The Silent Sales Man

As a restaurant waiter, I make £5.00 an hour and work 30 hours a week. That’s £150 a week. Once I pay my rent, buy my travel card, make my food shopping for the week, charge my electricity key and pay for gas, I am flat out for the rest of the week.

However, this is my social life; I have been to every club in town, eaten at every posh restaurant in the country, attended horse races every weekend, played golf with the country’s wealthiest men and flown round the world in less than 3 years. I hardly pay for things and most of all, I have nothing less than £4000 extra cash at the end of every week.

No! I am not a male prostitute and no! I am not a drug dealer. Neither am I an arms dealer. What do I do? I work at this posh restaurant in the west end and earn £5.50 an hour, working 30 hours a week. My secret is what I do during working hours .

Interested? Then read on...

In my first month of working as a restaurant waiter for Petrus, one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants, I made a decision to study every single customers that came through the door. This was my territory and I felt it was important that I was aware of every single person that came in and out. The first thing I noticed was that there were different categories of people that came in to the restaurant. We had the regulars, the first timers, and the once in a blue moon customers. I also learnt that you could never judge how wealthy a customers was just by what they were wearing. The extremely wealthy could not be bothered to make an effort and the middle class would do anything to show off. A gentleman trying to impress his new found girlfriend is another story entirely. You could also never tell the generous from the down right stingy.

As a result, I took it upon myself to treat everyone like they were worth a billion dollars. I knew all customers by name within the first 20 seconds of meeting them and remembered their names. This created familiarity and trust. The next thing I did was to concentrate on building instant rapport by finding something of a common interest between us. I used John Maxwell’s triple A treatment; Acknowledge, Affirm and Appreciate. Acknowledging their presence and understanding their reasons for being in our restaurant was critical to a keeping the rapport going. Affirming their status and my loyalty to serving them was also critical to gaining and maintaining trust. Lastly, appreciating them in every way, allowed them to open up to me. I became their friend.

My next strategy was to put myself in their shoes and be them for that day. This enabled me to act before they asked. For example, if I noticed that a couple needed a next round of drinks, it would be on their table even before they asked for it. I was able to master this by studying their body language. My last strategy was to make sure that when ever I acted in such a manner, I made sure to let them them know that it was on the house. I gave something free. Not the drink, because they could afford it but caring, understanding and a friendly hand. At this point, I deliberately positioned myself out of sight and waited for them to request my presence. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and as a result, I ended up with generous tips, business cards, free invitations, membership and access to prestigious places, resorts, clubs, hotels, courses, games and much more.

Key Lessons to learn:

Step 1: Evaluate your territory and the potential clients in it.

Step 2: Treat everyone like a they are worth a billion dollars. Give each person an experience worth remembering.

Step 3: Empathise with your each person by putting yourself in their shoes and seeing things from their point of view.

Step 4: Take action. Do for them what they are thinking of doing for themselves and ask for nothing in return.

Step 5: Do nothing, be silent, still and patient. The business is about to roll in.

By Keji Giwa http://www.careerinsights.tv