Cheapo

One female client called today asking for discount for a group of 5 people going to Turkey. I know by hard that my company follows a strict discount policy, I don't really know how to put it nicely to the customer. If she studies business, I can simply say "no" so as to reduce "brand dilution." But I can assume. So I could only say "I would want to give you discount but I can't."

Had my manager over to handle the call and she sounded stern and no discount means no discount. The customer kept telling us she could easily go to another competitor of ours. Now I can think of a good answer to call upon next time: "we do not compete on price alone. if we simply give discount, we will lose the trust of customers who don't even ask for it!"

Price consistency is very important, and now I thought of some agencies that collapsed because they were too desperate to close the sales.

One walk-in customer inquired on some cheap tours to Taiwan, and later Beijing. Our 5 days Beijing already costs almost S$1,500 by SQ. Her expression was so funny when I told her about the price. She immediately brushed away the itinerary, without even the slightest interest in reading the itinerary. Wasted my pen ink and paper. She walked away and now I realised I should sell the right thing to the right customer.

Called a customer who initially wanted to come down to book a Maldivian package. 2 hours passed and he still hasn't appeared. So I gave him a call and he said he got a better quote. I asked how was the quote like. He told me S$2,588 + S$300 plus taxes for 8 nights at Adaaran villa. I was amazed at that price. Usually a night stay would cost around S$800. When I worked out if we can give him a similar quote, my manager told me: "call him and tell him we can't match that price."

Maldives is one of my dream destinations. S$2,588 albeit is a bargain, is so expensive to me. I will rather go on a cruise and sail on the ocean, even when I'm asleep.