The Retail Doctor's Blog

On Monday, Ralph Lauren announced they are closing their flagship Polo store in New York City as part of a drive to gain their footing in a rapidly changing retail world. The Detroit News said it was “a symbol of old-fashioned luxury that no longer resonates with today’s shoppers.”

Luxury has come to a crossroads.

What once was exclusive and in high demand is now regularly discounted.

The finest wools and cottons for the finest luxury apparel are farmed from centuries-old farms, carded and woven in centuries-old buildings with meticulous craftspeople who refuse to let even the slightest flaw go out of their hands and into the market.

How can a retailer immediately tell potential luxury or premium customers that their retail store is a cut above? It comes down to your attention to details.

Attention to detail begins with designing the retail space to accommodate the world's most discerning customers. As a retailer providing luxury sales and superior service, your store is your opportunity to not only present upscale clothing lines, jewelry, or home furnishings, but to do so in a way that evokes the essence of the lifestyle your customers are either accustomed to, or aspire to.

Retail is separating into two camps: high priced luxury brands that give high-touch, personalized service and no-touch, stack-it-high-and-let-it-fly discounters.

Discounters are seen as no-frills, no service stores where customers only returnfor a cheap price, not for the quality, not for a relationship, and not for the experience.

The luxury brands do it better… or so you’d think.

In a recent press release, the Luxury Institute shared some startling facts:

• Most luxury brands lose 80-90% of customers in any given year.
• Those same brands are deficient in retaining even 50% of their top customers.
• Only 10-15 % of a luxury brand's customers state that they have a relationship with a sales professional (brand ambassador) and can name that person.
• Again, customer attrition rates in the luxury industry are at an astronomical 80-90 %.

Contrast those findings with the upside in the premium market, “Customers who have a true human relationship with a brand ambassador typically buy double from that brand and stay loyal for a longer period of time.”

Looking for retail sales tips because you have a luxury product or premium service to sell?

I’m not talking a good or better version, I’m talking the best.

Selling luxury retail goods are very different from selling any other product.

Why?…

Selling luxury products without a discount goes hand in hand with designing a retail space to accommodate the world's most discerning customers.

As a retailer offering luxury brands and superior service, your retail store is your opportunity to not only present upscale clothing lines, jewelry, or home furnishings, but to do so in a way that evokes the essence of the lifestyle your customers are either accustomed to, or aspire to.

In other words, they want to feel they can afford your most expensive, even if they can only buy your entry-level.

Scarcity is one of the closing techniques rotten salespeople have used for years to try to make customers buy.

It goes something like this, “We can give you 20% off, but only if you buy it today.”  If the customer isn’t quick, that offer of a discount will be gone, leaving them a fool to pay full price.

I have news for you...with the advent of the internet, there’s not much that’s scarce - except customers’ time.

We, as customers, know that some great deal, some coupon, some specific item will indeed be there tomorrow. If not from this retailer, then from some other.  In many ways it’s like what you learn if you miss a bus, there’ll be another coming along shortly.

Are you looking to increase your luxury retail sales?  While retail sales training can help, do you feel like a fraud when you are selling the premium merchandise?

For example...

Are you a window coverings store only able to sell the honeycomb shade because that's all you've put in your own house - at manufacturers cost.

Do you sell Cadillacs and drive a Ford?

You want fries with that? is probably the most derided add-on question ever asked.

And at that time, the most valuable.

Just by training their employees to ask everyone the same question, McDonalds increased their sales dramatically.

Authors Jeffrey Stamp and Doug Hall  revealedin their book, Meaningful Marketing, that  “volume per purchase is 3.4 times more important than frequency of purchase in explaining the total amount that a customer purchases each year.”

In other words, get more from the customers you have before you try to get them to come back more often or try to get new ones.

Using suggestive selling is a great way to increase you per-ticket sales and generate more revenue for your retail store.