If you’ve been in retail sales at all, you’ve had an experience selling to a difficult customer. It’s like this…

You’re going along in a sale and somehow, somewhere a light bulb goes off and you realize you just aren’t clicking with your customer.

They’re difficult.

Maybe while selling a luxury watch you are emphasizing a feature and your customer finds a flaw in your thinking and challenges your conclusion.

Or…maybe while you’re trying to “close” the sale on a purple plaid outfit, your customer turns away and starts looking around the store, picking up and examining a red low-cut outfit  or a paisley mini.

Or …maybe while you’re trying to build rapport, the customer is interrupting you with short, pointed questions about delivery and availability.

Or maybe you’re selling your customer on the features of a product, and they want to make small talk about your kids or theirs.

Those customers are just so darn difficult…

Or are they?

Maybe it’s you.

Customers buy from sellers who know who they are.

I butted my head against a lot of customers before I figured out my shear force-of-nature personality cost me as many big sales as I won. I had to learn how to sell better…

It wasn’t until I learned that most customers aren’t difficult by nature, but that:

Customers buy from someone who doesn’t expect them to be someone else.

One of the most powerful lessons in how to sell difficult customers I ever learned was that all salespeople and customers are one of four distinct personality styles – either a Driver, an Analytical, an Expressive or an Amiable.

You can take my free personality quiz to find out right now which personality style you are here.

Once I understood my own Driver personality style and how I expected to be treated as a customer, I could call on my other three less-dominant personalities to treat customers who were not like me in a manner they would respond to.

Natural Selling Styles of the Four Personality Styles

When it comes to sales, this is how the four personalities naturally behave in dealing with customers:

The Driver: Wants to separate the wheat from the chaff, determine whether the customer is a “player” or not. Doing this can often lead to higher sales.

The Analytical: Wants the customer to come to them and tell them what they are looking for. This allows them to shine as the product expert.

The Expressive: Wants to meet new people, whether they buy or not. Gives them a chance to socialize and be charming.

The Amiable: Approaches from a vulnerable, truly friendly position. This often endears them to the customer.

Here’s the part you must know about yourself, what each personality style wants from their customers:

The Driver: A quick sale of the most expensive items so they can make their quota and/or bonus.

The Analytical: Appreciation of their knowledge and buyers who don’t waste their time “just looking.”

The Expressive: Engagement with people who want to treat themselves and share their lives.

The Amiable: To find out what they want so the Amiable can help them find it.

When you understand your own style and the style of the customer in front of you, you can easily make more sales.

How To Sell To Difficult Customers: Adapt Your Selling Personality to Your Customer’s Personality Style

So in the opening examples of selling to difficult customers, when the customer finds the flaw in your feature of the luxury watch, you would understand you are dealing with an Analytical personality style frequently found in engineers. Perfection is what they expect. They don’t mean to challenge you and be difficult, it’s just they will spend additional time to narrow all their options down to the “best” one. That means you need to drill down in features and benefits and solicit their knowledge so that together you can answer all their laser-focused objections.

The next example where you were trying to “close” the sale and they turn away and start looking around at unrelated items – you are dealing with an Expressive personality style. They are the personality style rooted in the future; the possibilities of things excite them. It doesn’t mean they don’t want what you are working on, it’s just that something else caught their eye. The smart and therefore patient salesperson will let the Expressive add to that original item without ever having to be “closed.” The Expressive who feels validated spends more freely than any other personality style.

That difficult customer interrupting you with short, pointed questions about delivery and availability? Probably a Driver personality. They consider themselves kings of the world. Time is of the essence. If they are asking those pointed questions, they already see themselves owning it and very well may have decided to purchase, so cut to the chase and answer them quickly and get on with the sale, but don’t forget to add-on. A motivated Driver who trusts you can be the most loyal and price un-conscious customer of them all.

Finally, that difficult customer wanting to make small talk about your kids or theirs is trying to make a friend because Amiables don’t want to do business with people who aren’t friendly. You might be a cut-to-the-chase Driver but if you talk to an Amiable that way they will always “have to think about it.” You must find the attitude within to want to make a friend first and a sale second.

While customers can be difficult due to stress at work, a sick child, harsh words from a friend, or a myriad of reasons, no one sets out to be difficult when shopping.

What they set out to do is be greeted and engaged as a unique person.  Just like you. They aren’t difficult, they just want you to talk to them in a way that lets them be them.

Your customers aren’t always like you.  Learn to be like them because when selling at retail, one size doesn’t fit all.

That’s how you sell to difficult customers.

Want to know more about using the four personality styles to make more sales, manage your team better and build rapport with strangers?

The retail world is upside down. And I don’t mean because of Amazon…

Once upon a time merchants purchased the cheapest items to draw people in and then because they held high regard for their retail sales training, upsold what was the best answer for their customers.

In today’s topsy-turvy world, retailers are now showing the cheapest thing as the ANSWER.

How this happened

When sales are down, businesses cut employees.

Next is training.

What this has done

The lack of retail sales training leads employees to sell cheap as the answer… and that’s expensive for your business.

Case in point …

I was working with a sporting goods store once when I asked a young woman, “What’s the best fishing hook you have?” She quickly pointed out the feature and benefit with, “These are cheap so you won’t care when you lose them.”

While that was indeed a feature and a benefit, I asked, “But isn’t the reason you lose them is because they are cheap – they either break or you can’t hook the fish?”

She came to realize that the best hook, the most expensive was because it was twice as strong and much sharper so the fish could be set easier – resulting in more fish caught. That’s what the fisherman wants – right?

More fish, less frustration.

That’s the selling point…

The cheaper hook, in this case, was the most expensive – when you factor in time lost and fish lost – not to mention frustration to the fisherman. Think about all it took for that guy to carve out his time, get all his gear, find his perfect spot and sit there for hours in what he thought would be a fun afternoon… then think about those cheap hooks and the fish he lost.

Why selling the cheap is bad

When you just sell the cheapest item as the answer, you open yourself up for:

• Having to mark down your premium items.
• Dissatisfied customers telling their friends, “It (broke, split, collapsed) after just a few (wearings, uses, tries.)
• Dissatisfied customers telling their friends, “They used to carry good stuff, now it’s all ‘Made in China.’”

Oh yeah and it’s not just sporting goods…

You hear it in the auto parts store; “You could just do this and get the same effect – for less.” You hear it in the apparel ads, “Same fashion – for less.”  You hear it in the garden center, “Save money, get the smaller ones.”

Except that what seems the same isn’t.  A hook is not just a hook.

Which brings me to…

What to do instead

Retail sales training is brain training, not rote training. It is not, “Do this, then this.”

You have to educate the employee first, so they can educate the customer second.

You need to point out why the most expensive item costs more and not assume anyone will see its worth just because it’s priced more.

Customers are settling more and more with their food choices, clothing choices and furniture choices – they don’t realize all they don’t know; they just feel they are being ripped off, which leads to their frustration first with their cheap purchase, and then with the person who took their money for it.

Make sense?

Anyone can vomit features and benefits to a customer, but the true winners in retail are the ones who enjoy the game of selling, who analyze what they say, how they say it to a customer and connect this process to every sale they make. Those winning salespeople were educated on the benefits of the more expensive items and knew that those hidden features would lead the customer to say, “I’ll take it.”

While everyone can see a low price, most customers – and most employees nowadays- don’t see the eventual cost to the customer. Like those fishermen and their cheap hooks, customers who leave with the cheaper items more often than not will find themselves frustrated using the cheaper product.

And remember, you handed that frustration to them.

And now you’ve lost them. That’s what upside-down thinking does to people.

What items have employees down-sold you on?

I walked into a fully stocked and displayed upscale retailer.  There were four of us in the store but it seemed void of employees.

As I walked further into the store,  I saw an employee enter the cash wrap area; she had a clipboard.  As I looked at a display and its POP, I couldn’t find one of the items listed.

I got her attention, she came over over and I asked her my question.  She simply replied, “Out.” With that, she returned to walking by every display making notes on her clipboard.

As I started to leave, I spotter her at the front of the store talking on a walkie talkie to someone about what merch to bring out.  “Excuse me,” she said as she walked around me to another display that was missing one unit (on a display of about a dozen of the same thing.)

That’s when it it hit me that the big problem of not engaging with customers and gaining higher conversions stems from …

The people who are comfortable stacking merch have replaced the ones who are comfortable talking with customers.  

That’s good news if they are your competitor but bad news if you are the ones trying to drive sales in your store. 

I used to call them “pant stackers” from my days in western wear.  You could give the new guy or gal the task of straightening the wall of jeans, to stack them so the largest size was on the bottom and all the rest were in order in each stack. Or fill up the stack of jeans. Or just straighten.

But sometimes, you found you had hired a pant stacker.

You knew if you had a pant stacker because they were quite happy to stay there for hours taking the jeans off, refolding and stacking.  They didn’t say they were bored, they didn’t try to leave the job and go help customers; they just stacked pants. 

The salesmen, the people who liked other people, the ones who wanted to get ahead, to connect with others, were always trying to engage customers if they were put on stacking merchandise. They usually left the task to wait on customers.

I’ve seen retailers condemn employees who were so customer-focused, which is why those people left their job and seem to have left retail.

They’ve been replaced with the pant stackers. It’s not a black, white, young, old or any other physical attribute, it is their comfort level in the world.

And there is nothing wrong with that in a big box.

The trouble is these people are now managing major specialty shops and have brought all of their insecurity, fastidiousness with order, and lack of engaging the customer into better retailers.

Here’s my retail consultant tip for you: Higher sales are not a result from having tidy shelves of merch. For that you need salespeople.

Your takeaways:

• Hire people who need to engage other people.
• Limit your pant-stacking, cleaning and inventorying to times customers are not present.
• Give retail sales training to your entire crew to grow sales.
• Limit the number of pant stackers on your crew.
• Focus employees on customers in your store and find ways to engage those customers, not walk past them.

It’s not easy but neither is closing your store.

About Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor

Companies from some of the very largest, to some of the smallest, from luxury brands to startups, from franchises to regional chains contact me as a retail consultant because they are looking for results. An owner may have read one of my books, seen my videos, seen me on TV, heard me speak or read this blog to get a taste of my people-focused philosophy and my methods.

While every client and project is different, the ability to enlist me as a retail consultant who has a fresh set of eyes to look at the challenges you are facing results in a focused, effective and creative path to profitable sales.

No matter what your size, let’s see how I can help you; click the Take the first step button below to contact me.

We have taught customers that printed price is irrelevant, someone somewhere will pay you to buy whatever it is. The retail landscape has become like Monty Hall’s game show from the sixties,  Let’s Make A Deal or a third-world bazaar.

Some of the biggest companies are helping all kinds of product dealers move inventory by paying the customer with rebates. Taking a page from how cars have been sold for the past twenty years…

And that’s worked well, right?

Everyone is embracing employee discounts, friends and family shopping days and rebate programs.

Why not just improve your sales team?

When I began my retail career, it was common knowledge that in many appliance stores there used to be a “loss-leader” that was heavily advertised;  a washer with a “the  golden spike” in it if you will. The understanding was if you the saleman sold one, you would be  gone because you couldn’t sell; a salesperson’s job was to sell the profitable item.

Sears’ had a different sales strategy I’m told by a former principal, “Sears sold up by selling down.”  They presented a full line of each appliance, from a stripped down model you probably didn’t want, to a model with gadgets that you really didn’t need.

They didn’t expect to sell many from the top or bottom of the spectrum.  The sales strategy was to present the full line quickly, identifying the shortcomings of the low end model and the gee-whiz features of the top-of-the-line.

Depending on how the sale was going, the salesperson would say, “Let me be honest with you.  You’re paying for features in the top-of-the-line model that you probably will never use.  I don’t think this is the best value for you.  The model under it has features that you will use and for a lot less than the top of the line.  I suggest you save some money by buying the next model down.

Sears made a profit, the customer got what they wanted, everyone was happy.  Nowadays in most appliance stores, if a clerk came over, they’d ask if you “found everything ok” and a sign would tell you there was a rebate on it.

Of course, that was then.

One of the people I follow on Twitter, EdisoftFan alerted me that at their local Sears is a chart ranking associates by credit card applications – nothing to do with sales.  Is it a mystery Sears is flailing these days?

In a related story in today’s Los Angeles Times details how IKEA is struggling for profitability in China, Beijing loves IKEA.  People flock to the store but not for shopping. Linda Xu, a company spokeswoman rolled her eyes when she came upon a trio of slumbering customers, ”The brand awareness is great, but the question is, how do we get people to open up their wallets and spend money?”

That’s a salesperson’s job.

An office manager visiting with his family said he bought a couch elsewhere that looked just like IKEA furniture. “Why spend so much money when you can have the same thing cheaper?’ he said.”

That’s a salesperson’s job.

Lessons For You

The only way your store will standout from your competitors, that your crew will be different than any other, that you’ll make a profit as the economy recovers is to learn to sell better.  That comes from having a process, being coached and tracking results.

Consumer sentiment is up – are you ready to sell the merch or let your employees sell by calculating the “deal?”

Sales training is the magic bullet to growing your sales, not discounts.  I have the track record to prove it in any economy.You won’t be able to use the excuse  its “the economy” any longer.

Change or die my friends.

I look forward to your comments below:

About Bob Phibbs

Companies from some of the very largest, to some of the smallest, from luxury brands to startups, from franchises to regional chains contact me as a retail consultant because they are looking for results. An owner may have read one of my books, seen my videos, seen me on TV, heard me speak or read this blog to get a taste of my people-focused philosophy and my methods.

While every client and project is different, the ability to enlist me as a retail consultant who has a fresh set of eyes to look at the challenges you are facing results in a focused, effective and creative path to profitable sales.

No matter what your size, let’s see how I can help you; click the Take the first step button below to contact me.

Lately, major chains seem to be taking a page from the same tired, retail-sales training book.

Somewhere on a torn page, it must advise managers to station a person within four feet from the front door and use them as a designated greeter.

Think Wal-Mart but closer.

Except, instead of being cordial, these new greeters are to “greet” the customer with news about their sale merch. Hanging out just inside the entrance, they become soulless puppets muttering the same markdown mantras over and over.

But if you’re going to designate a person to only greet your customers, don’t you want them to use their energy to suggest the new spring lines you just got in? Or make a positive comment based on what the person in front of them is wearing? Or try to make that shoppers’ day by offering them a smile?

I think so.

Instead, customers are pointed to the markdowns like there was gold in last September’s picked-overs still there in February; those leftovers are in the flea market.

If your customers wanted to go to the flea market, they would.

When I am performing retail sales training, I teach that greeting is only one aspect of the sales process, and that the greeting should be connected as a building block toward customer trust, make sure the people you are stationing out front are only the beginning of the relationship that ends with, “I’ll take it.”

Ideally the greeter follows that customer through the store helping until the time of purchase. Meanwhile another person has positioned themselves at the front to await the next customer.  In this way, each greeter becomes a salesperson.

If you are going to station employees in front of your store, whose sole job is just to greet customers, give them retail sales training that follows these four tips.

Four ways to use a greeter:

1. Have them start with the attitude that they are welcoming someone into their living room.
2. Train them to say greetings like, “Good afternoon,” and to avoid, “Hi, how’re you doin’?”
3. Train them to make eye contact and smile.
4. Train them to spotlight a specific item for each customer …and not the markdowns. This means your greeters need to know the merchandise in your store.

Part of the reason shoppers avoid interaction with greeters is that they are not seen as people, but as parroting bodies saying the same thing over and over.  Much like those pesky perfume samplers, customers just want to avoid them.

Face it, there are fewer customers coming through your doors in February,  so relax the hype and let your greeters become human.  Let them inform customers of a new spring sweater they really like or of the new board game that just came in.

By allowing these greeters to share their connection with your goods, they will make a connection with your shoppers in your store.

And that’s something that doesn’t happen at a flea market.

To learn more about retail sales training and greeting your customers, grab a copy of The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley)

But more choices do not always equate to happier consumers.  In fact, some studies show that having to make too many decisions can leave people tired, mentally drained and more dissatisfied with their purchases.”

This was detailed in Matt Haig’s 2003 book Brand Failures.  He noted that “Procter & Gamble’s brand strategy in the 1980s seemed to be: why launch one product, when 50 will do? However, increased choice equaled increased confusion.

As a result, Crest lost market share… as soon as there were 50 Crest toothpastes, its market share dipped to 25 per cent and fell behind Colgate.” When they had one product they captured above 50% of the market.

I would add because it was easy for the customer.

The LAT story said as much in their helpful tips, “Sometimes it’s good to rely on habit — ‘put the blinders on and get the same toothpaste you always get,’ says Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.”

How this impacts your retail business

What is so deadly about this for retailers is that we think giving our customers more choice is better. But if the customer can’t quickly get why one product is better than the other, they become overwhelmed and put blinders on.

That’s because it’s easier to settle.

If there is no one there to help whittle down their choices or find out what they are trying to do and then matching product to their use, you lose the sale.

And the higher the ticket, the higher your stakes.

That’s why you need salespeople, not clerks.

The evidence is overwhelming that customers are over-choiced, from the menus in restaurants, to the products on the sales floor.  We just don’t want to make the wrong choice. Salespeople, true salespeople can make the difference.

Yes, Paul Schottmiller and I recently discussed the customer survey by Cisco Systems that found 68% said online reviews were one of their top three influencers whereas only 13 percent indicated store associates.

But I believe that says more about the quality of the store associates in many stores than customers’ proclivity to seek solutions from store employees.

What to do to drive conversions

You want to get your store sales up? Do the hard part of hiring people who can sell, who can funnel down hundreds of choices of paint, of carpet, of furniture, of black dresses, of whatever, into what customers can easily decide on.  Salespeople are out there looking for work, whittle down your resumes to those who have proven they can sell the merch.

Your competitors are “putting blinders on” and hiring whoever will fog the mirror, work the hours and be grateful for a job.

To get your store moving, take the time now to whittle down your choices of who you allow on your sales floor, train them how to sell and you’ll be able to help customers choose, not settle – or worse, walk out the door empty-handed.

What stores do you put blinders on when shopping? Grocery? Hardware? Drugstore? Please share in comments below…

Who are the customers who walk through your door? Are they already cyborgs?

NO!

Every one is a person who has a mom who has Alzheimer’s, who has a kid who is in rehab or has a dad who lost their job, or whatever.  Their mom could just have just won the All-star game, their brother could have finished his first book of poetry or together they might have completed a 5 mile walk to help cure AIDS.

Our humanity is what connects us to each other, not a machine.

The kindness and care that we give our employees and our customers speaks to who we as individuals are in the world.

If you aren’t willing to take that mantle, then get out of retail and start an online deals site. Because real human-to-human connection is the foundation of modern society.

And that’s what’s being lost right now.

This is a plugged in generation with multiple ways of connecting to everyone from texting, to IM to Facebook and the rest.  Maybe because their parents were working two or three jobs trying to keep the house, maybe because class sizes have grown too large, maybe because they were taught to fear strangers at an early age, whatever the reason – young people have sought to make the human connection in the only “safe” way possible – online.

So while they may have 200 virtual friends and only give a one-sentence status update – they care if someone “likes” it or comments immediately upon getting it.  That’s my point, they still care.

They talk to their smartphone like it is a person; they search online with their iPad, disregarding anyone around them.  Those with an iPhone treat Seri like their BFF.

In short, the machine has become the good-looking, smarter, more reliable friend who never disappoints.

So when they show up to your very human retail store, they are bound to arrive thinking people are not as reliable as their machines; humans have quirks and emotions they don’t understand.

Instead of employees being coached how to deal with that, to make a relationship, to truly connect, retailers have given up and let them be bored and in turn bore customers.

Customers have been ignored and are increasingly being left to rely on their machines.

If we don’t fix that, the world just becomes colder and colder and we are one step from cyborgs.

The answer is not to supplant cold technology because you can’t.

But don’t mistake it for the very heart of your bricks and mortar store – your employees.

2012 doesn’t have to be a battle between technology and humanity with winners and losers.

Embrace the latest technologies, of course, but they must go hand in hand with your employees, and your employees won’t be willing to do that until you fix their motivation.

And I cover that in the third in this series, “Should you offer incentives to bricks and mortar employees to embrace the iPad?” You can also …

If you missed the first installment of this series, start here.

Your job is to create an exceptional experience for everyone who walks into your store. That’s the mark.

That means people who purchase from you would crawl naked over broken glass to come back and have that experience again.

And if they don’t, then you have some work to do.

What could get in the way? Customers entering your store embraced in a cold virtual world; earbuds drowning out all sound, eyes focusing down toward the blue glow coming from their smartphone.

Its up to you to warm them up. That comes partially from your store design, displays and merch but mostly from human contact.

The good news is that most people still buy products at a physical bricks and mortar store.

The rush to all things digital got a shock last week when the New York Times reported that only 1% of consumers generate half of all traffic.  Meanwhile, the top 10% of users are consuming 90% of wireless bandwidth.

Even though the top 1% are skewing the results, retailers are rushing to bring cold technology further into the store.

Evidence GUESS announcement that they are going to give in-store consumers access to their online and in-store products via iPads mounted on rolling stands serving as kiosks.

“Great,” some customers will say, “less contact with employees who don’t care about me anyway.”

But how do employees end up so uncaring? Because they are treated that way.

Yes, employees are messy and harder to manage than a cute little app where customers check-in or shop from, but if you don’t commit to making your retail space a great place to work, to undertake the job of teaching life skills for individuals, if you say it doesn’t matter because everyone will soon be on their Smartphone … then how in the world will retail survive?

We’ve already found that hiring employees without training them beyond the basics has created a group of latchkey employees who pretty much do what they want.

The answer lies with you – the owner or executive – to realize that we must value the person in front of us, whether they are a customer or an employee.

No one who walks through your doors is a thing to get through or avoid.

How are you going to make that happen? Check the second in this series here … you can also:

I stopped at a display of gloves.  I needed a new pair as its getting below freezing in upstate. 

I went over to the Isotoner Glove display.  A sign “30% Off.”  Above that another sign “Use your Macy’s card and get an additional 15% off.”  I picked up a pair and tried them on, went to the counter where a pleasant woman was standing at the register. 

“Do you have your coupon?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
“That’s too bad, if you did you would have gotten an additional 15% off.”   Now I got them for $20. And I could have gotten them for $17? WOW, I was ready to buy them at the $35 tag. 

Could my clerk have said something like, “Yes, these are such a good deal you could buy an extra pair to give as gifts. And since they are one size fits all, you don’t have to worry about sizing”?

Sure they could. But they hadn’t been trained how to upsell.

Whenever I was working retail I used the sales to increase tickets, not decrease them.  “All our shirts are on sale for 20%” was the impetus to upsell three shirts, not two. 

Especially if you are seeing fewer customers, when you run sales, you typically are cutting your profits so you must find ways to generate additional sales. That comes from suggesting additional items – especially when they are on sale.

I learned this in the hotel business when we cut rates to increase occupancy.  What happened? Occupancy barely moved up 2%. But the customers who would have paid more got a deal and profits fell. What we needed to do was get more money out of those who came.

Retail sales training can increase sales without spending a lot on marketing just concentrating on the people in the store. It’s a formula that has helped thousands of stores compete from some of the biggest to the smallest – whether economic news was good or bad. 

I can help you too.

• A. So customers know you work there and are available.
• B. To put potential thieves on notice that you are watching.
• C. To be be nice.
• D. None of the above.

The correct answer is, “None of the above.” The point of the first sentence out of your mouth is for the customer to want to hear the second sentence out of your mouth. That makes you interesting.

The customer wants to know more.

Much like the heading of a news story, that’s all a greeting should intend to do.

To get them to want you to speak again …

That happens when you set up the customer to be comfortable around you first by your words and actions,then letting them lite at a display or section and saying something positive as you return. As long as you don’t blow the greeting, they’ll be interested in what you have to say and a relationship can form.

A friend of mine told me a story recently about a grandmother who worked as a waitress. Each day she came home and emptied her apron onto the dinner table and told her daughter, “Here is the money I made as a result of the relationship I made with them today.”

Exactly

Blow the greeting, and you’ll encourage rudeness, cell phone useage, price checking by smartphone, the works. Why? Becuase you didn’t get them to want to hear anything from an actual person.

What turns off customers ears and keeps you from being interesting?

• Can I help you?
• Looking for anything specific?
• Let me know if you need anything

David Ogilvy’s famous headline for a Rolls Royce was simple, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

David Ogilvy wasn’t the first as he heard from an ad agency in the UK cited their advertisement for a Pierce-Arrow in 1933. Good ideas, like greeting a customer in a way they’ll want to hear more, are worth borrowing.

You might want to check out this clip from my YouTube page on “How to Greet a Customer.”