Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Why We Tip the Valet But Not the Housekeeper

MATT: Why do we tip the hotel valet but not the hotel housekeeper? The housekeeper does far more work for us and contributes much more to how enjoyable our stay is at the hotel compared to the valet.

The answer is simple, though. We see the hotel valet in person.

We see them face to face and we don’t usually see the housekeepers.

This illustrates the importance of in-person meetings, and on today’s episode, we’re going to jump into the reasons Face to face sales are far more effective than any other sales tactic.

Hello and welcome back to.

MATT: The Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. We are always just a mindset shift away from success.

This is the Midwest mindset, and today’s episode is brought to you by Duke’s Worm house in Wahoo.

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MATT: Thank you, Duke. Appreciate the sponsorship. So let’s talk about in person face to face meetings. I have always been baffled why we tip the hotel valet, but we don’t tip the housekeeper, the hotel cleaning maid, the hotel cleaning maid. She does far more work.

I mean, she cleans up and trust me, I mean, when I’m on a trip and I’m on vacation, I’m a messy, messy man. And they clean up after me.

They come in, they make your bed, they turn your towels into like, an elephant, you know, and they fluff your your your Kleenex into a rose. They bring you new soap and clean towels. Sometimes they accidentally walk in on you and you’re getting out of the shower. But, you know, that’s not their fault, right? The point is, they do a lot of work. A lot more work. What does the valet do? He stands there. He stands there. He waits.

And then he gives your keys and drives your car 20ft away and then comes back and stands. I mean, come on. But we tip the valet and the valets. They get big tips, right? Why is that?

It’s the power of seeing somebody in person. It really is. We don’t have to see the the housekeeper. We usually don’t unless she actually walks in on you, like I mentioned. But, hey, it was one time I learned my lesson.

MATT: Put the little do not disturb thing on the door handle.

We don’t see them, therefore we don’t make that extra tip. I’m going to be honest with you. I and this is something I would encourage you to do when you plan your vacation budget in an extra 100 bucks, a crisp $100 bill.

And I know that sounds like a lot, but really it’s not. When you think about it and we’re talking, you’re going to be there for a week. You know, they’re getting they’re cleaning up after you every day. Leave that $100 tip.

Leave it on the table with a thank you note. I do this every time, and I will be honest with you. I do it for half selfish reasons. I get so much enjoyment out of it. I just imagine this person who is ignored most of the time is not given the gratitude or the appreciation that they deserve.

They don’t get the tips like the valet does. To get that as a gift and make someone’s day. I am obsessed, to be honest with you. I’m obsessed with making someone’s day.

That is just a great feeling. I mean, try it. It’s 100 bucks budget. In an extra 100 bucks. 50 bucks. You’ll make someone’s day, you’ll make their week, and they deserve it. Another example of this is when we’re sitting at home and, you know, the Mormons come knocking or the local cable company, Cox Communication or whatever, they’re selling their their Internet, their Ethernet, their they’re fiber optic cables and they come to your door.

MATT: And what do we all do? We all hide. We pretend like we’re not home. I do this with kids trying to sell candy bars. I mean, I’m such a horrible person.

On one hand, I’m over here, you know, tipping cleaning maids because I want to make their day.

On the other hand, I’m hiding behind the refrigerator because a ten year old Boy Scout is trying to sell popcorn to me and I want nothing to do with it. The reason that we ignore it is because we know if we get face to face, it is so much harder to say no.

So much harder to say no. So now those experiences are a couple of examples in the real world of how face to face really works. Let’s apply that to sales because it is the same, has the same effect. We live in this digital world, the age of the algorithm. And yes, it is it is far too easy to just sit back anonymously.

And it’s the it’s our version of not answering the door when the kids are selling popcorn or candy bars. It really is. We sit back, we sit in our office and we decide, I’m not going to pick up the phone and do cold calls.

MATT: I’m not going to go do a face to face meeting. I’m not even going to do a zoom. I’m just going to fire off thousands of emails using whatever email marketing platform you’re using. I’m just going to do some meta ads. I’m just going to do some Google ads.

I’m just going to do some posts. I’m going to pay somebody else to do it. And we get. We compartmentalize ourselves. We put ourselves in this box, in this room where it’s like, I’m not going to interact with anybody.

And I don’t know if this is a side effect that was correlated with Covid and the pandemic and we were isolated, and maybe that shifted our mindset a little bit.

Maybe we’re just all becoming jerks. We just don’t want any human interaction in our lives. The bottom line is that that is nowhere near as effective as face to face. I will tell you, cold calls are effective.

Now, yes, you’re going to get 92% are not going to answer or they’ll say no. But you get the one. It’s a sale. And people hate cold calling, but cold calling works. I don’t care who you are. It works.

What works even better is face to face interactions. Stopping by that local business. We use our podcast and this is a great technique that you can you can you can deploy yourself and you have a podcast.

MATT: When you have a show, invite that potential client, that ideal client, that person you wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to even interact with, let alone build a relationship with. Invite them on your show as a guest. Trust me, they all say yes. Nobody knows if you have ten downloads or 10,000, right?

I mean, your downloads are like your bench press, only you know how much you can bench and only you care. Nobody else cares. Nobody else knows. All they see is the perception that you host a show, you invite them on, and now you have a face to face interaction. You can structure it where you have 3 to 5 Zoom meetings, you know, prepping for the show. What do you do when the show comes out, the actual interview in person, and then another

Zoom meeting when you’re releasing the show and how you’re going to promote it, you’ve developed a relationship and that’s what we’re after here. All right.

And that is my first tip today. I have five tips here, five reasons why in-person meetings trump anything else when it comes to sales. First is building stronger relationships, you know, in-person meetings.

They help establish a deeper a more personal connection with clients. You know, face to face conversations allow you as a sales person and, you know, salesperson doesn’t necessarily mean like what you’re imagining in your head, the used car salesman.

MATT: I mean, listen, I’m a salesman. We’re all selling our business. If you’re a business owner, you are a salesperson. You have to make sales, you know,

But this makes it has more of a personal impact. And it really is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your genuine interest in your client’s needs, in that prospect’s needs. That’s going to boost trust. It is going to strengthen client relationships. Number two, non-verbal signals.

Now you can pick these up in Zoom. I don’t let any of our any of our team members or I don’t do any calls typically with clients or prospects if they don’t have the video on, because nonverbal signals are important.

You have to pick up on these. You know, we had one where we had a team member and I could just tell something was off, something was wrong in our team meeting. So I asked her just to hang around afterwards. We talked and yeah, she was going through some very tough things. It was kind of in a dark place. And we’re not family.

We’re not her therapist or her doctor, but she is a part of our team. And I think it helped for her to know that we’re here to support her in any way that we can.

MATT: I think being able to talk about it helped. None of that would have happened, though. She didn’t have the video on. None of that happens if if it’s all done over email.

And think about this. How many times has an email been misread? You can read an email 20 different ways. And we do that right. People get and I’ve been guilty of this in the past, I will admit get passive aggressive with their with their emails because we interpret things different ways and somebody maybe doesn’t even interpret it. They’re not even intending it as you are reading it.

But you know, it’s like Brené Brown says, it’s the story that you’re telling yourself as you’re reading it. The third reason why face to face in person trumps any other form of communication or interaction is that you’re going to get better engagement. You’re going to get greater engagement one on one.

Meetings typically generate higher levels of engagement. The attendees are more focused. You don’t have distractions all around you. You know, with virtual meetings, they have advantages.

Don’t get me wrong, virtual meetings are there’s a lot of a lot of pros, you know, but there are some cons, you know, we can stack these meetings back to back to back to back to back. And they can lose their effectiveness.

MATT: They can lose. We can tire ourselves out. I’ve done this before where you have ten hours of just non-stop Zoom meetings and you’re just exhausted.

So your last three Zoom meetings, you’re not at your best self. So attendees in person, they’re more focused, you are more focused, you are both focused on each other much more than virtual meetings. As much as I love using Zoom and doing video meetings, it is this is a distinct advantage when you meet in person.

This engagement is going to increase the chances of effectively communicating your sales pitch, you know, understanding your client’s needs. Number four, Immediate feedback and resolutions. In-person meetings allow real time conversation and instant feedback.

You know, it can lead to quicker resolutions, objections, misconceptions that, you know, might otherwise stay hidden with online communications. I mentioned email and how we can misinterpret that. And man, there’s so many different platforms we use for communication. I’ve got one client and it’s all on Zoom chat.

We use Slack internally here for our internal communications at Two Brothers Creative. Another one is, Oh no, we’re on WhatsApp, the Nebraska group I’m in now, we’re on WhatsApp, and then we got another client. They’re over on Google meet. They’re using the Google Chat feature and after a while it’s like there are so many platforms here to keep track of. It’s kind of ridiculous.

MATT: But all of.

MATT: Those platforms, they’re all texts, they can all be misinterpreted very easily. In person is not the same. You can emote when you are in person.

You can show emotions and intent in a way that you can’t with with online digital communications. And the last thing here, the demonstrations and presentations you can do, I feel are far more effective in person as well. You know, when you’re doing a physical meeting, when you’re in person, you know you’re going to have the optimal environment, if you will, you know, to conduct these live demonstrations.

So showcase your products, services, examples, you know, showcasing your product in person, it leaves a stronger impression. It stimulates more senses, if you will, than digital presentation. That kind of sounded weird, but you know what I mean. Meeting in person. I just feel overall you’re much higher likelihood of getting them to say yes. It just is a higher likelihood, in-person meetings.

I know we can’t do every single meeting in person, Right. But I recommend making this a priority. All right. At the very least, make this a priority. Offer to meet in person.

Even just the offer is going to show your commitment. It’s going to show who you are as a person. I think other than just detracting to only digital, only email conversations. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love video chats. We use video chats all the time because half of our staff here, full time staff works remotely.

So we have to and there are distinct advantages of video meetings. You know, it’s going to it’s going to help push your communication to a new level because you have to do more meetings.

MATT: We do daily huddles twice a day. We do once a week team meetings, and we do one on ones every week with all of our staff, with all of our team members.

And then we do one on ones every month as well. That’s a lot of meetings. It sounds like a lot, but man, it is a game changer because you’re communicating and when you can see the person, you’re communicating with distinct advantage over an email, over a message, and if you can meet in person specifically with sales, you’re going to get more yeses, you’re going to get more deals closed.

You’re going to make more money. All right. You know, video meetings, distinct advantage. Yes, I would use video meetings. As your initial sales call, you shift your initial sales meetings from just an email or a text invite, do a video call with them, and then get to that in person.

You know, if you can do it in person right out of the gate, that’s awesome. But this is going to boost your efficiency. You’re going to get more sales prospects into your pipeline this way, going to increase your deal closures. It’s going to lower your prospect reluctance just due to the perceived lower time commitment that you have with a video meeting, with a video chat, and you’re going to reduce travel costs.

So use video chats. Yes, absolutely. But don’t discount in-person. You know, there’s a reason that we tip the valet at the hotel and we don’t tip the housekeeper. It’s because we see them face to face.

MATT: We feel guilty. It’s a guilt trip. I mean, the Catholic Church has been doing this for how long? I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. It’s harder to say no to somebody in person. It. That means it’s easier for you to get a yes and a sale. Also, let’s change the.

Let’s flip the script, as they say. I don’t know if they still say that or not, but probably not. Either way, I sounded lame saying it. Let’s start tipping the housekeeper. Do it. Trust me. It’s going to make your day. It’s going to make their day. It’s going to be amazing.

Thank you so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. You know, one of the things that I am bad at is planning out my day. And I changed it up and decided I’m going to start doing this the night before I plan out my next day. And it has increased my productivity and I think it’s going to help you too.

We put together this daily planner for you. It is free. You can download it right now.

The link is in the show notes. Plan out your day. Set those three big priority tasks that you’re going to get done and get them done instead of the list like I used to have. That’s like 30 things long and it just gives me anxiety looking at it. This free daily planner is in the show notes.

Click on the link, download it, It’s free. Thank you so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset.