If you make the customer insecure during the moment they are deciding or paying for your merch or service, you will then be trying to placate a nervous customer. By then though, the trust and relationship are gone and you’re left coming up with excuses to your boss
The holidays are almost here so I’ve come up with my blunt reminders for both staff and owners of specialty retailers. They’re by no means all the “Don’ts” but especially at the holidays, these 50 can make the difference between hearing, “I’ll take it,” and “I’m outta here.
Stop asking, “Where are the customers?” and realize we’re right there. Sometimes even giving you a second shot. The sale is yours to lose.
Retailers, that’s what you need to remember this holiday, it isn’t the cheap, it’s the love they will be showing. Yes its materialistic, that is what retail is.
It isn’t that Penney’s is the cheapest or off-price; they are truly there to serve. Treat yourself sometime and put them to the test. If nothing else, you’ll get a lesson in what makes one customer choose a store over another and it isn’t due to selection, location or the fact they sponsor a parade, its about the people who serve them.
The trouble with so many retailers is they don’t price according to what the market will bear but what they fear they can’t go over. They don’t figure in their time or talent.
We all have needs and desires to feel worthy, important, and valued. The Five Parts to a Successful Sale process gives you the chance to do this for others and for ourselves. It begins by connecting to the person in front of us as a person, valued and worthy of our respect and in turn, rewards us with the same.
You want to bellyache about how business is off? Call your buddies and compare sob stories? Save your time and instead go out shopping to find and bring the Ashleys of the world to your store.
Slow sales have allowed complacency in most retailers. More employees behind the counter. More dismissive expressions, “They’re just looking.” Don’t let your employees get away with being more comfortable with only one person, train now how to juggle many customers.
Many of the major retailers tout “experience” but in many cases – can we just admit it – you really are just Wal-Mart with less polyester. The same unenthusiastic, bored employees seeing their lives slip away you’d find at a mass merchant. The hive mentality that lets them find security stocking shelves, avoiding customers and sticking together behind the counter has left us shoppers aloof and alone. Your pleas to return go unnoticed because we know you haven’t changed.
