Serving Food/Selling Insurance
Most of us have toiled in the food service industry at one time or another. And let’s face it: there are few jobs that are as stressful and thankless as serving food to strangers.
So you may resist my making an analogy between serving food and selling insurance, but there’s a lot to learn from waiting tables—and it’s not just how to develop a thick skin.
Sarah Dickerman reviewed a recent restaurant memoir called Service Included, by Phoebe Damrosch. The book covers Damrosch’s time as a server at a trendy, service-obsessed New York restaurant called Per Se.
It seems that being a good server is both incredibly complicated and ridiculously straightforward. On the ridiculously straightforward side of things, there’s saying hello to new customers, something that any restaurant goer knows is far from guaranteed. Dickerman: “Someday, I will learn to walk out of restaurants when I am not acknowledged with at least a ‘We'll be right with you …’ within a minute of arrival—it is as good a harbinger of a bumpy night as any I know.”
Application to selling insurance: your greeting is essential.
On the more complex side of things, there’s when to ask, “How is everything?” Dickerman: “Such questions should be occasional and timed for a moment when guests are not chewing. At the finest restaurants I've dined in, the question itself is obviated—waiters swim about like benevolent sharks, eerily sensing your needs.”
Application to selling insurance: don’t be a pest. Anticipate client needs.
And then there’s the question of what to do when you screw up, which is in the middle of the continuum between complicated and straightforward. Dickerman: “While an apology might come in the form of very noble grape juice at fancy restaurants, efficiently mitigating mistakes is a key to good service at any restaurant. A slice of pie can do the trick, but even a sincere, but simple ‘I'm sorry’ can work.”
Application to selling insurance: at the very least, an ‘I’m sorry’ is due when you screw up, and the sooner you fall on your sword, the better.
