Who is your middleman? How many middlemen (or women) do you have between you and your customers/clients? How many do you have that are giving the first impression about you or your organization to potential customer? Are they all talking the same talk as you, after all they are the first voice of your company that they hear? They are the first face they see when they walk through the front door.
Those are some seriously loaded questions and rest assured the answers are just as loaded.
Right now, there is a customer that needs your help. Right now, that customer or client is reaching for the phone and someone other than you will answer the phone. Right now, that client is banging out an email and will you be the one that gets it? Probably not.
In large organizations it is with great certainty that there will be a middle-person that will run interference for some top-level official(s). Thus further down the corporate ladder the need for a middleman drastically diminishes almost to the point that the person at the bottom of the corporate ladder is the middleman.
There are those Small-, Medium- sized Enterprises that the existence of a middleman is all but assured. For the most part, the one-man operations are exempt (to a certain extent). Those organizations that have grown to a point that now someone other than the boss is answering the phones will have a middleman (or woman).
In most cases that person is known as the Receptionist. They are the ones that are the face of the company, the first person a guest sees when they arrive and the last person they say "Goodbye" to. They are the ones that will answer the phone, they are the ones that will convey your message to everyone they come in contact with everyday.
The long and short of this is really simple. Those middle-men and -women will either make or break you. They will only do that with your permission. Train them right and they will make you look good all the time, every time. Fail to train them and you get what you give.
So, why not take some time tomorrow morning and have a quick one-on-one training session to ensure that your message and that of your organization is easily understood and can be passed along to your guests, clients, customers, and potential customers without any deviation. A little investment in ensuring that your middleman is an extension of you and not the antithesis of you will certainly go a long way towards ensuring that customers are guaranteed to hear the same story of you and your organization from the first "hello" to the last "goodbye."
Here are some Technorati Tags:
• Dave Guerra • Leadership • Leading • Leadership Development • Professional Development • Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way • Middleman • Who speaks for you • The Party Line • The Message • Give to the American Red Cross • Hire A Hero
No comments:
Post a Comment