After talking to some friends and acquaintances about their good and bad sales experiences I found one common denominator in their answers. Either people loved the super helpful sales-person, or found them extremely pushy. When I asked both sides about their experiences with this type of person the qualities were very similar, whether they liked or disliked the sales-person. Some people enjoyed being welcomed into the store and asked if they needed help, others hated it. Some people enjoyed receiving questions, both about their shopping visit or just friendly chat-chit. Others found this to be annoying and uncomfortable. So, the question stands how can one be an efficient sales-person if a “good selling technique” isn’t applicable in most situations?
We talked about this a little in class when we discussed ambiverts. However, I think their is something more to it then being able to relate to the energy level of the customer. I think as that customer enters the door a good sales-person should be observing and taking note as to discover the type of customer they have and adjust their technique accordingly. This type of observation is in a way linked to listening, its just listening before the customer speaks.
As a Communication Studies major, we discuss all types of formats for sending and receiving messages. It is a fact that over 90% of daily communication is non-verbal. Even as verbal communication is taking place there can be interference in the message if body language is in conflict with the words. If this is true, then a lot of the “listening” a sales-person should be doing is observation.
Now, despite the fact that some people enjoy help from sales-people and others don’t it is always important to be positive and create uplifting experiences for the customer. It is crucial to understand to what degree your positivity needs to be inorder to stay within the customers comfort zone. I am not really sure of any way someone can learn observation and proper response other than through experience and failure. These are a lot of the lessons we are learning in class.
BoweryJE22
Friendly chit chat is a great way to build up a meaningful relationship with a client, I like how you mentioned this skill set here.
This goes back to the very top of the sales funnel that we talked about in class. Every salesperson needs to do their pre-call background check on a customer or client. If a salesperson fails to do this they’re at a critical disadvantage and run the risk of being that “annoying salesperson”.