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Loading ...First in a series of posts on technology and humanity in retail sales training
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:
