working at the book fair

i spent my last 2 weeks working at the world book fair for a local publisher. i was promoting this new educational software which is like an e-textbook. as i was kinda involved in direct sales, i managed to come to interact with the customers very often. really widen my insight of the singapore customers... 

some of the more memorable encounters with experience...

the foreigners

as the software was based on the local textbooks, the target market was more for the local students. so i was very surprised that i managed to sell to the foreigners. foreign customers always leave me with a deep impression as i see them as very direct customers. if they wanna buy, they will just buy and won't ask u for discounts or hesitated.

i remember this ah mong from some non-english speaking native country (i know it cos i heard her speaking some other language to her son) who wanted to buy the software and textbook for me. after trying to tell her that there was no translation for chinese to english for most characters ( & trying to hint that it is not suitable for her), she still insisted on buying. she came on thursday and almost wanted to buy but her son was throwing a tantrum. she then said that she would come back some other days to buy it. when customers said this to me at times, i would always take it as a 'no, i don't want ur product'. but surprisingly, she came back on the last day and bought one from me without hesitation. she even tried to help me promote the software.. lol.. such a nice customer and one of those who will really come back to buy after saying so. 

the 'suggestive' locals

there is group of customers who i will labelled as the 'helpful' people. they will come to me and ask me to demonstrate the product. after demonstrating, they will then suggest ideas to make the product better or improve the sales. there was this lady whom i demonstrated 2 times and spent close to 1/2 hour to explain the product. in the end, she suggested that we should sell the microphone along with the software to attract more customers. (my software required a microphone) and of course she gave other suggestions for the display of the stall which is none of my business. most importantly, she didn't buy any at all.

following are some suggestions given by customers that i think the publisher won't work on them: 

• we should sell textbook at the book fair along with the software. ( customer also commented that we r stupid and don't know to do business)

i will say the customer is even more stupid. we publish the textbook and distribute to school book shop and book stores to sell and thus we can't sell it on our own. or else which retailers wanna get from us!?!

• regarding the microphone 

we r a book publisher and this is a book fair. so u expect us to get mikes from Creative and sell? don't be lazy lei.. just go to a neighborhood shopping centre and buy one urself

bad attitude customers

i got to agree that sales pple are in svcs lines and got to be polite and stuff like that. however customers also got to mind their attitudes as well. no point being so rude to us. in the end, we won't want to tell u more abt the products and surely not abt the hidden promotions that we have.

children-parents alike

i notice how a child behave reflect hows the parents teach/behave. i come across this girl who is very polite and will say 'thank you' and is very well mannered. her mum is surprisingly well mannered as well. then there is particular child that i remember cos he spoilt my head phones. he cracked it into 2 pieces. he didn't apologize and almost wanted to cry. the mum then came and took him away without apologizing as well. violent kid.. rude kid.. rude parent.

child-care centre

alot of pple took my stall as a child care centre. simply cos of i had the computers and the kids are naturally attracted and glued to it, didn't mean that the irresponsible parents could just deposit their kids at the stall and occupied all the space till i could talk to any potential customers. the worst is that the parents ain't interested in our products and just simply used us as a child care centre. what if the kids wandered off or spoilt the com? who is suppose to be responsible? the sales pple or the irresponsible parents?

it was no doubt a wonderful working experience. the next time when i read a report about services, i will think twice about the contents and question whether the writer is a bad customer anot.