints from customers in retail. The salesperson might be nice, but the boss makes believe that the customer is just another bit of furniture. One store owner I know positions himself at the cash register and acts as if he is an ATM machine without an iota of warmth towards his customers.

What can probably pass as perhaps the worst case of bad marketing bedside manners is a store a friend told me about. The boss’ picture is on the store brochure and on the Web site where he is seen smiling from ear to ear, but in the store he looks like an executive grouch, barking orders at employees and even ignoring customers’ questions. More than one customer have approached him with: “Is that you in the picture?”

Marketing experts often refer to a corporate or company culture, which in essence should incorporate even behavioral issues like those described. Businesses often forget that a corporate culture is passed down from the top. One cannot expect to develop a good behavioral model in the company if top management does not set the example.

Several companies I know conduct in-staff training to deal with these issues that range from customer relations to general communications skills. One training outline I saw even included letter-writing and e-mail verbiage to stress that every method of communicating with customers is crucial. They were on the mark since the evidence is clear that customers do evaluate companies based on how they communicate.

In one such session, the consultant warned salespeople not to be curt with their customers. He counseled not to say “Hi, do you need any bananas today?” but to begin the conversation by saying, “Hi, how’ve you been? I’m just checking on my choice customers to see whether they might need any bananas today. Joe, you know how much we value your business.”

I have frequently counseled clients to occasionally try putting themselves in the shoes of the people they sell to or do business with. I recall meeting David Neelman, the founder of JetBlue on a flight to Ft. Lauderdale where Mr. Neelman was actually serving snacks to the passengers and getting feedback from them. While customers like me were impressed with such a gesture, for Mr. Neelman it was a great opportunity to check on the systems in place at the airline. I also noticed how much it meant to the flight attendants to have their boss join them in serving passengers.

Yes, you can be the greatest surgeon, but without proper bed manners, you will always be lacking a fundamental trait that people care about.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.