The amount of times that I questioned why I had a job in retail was much higher than the amount of times I thought “Wow, this is so fun”. Almost every shift I had at my second job, another retail clothing store that was right across the row from my first job, I caught myself thinking of how things could be done in a more efficient way, or in ways that actually help the customers.
When I first started working at Zumiez, I was brought in for some training. During this training they told me about the different brands we sold, the skateboards in the back, and the history of the Zumiez company. After the training, they started teaching me how they wanted me to interact with customers. Their approach was similar to my first job, ask what brought them in, how can we help, etc. Zumiez took it a step further though, they told their workers that if a customer was wandering around the store, it was okay to follow them around and ask multiple times what they were looking for. This very quickly became the bane of my existence.
Customers walking in would get so annoyed by how we would follow them and ask all of these questions, when most of the time, they just wanted to browse quickly and leave.
I started to take a different approach. I would ask how they were doing, ask questions about music, or compliment something they were wearing, and try and have a genuine conversation with them, and this resulted in more sales than any other interactions in my past three months of working at the store. My bosses weren’t particularly thrilled with this. They wanted me to sell the way they were taught, and the way they taught me, so it started to become a point of tension when I was at work with certain people. When Black Friday came around, I was dreading my shift. I was supposed to work from three in the morning until eight. It wasn’t a particularly long shift, but it was quite literally in the middle of the night. This meant that there wouldn’t be that many people, but they would probably be tired and annoyed at this point in the long night of Black Friday. Now for this insane night, my store was having a competition for its employees, whoever was the “best salesperson” for the night would win a pair of Beats by Dre headphones. This was not really something I thought about because I was just going to sell the way that I had been and I knew I wouldn’t win any prizes for the night. So, when I showed up, large iced coffee and Red Bull in hand, dressed in my best possible “skater girl” outfit (ripped jeans, Vans sneakers, a band t-shirt, and a flannel, with my blue and pink hair straightened to perfection.) I was ready to jump in and get the shift over with.
As time went by, there were some sales, some annoyed customers, and some really fun conversations with people who I worked with. Around five in the morning my boss came to me and asked if I could stay later, so I ended up working until ten in the morning, which was fine, more money in my pocket right? Then as my shift was ending, my boss pulled me aside and handed me a box. I was really confused; did he want me to find a place for it on the shelves? Did I leave it here during my last shift? Then he says, “You went over and above tonight, you really did the most work and had the best attitude, you deserve these headphones, congratulations!” Now I was floored. I did not expect to be told that I did a good job selling and that I won this random competition. So, as I walked out of the store, I was wondering what I did that he noticed.
During my next shift I went up to him and asked just that. He responded by saying something along the lines of, “You connected with people. You gave them a reason to stay in our store instead of going to one of the hundred other stores they could have visited. You also sold the most of our high price items (watches, shoes, jewelry), so you will get some very nice commission on top of the headphones. You proved that you can sell, and that people will engage, that’s what I was looking to see”. Now this completely changed my perspective on my job, I was still frustrated by some parts, some of the people, but there will always be annoying things and people, but I looked forward to interacting with customers, especially now that I had my boss’s approval. I learned from this job that sometimes you do have to go outside of your comfort zone to sell, but often times people will notice when you are being a genuine and kind human being. You’re selling who you are as much as you’re selling a product.
BoweryJE22
This is a great example of how being a typical “pushy” salesman doesn’t necessarily benefit the customer’s perception of whether or not to make a purchase. Way to stand up to your boss and create a positive experience for customers that came into your store!
What an awesome story! It sounds like you utilized the first Sandler rule: you saw how Zumiez was failing to connect with customers in a pleasant way, and you used this knowledge to create and implement an approach that was both more personable and financially successful. I hope Zumiez also learned from these experiences!