Retailers need not be scared about losing business to online retailers – and this includes relevant vendors who use retail as their consumer channel.
By Paul Naidoo
What they should be more concerned about is the customer experience meted out to those customers who walk into their stores. IT retailers generally have good salespeople who are polite and very helpful. Good service does not necessarily increase sales, but certainly does reduce negative word of mouth.
There are mainly two types of customers who purchase online. The first are those who know exactly what they want. The second type are those customers who are dependent on the advice of someone whom they trust. They don’t necessarily know exactly what they need, but go by the advice of their “authority figure”.
A customer walking into an IT retail store does, in the majority of cases, require advice and guidance. They want to talk to a “subject matter expert.” They want to meet a trusted advisor. Someone who understands their usage of the product. What they get from salespeople more often than not, is the reading of the “fact sheet”, or worse, a whole lot of unnecessary technical jargon. Customers can sense that the salesperson is not really clued up to assist them as per their individual needs. Every customer is different and retail salespeople tend to sing the same song to every customer.
Customers need salespeople who understand what makes up a customer-centric conversation. They need salespeople to create a “wow” customer experience during the interaction.
The responsibility to have customer-centric salespeople on the retail floor lies both with the vendor and the retailer. In many cases, their training is limited to product knowledge. A customer does not buy on product knowledge alone. A customer buys largely on three fundamental pillars:
- Resonate: Connect with me.
- Differentiate: Be relevant to my pains and aspirations.
- Substantiate: Be credible.
If a salesperson is well-versed on how to meet and exceed the above pillars in a conversation, the customer will buy. The salesperson never has to sell. Customers walking into a retail environment want to buy, they don’t want to be sold to.
In recent years, many major vendors have established their consumer products on the shelves of retailers whose core business is not IT. These retailers usually sell purely on price. However, on the downside, there is the danger of reputational damage to the brand because of the wrong advice given to the customer, or due to other service issues.
I believe that every vendor who has their products listed in any retail environment should also insist on the correct sales enablement interventions for the salespeople on the floor.
South Africa still has a large market of people who want to walk into a retail store and have a “wow” experience. IT vendors should take the necessary steps to empower the retail salespeople to be optimally positioned to serve a customer better than an online retailer.
Online retailers will never be able to give a customer a personal conversation that is customer-centric and that has that “wow” customer experience. They simply sell on price and process.
Human beings are the only species that buy product. Retailers can capitalise on this by “humanising” the experience.
For the past 20 years, sales consultant Paul Naidoo has empowered salespeople in various environments to achieve and exceed their sales targets consistently. He is a regular sales trainer to partner salespeople in South Africa the Middle East. He can be contacted at paul@paulnaidoo.com