The best sales training is watching your waiter

Yes, I am on vacation. Travelling through Europe with my wife and two dogs, all four of us sharing a small camper. You see a lot of things covering that many countries and that many miles of road, good and bad.

And I have an occupational hazard: I think about sales all the time. It has got worse lately, because I have started writing a new book, so I am constantly scanning the real world for material.

Vacation, it turns out, is a goldmine. As a tourist you are on the receiving end of sales attempts from morning to night. The beach vendor, the sommelier, the guy with the boat tours. Notice which ones you say yes to. There is a whole field-force philosophy playing out at your holiday restaurant.

The waiter in Trouville

The other day we had dinner by the harbour in Trouville, a beautiful town on the Normandy coast. The waiter was drowning. Every table full, every guest wanting his attention at once.

His solution was humour. He engaged every table with a joke, a wink, a little theatre, and it took the edge off for everyone who felt they had waited too long. He kept an entire terrace in good spirits while running what must have been the hardest shift of his week.

And he did not forget us, even though we were among the first guests that evening and had long finished our meal. Eventually he appeared with the dessert menu, asking if we were in the mood for something delicious.

We had already decided. No dessert tonight.

Somehow, with humour and charm, we found ourselves ordering one anyway.

Well played, mister.

What he knew without knowing it

That dessert has research behind it.

In 1981, two psychologists, Karen O’Quin and Joel Aronoff, ran a negotiation experiment over a piece of art. Half the sellers delivered their final offer straight: “My final offer is X.” The other half named the same number and added, with a smile, “and I’ll throw in my pet frog.” The frog buyers accepted a price around 18 percent higher, and they reported enjoying the negotiation more and feeling less tension with the seller.

Twenty years later, Nicolas Guéguen tested it in a French bar. When the bill arrived with a small joke card, guests tipped more often and tipped more generously than guests who got the bill alone, or with an advertisement. The mechanism was simply mood.

Neither study is really about being funny. Both are about what humour does to the tension inside a transaction. Lower the tension, and the decision changes.

Our waiter never argued with our no. He just removed the tension it was resting on.

The receptionist in Germany

Of course there are bad examples too.

A campsite in Germany. We arrived after ten hours of driving, holding an email that welcomed us and confirmed our place. The lady in reception looked at us with no empathy in sight.

“No, we have no reservation for you.”

My wife showed her the email. “But what about this? You have written to us saying we have a place reserved.”

“That is not a real reservation.”

End of discussion.

It was getting late, we were exhausted, and going back on the road to find something else did not sound like fun. So I asked the only question left: “Ok, so do you have a spot for us?”

She banged on her keyboard for what felt like an eternity. “Yes, we have one pitch for you.”

It ended well, and we got a good night’s sleep. But what we both really wanted to do was tell her: thank you, but no thanks, we will look for something else.

Why she got away with it

Look at what was actually missing at that desk. Not correctness, everything she said was technically true. What was missing was any interest in owning the problem.

She had the solution in her keyboard the whole time. There was a pitch available. She never offered it. She answered exactly the questions we asked, one at a time, and not a millimetre more. It took a tired customer asking the right question to unlock an answer she could have led with from the start.

Compare that to the waiter. We never asked for a dessert menu. He brought it.

The service recovery research keeps landing on the same finding. When something goes wrong, proactive recovery, where the provider takes the first step towards a solution, beats reactive recovery on satisfaction, loyalty and even anger. Customers forgive a failure. What they remember is who did the work of fixing it.

One sentence was all it would have taken: “Your booking did not go through, I am sorry, but let me see what I can find for you.” Same pitch, same price, entirely different memory.

Instead she got the sale anyway. We stayed, we paid, we even came back from the shower block without complaining.

But she closed for one reason only: we had nowhere else to go. Tired travellers at nine in the evening are a captive market.

That is the distinction worth packing in your suitcase. The waiter sold to people who were free to say no. The receptionist sold to people who were not. Only one of them was actually selling.

The uncomfortable question to bring home

For a long time, parts of pharma could sell like that campsite. If yours was the only product in the class, the customer was, in a practical sense, captive. The meeting happened because it had to, not because anyone looked forward to it.

Almost nobody lives in that world anymore. Crowded classes, guideline alternatives, physicians who choose which companies they still see. Every customer is free to say no.

Which means the role model we need does not wear a suit. He wears an apron, carries a dessert menu, and knows that the sale begins with how the waiting feels.

Epilogue, from the harbour

The dessert was delicious, by the way. That is the strange thing about being sold to well: you do not feel sold to. You just feel slightly happier than you did before.

The waiter got a good tip. The book got a new chapter idea.

So, over to you on your own vacation. What are the best and worst sales experiences you have collected so far this summer? And what did they teach you?

The material is everywhere. All we have to do is order the dessert.