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. Continue reading Selling Tip: How To Sell To Difficult Customers »
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. Continue reading Retail Sales Training: Why Send Customers to Your Markdowns? »
Your custom motorcycle and you hurtle down Wilshire Boulevard. You turn around at the intersection and stop in front of an apartment building.
You grab your precious cargo – two extra large meat lovers’ pizzas with extra cheese and extra sausage, and hurry into the building. Continue reading Lost a Sale? It All Started With How You Greeted Your Customer »
Let me just say it out-loud – if you sell anything to anyone – you are an idiot (is that too strong?) if you don’t run out and get an iPhone4 today, right now. And no, they didn’t pay me to say that.
Don’t care if you already have a Verizon account. Don’t care if you use a Blackberry. Don’t care if you own stock in Microsoft.
And the higher the price of the items you sell, the stupider you are if you don’t get it NOW. Ok, I’m a bit opinionated on these. Stay with me…
Forget all of the other bells and whistles. You have the ability in the palm of your hand to make a personal introduction, followup or product video in minutes using the iMovie app. Easily, professionally and you can email them right away.
Here are four I just created.
One for a nursery talking about their fresh tomatoes for the day:
iPhone4 Example for a Farm Stand with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®
One for a Buick Dealer following up for a customer:
iPhone4 Example For Buick by Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®
One for any salesperson who has to followup after speaking on the phone:
iPhone4 Example Following Up with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®
Last one for a landscaper or professional Gardener talking to a client about a problem;
iPhone4 Example Landscaper / Gardener with Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor®
Do you see how impressive this looks? How immediate? How out of the ordinary, knock your socks off fantastic this is?
I’ve done testimonial videos for years with my Flip camera. Yes it was convenient but NOTHING like this. I can add titles, transitions and music quickly and easily.
Imagine the look on your customer’s face when it is you talking to them directly right in front of their home before you go back to the office?
Sure I could get hung up with a few clipped words or a few transitions. But the door has opened for anyone to quickly and easily make youself standout.
How could you use it in your business? Think about it and put in the comments below please.
Oh yeah, and don’t worry about your competition finding out, they’ll still be hung-up on the cost of the data plan as you steal their customers right and left!
For more ways to make your business standout, check my new book from Wiley & Sons, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business.
Times are tough. Hard to find good help. Got it.
But wouldn’t you think, if you wanted to make more money, you’d change your ways?
I’m talking about selling your merch and how your crew is or isn’t doing it.
Here’s how what I call, “Low Hanging Fruit” clerking goes:
Customer walks in. Employee yells across the counter, “How are you today? Looking for anything special?”
Customer looks around, after awhile asks employee, “Does this come in green?”
“It does right over here.”
“I’ll take it.”
That is not selling.
That would be about as much like selling as a guy walking into a Ford dealership, “Yeah, I’m looking for the Mustang GT 5-speed in grey with black seats.” Then the salesperson says, “Right over here.” “I’ll take it!” The customer says.
That is clerking.
A real sale would be if the guy came in for a Focus and drove off in the Mustang because the salesperson found things in common and the customer opened up to him that he always wanted one since he was 16 in Toledo, Ohio and first saw it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
True selling is the whole tree, not just picking what you can reach without effort.
When a customer thinks they can’t afford it, when the wife says “you better think about it,” when the customer selects a product that won’t do what they want – that is when selling makes the difference.
Selling isn’t pushy, it’s not cheap, it’s the stuff of American business success.
When I was selling western wear in college at a store in the Santa Monica Place mall, I had a guy who came in to the store and immediately told me he needed a red shirt for a party.
“Why red?” I asked.
“My girlfriend told me to.”
I showed him how red really wasn’t a good color for his skin, shared the mistake I’d made getting one once and found a good blue shirt he would wear more than once to a party. He also got a pair of boots and jeans – about $300 worth.
He returned to me after he received a handwritten note from me thanking him for his purchase. He said, “You know, most people would have just gotten me the shirt and been done with it. But you took the time to educate me. Everybody said I looked so great, I should get more so I’m changing my wardrobe.” With that he purchased thousands of dollars.
Low-hanging fruit would have been to clerk a $30 shirt.
You want to compete in a global marketplace? Standout from a world that is overbuilt with power centers? Have your luxury brand stand out from a point and click experience in your luxury boutique? Reach higher. Hire salespeople. Encourage them to reach higher with every sale and not be happy clerking.
As any gardener can tell you, the ripest fruit hangs at the top, not near the bottom.
Learn how to sell your merch with Sales RX: Five Parts To A Successful Sale
