Welcome to first blog post for the series Communication in Retail. At the end of last year, I mentioned I would be starting a new series. The introduction to this series was in fact a podcast. Now we officially start.
Let me share a hypothetical conversation with my wife. She says “You’re writing a blog series on what?” She continues “You’re kinda the worst person to share anything about that.” And follows with “I will have to read that one, especially the one on listening.” This is very ironical, I teach communication to managers for a living. I am published in the topic. And yet I am perceived in a certain way. To be fair and clear, I adore my wife and she feels the same way about me. What this fake conversation is telling me is that I have an opportunity to always be challenging and growing my skills. This is at the heart of this series. I will be taking one or two things out of communication, exploring them and then placing them in the relevance of the retail environment. I am staying true to my genre.
Before we get started, let me make this perfectly clear, I do not view communication as a process. A process suggests something formulaic, something fixed and calculative. While I am aware there are patterns within communication as well as a biological process associated with it, I choose not to believe it can be so mechanical. I prefer to define communication as a relationship. This implies something more at stake with more risk and ultimately a larger and more involved pay off for the effort. As we progress together, please know, the things I suggest and offer for consideration are based in that philosophy.
In the introductory podcast we took a look or rather discussed the pre-communication realities: filter and context. Filter decides what and how we do and say and context shapes and influences the same. These two elements fuel all decisions in communication. This post will look at one of the key three tenets in communication: Verbal. By the way, the others are Vocal and Visual. Another way to describe it would be the words we choose when we communicate. Have you ever heard “He is a man of few words”? Or how about “She always knows just what to say”? Do you know someone who is an absolute wordsmith? The type of person who uses every possible word. Sometimes causing you to figure out what the heck that one word means. Maybe you go to bartleby.com or webstersdictionary.com or maybe you just google it. Or maybe that is just me. Words in many ways define us. Especially when we don’t know the word or use the wrong word. This definitely impacts context.
Let’s take this into retail. Have you ever been with a sales rep who knows every minute detail of the thing they’re selling? To the point you (a) want to throw up, (b) want to walk away, or (c) just go cross-eyed and glaze over. Conversely, ever been in the situation where you knew more than the sales rep?
Here is the challenge. Sales reps are instructed to administer sales in a process. I should know – I teach sales, but not that way. Again the focus must be made to treat sales and communication as a relationship. Therefore, the words you use in sales must mirror and match the needs and bandwidth of the customer.
Imagine this, you are going into a store to buy a widget. You know very little about what makes it a widget, you need what that widget will provide (This is huge in the art of selling, but that will be another blog series). You are browsing around and a sales rep greets you (I wish). Some small talk ensues, you clarify a need and the sales rep begins going into a cascade of product features: “It has this cool thing and was made in this place and blah, blah, blah.” In an effort to sound credible, the words chosen were not aligning with the real reason you want the widget.
To be fair, there are some customers who want and need extensive information. They need certain words highlighting the features not just to define the why. That is my point, the right words must match the right customer. Can you guess what two things I will say matter most in this communication reality: filter and context. So I suggest if you are a sales rep, get a feel for the customer and ask some questions to clarify a direction to go with your words. Think flexible relationship not rigid process.
To conclude, while words may define us, they make up a very small percentage of the total communication act. We will go deeper into the act in coming posts. Thanks for visiting. Cheers.