Help your sales staff avoid these UNWITTING customer turnoffs
A SALE CAN quickly turn sour through attitudes shown by you or your retail staff, sometimes without them realizing it. Here are approaches that sales people often adopt, causing customers to become turned off and possibly losing them forever.
• An attitude of indifference.
• A defensive approach, communicated through body language and tone.
• Becoming frustrated when a customer becomes “difficult.”
Here’s a way to assist your staff in avoiding these turnoffs.
If you need to pay more to attract quality staff who understand customers’ needs, it will be worth the investment.
• An attitude of indifference.
Sales staff should be enthusiastic about their work and friendly to customers. Often, however, they make customers feel as though their business and their problems are unimportant and they do not care whether they make a sale or not.
Instead of being more concerned about defending their approach or their products, they should be good listeners who should be open to feedback from customers and to strive to find out what they want. They should be able to anticipate customers’ objections and be capable of changing the customer’s beliefs and attitudes where necessary.
Staff should be mannerly, respectful and patient, no matter how hard they may find it to be at times. They should be understanding and patient, realizing that not all customers are the same and that some might be slower than others at grasping what the sales person is telling them. They should remember that, although they know the store’s products well, most customers do not.
Advice to help staff
Here’s a way to assist your staff in avoiding these turnoffs.
- Suggest to them that they look at each customer as a friend, as someone they would really like to help.
- Tell them that, even if they find the person rude, demanding or objectionable, they should inwardly say to themselves that they are not going to allow this person to make them adopt a similar attitude in response.
- Remind them that a stranger is only a friend you have not met.
If you need to pay more to attract quality staff who understand customers’ needs, it will be worth the investment.