Because they price the product against their own bank account, not the customer's. Most of your newer hires are young, and young people have less money. That has always been true and it is not a knock on them. But this generation came up through lockdowns, watched the ladder get pulled up, and hears every week that AI is coming for whatever job they were going to get. So when you ask a twenty-two-year-old to sell a $700 purse, the voice in their head says exactly what any broke twenty-two-year-old would say. What a waste. I would find that used. Nobody needs that. They will never say it out loud. They will just do it with their feet.
They lead with the cheap option and apologize for the good one. They walk the customer to the sale rack first. They say "this one is nice too, it is a little more," and that half sentence hands the customer permission to spend less. The customer takes it, because most people are looking for a reason to feel okay about buying, and your associate just handed them a reason to buy down. You lose twice. You lose the size of the sale, and the customer walks out with something they will like a little less every time they use it.
No. Change the commission or add a spiff on the expensive line and the numbers move for a week, because the associate is being paid to override their own gut. Then the spiff ends and everyone slides right back, because you never changed the belief, you rented a behavior.
Teach one line until they can say it in their sleep: the customer's budget is not the associate's budget. The person standing in front of the $700 bag walked into your store, on their own, and picked it up. They are already considering it. They do not need protecting from it. They need help buying the one they actually want, the one they will be glad they own in two years. Coach it on the floor, not in a back room. When you see an associate walk a customer down in price, pull them aside after and ask one question. Did the customer ask for something cheaper, or did you? Nine times out of ten, they did.
Then you would have no full-price sales at all, and you do. You have customers buying the top of your line right now, from your best people, the ones who got past their own wallet. The gap is not your price. The gap is which associate the customer happened to get.
Walk your floor and listen for the apology, the "it is a little more," the walk to the sale rack. Every time you hear it, that is a coaching moment, not a write-up. Get your team saying the one line back to you. And put your newest people next to the associate who already sells the top of the line, because belief is caught more than it is taught.
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