Recently I went to the outlet mall to buy a pair of dress shoes. It was interesting to note how the way that the salespeople treated me and my friend in each store varied. I’ve had a number of poor experiences with retail salespeople and until this class I just assumed that unpleasantness was a necessary part of the sales process. In this post I’ll outline a few things a particular salesperson did that were off-putting and explain how they could have been done better.
The first step of a sale process is usually bonding and rapport, where you exchange friendly conversation to get a sense of the person before getting down to business. The shoe salesman asked what I was buying the shoes for and I said they were for my wedding. Immediately he started making jokes about how he was married and that “It’s not too late to back out”. I can appreciate that he was trying to be funny, but me and my friend were bewildered at the way he was talking! Proper bonding and rapport lets you understand generally how someone is feeling in the moment. If I was the salesperson I would have immediately picked up the excitement of the customer about their wedding to the person they love, I definitely would not start talking badly about my own wife especially if they had only said positive things about their fiancée.
The next thing that I thought was strange was the salesperson was selling me HARD on features and benefits. He asked me what I was looking for in a shoe and I mentioned a few things I wanted, namely a rounded profile, laces, and a dark brown color. To my surprise he started trying to convince me that a pair of reddish brown slip on shoes with square toes were the ones to have! He was so persistent that I ended up trying them on just to get him to stop talking about them. He kept trying to sell me on the benefit that they would be easier to slip on in the morning, which was of absolutely no value to me because one of the things I love about dressing up is taking the time to look presentable. Not only was he not asking good questions to get to my pain and sell me something I wanted, he seemed to completely ignore everything I said I wanted.
A salesperson that was more attuned to the pain points that I mentioned, looks and price being the top two, may have been able to earn my business. In fact, I would have been willing to go slightly above my budget if I found something that fit my tastes because of the occasion.
In the end, I found a pair of shoes that I liked I sent a picture to a friend to confirm and the salesperson said “You don’t want those, the other ones are way better”. Needless to say I walked right out of the store at that point and he lost the sale.
BoweryJE22