What if they come in and don’t want to buy stuff? Excuse me why I giggle just a little bit. Don’t want to buy stuff? Why are they there exactly? So here is what you might say or think…
They have a product question.
They have a return or repair.
They are looking or just getting some ideas.
They have to talk to their significant other.
They want directions (or change).
They are killing time?
If this is your store, you have product all over the place and a sales person ready to pounce, what is important in these situations? While I think there is absolutely a selling opportunity in each and every one of these, what does Skippy, Todd and Mary think? What have you done to level set what each of these situations represent as selling opportunities?
Let’s start with this idea, at what point does service disengage itself from sales, or is it vice-versa? Which comes first? This is the ultimate question in retail. Does service precede sales or does a sale precede service? I think they are one in the same. A complete customer experience involves both. And if the customer contributes to your pay-check, don’t they both matter? It is just the service part which needs to be defined and more importantly, merged with sales.
If I asked a sales consultant, which comes first, what would they say? Think about that. This may be a aligned with the paradox of the chicken and the egg. Ultimately, the conclusion seems to be one cannot exist without the other. It is, uh…symbiotic. This is dollar-fifty word which defines what I wrote just moment ago. If someone comes in to your store, sales and service are happening in conjunction with the action expected from the customer, right? You start with service and then move to sales and then follow with service. Stop and analyze that statement. This is a very complicated approach. How about simplifying the actions in the moment? How about making each and every customer interaction all about service with sales as an obvious question and action. Question and action? Yes. Sales is a game. They came in, regardless of what you may think is their intention or momentum. Closing a sale or even positioning a sale must involve some type of question. It doesn’t have to be “hey, wanna buy something?” It can be an internal realization when you ask yourself, how will this customer buy something from me today? That is the intention part. You are in retail sales. You have stuff to sell and you have to position it in such a way to have it make sense to the customer. This is the action part. You can’t just ask (well you can – more on this later), there must be a set or series of events or things you do to connect the widget with the customer DNA. That is servicing a need. Oh yeah and a sale.
How do you manage to those expectations? We always expect the sales consultant to know everything. And when they do not, we get feisty. What if we took the time to tell the sales consultant? Don’t laugh. While this seems positively obvious, it is very much missed. You see many employers hire for experience and then realize it does not matter as much as they think. Have you ever hired someone with experience and they were the worst employee? Have you ever hired someone without experience and they were the best employee. Yep, that is what I mean. Therefore if that is what it is, then it implies, we should, we must indicate what we expect in all things. Like, oh, I don’t know…the nature of service and sales.
I was in Wisconsin yesterday. A business-to-business guy offered, as we were finishing our day on sales management, what about service? It seemed he was defining it as in a place in another realm or another perspective completing void of the sales environment. I am paraphrasing. He was tagging what I have been pointing out in this post – the debate between service and sales. It seemed what was bothering him was that people make such stereotypical distinctions as to what defines service. It seemed he was implying service was not a desired part of the job.
If we know someone will come in wanting something other than buying the widget, then we must presume they still want service of some kind (which could very well lead to some type of sale). If you were here, you would see me giggling. This is what I meant at the beginning. Great sales people do not run in the back when they see a customer with a bag or product in hand (implying some kind of issue, return or repair), they run to that customer knowing there lies a new revenue generation.
Let’s be real, this involves a greater awareness…a greater understanding and mindset. Service is sales and sales is service. One cannot happen without the other. Make it simple and consider these best practices:
Set your teams expectations. Let them know how sales and service looks and feels. Let them know what “good” looks like.
Brainstorm ideas to integrate and achieve success in each. Have the team share how they have blended each and how they saw success.
Identify bridging opportunities to make sales service and vice versa. This may be the big “aha”, especially if your team has made a distinct, large chasm (canyon) between each.
Train the service process. This may very well solve the issue by teaching what “it” actually is. Sometimes sales people fear what they do not fully understand and therefore avoid it.
Measure it. Measure it like any other part of the business. This may create the link to their job by simply knowing a score or more specifically their own personal score.
Be sure to contact me if any of these ideas make you go “uh, what?”
Make service as important to the business as sales. At some point, they will become one. That is your goal. Well, kinda. The goal will always be the customer solution. And it will involve whatever is important to the customer. An obvious service or sales ”thingy” may not be part of the equation. They may only be asking for directions. Wait, isn’t that service? Never mind.