Presales Best Practices: Listen, Write It Down, Share
I recently worked at a pop-up pizza shop, and it reminded me how important it is for presales teams to write things down and share those things with others.
I am a lover of pizza… anytime, anywhere. 🍕🍕🍕
Some friends had a pop-up pizza shop this year outside of the Burning Man event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
Expecting a lot of demand, they asked me and my wife to help out over a weekend.
A road trip to Nevada? Seeing old friends? Getting paid in pizza?? 1000% YES!! 🙌
After some basic training, I was making pizzas for customers.
There was your basic cheese pizza, your classic pepperoni, and several combo pizzas like the Railroad, the Gerlexican, and the Veggie Delight. They were options for gluten-free crusts, soy-based chorizo, and vegan cheese. And of course, you could customize your pizza however you wanted.
Our process was simple: The cashier entered the details of what customers wanted into the order management system. That system printed out little tickets for us on the pizza line. We made the pizzas according to the tickets. Happy customers chowed down. 😋
There were A LOT of customers.
And there were A LOT of different pizzas and customizations.
It was hard to keep up.
The orders. just. kept. coming.
I soon realized that the little order tickets were CLUTCH.
I knew exactly what to make for each customer, no matter how complicated their pizza, no matter how fast the pizza orders were coming in, no matter the chaos around me.
Just read the next ticket… and make that pizza.
My job was hectic, but easy.
Customers were hungry, but soon VERY happy.
WHY?
BECAUSE:
We wrote down what customers wanted, and
We shared that info with the people that needed to know it.
Now imagine if we didn’t do that…
Imagine if the cashier said "I know I should write it down, but I don't have time for good documentation."
Imagine if we simply tried to remember every detail...for every pizza… for every customer...
ABSOLUTE CHAOS
As pizza makers, we’d be struggling to service our customers with limited to no information.
We’d have to ask customers YET AGAIN what they wanted.
Customers would be yelling: “I just told your colleague what I wanted two seconds ago. Why are you asking me again?!?”
Already ANNOYED customers would become downright ANGRY customers when they FINALLY got their pizza and it wasn’t even what they ordered.
It would be LOSE-LOSE for everyone.
Easy fix: Don't do that!
The MOST EFFECTIVE presales teams:
LISTEN to what customers want.
WRITE. IT. DOWN. (Ideally capturing it in a presales workspace like Homerun Presales! 😉)
SHARE it with their colleagues (especially with their post-sales/customer success teams as they are the ones who actually make the 🍕!).
Need help capturing and sharing important customer information during your sales cycle and technical evaluations? Talk to one of our presales experts about about how Homerun can help. Click here to get started!
