It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to sit down and write; school, work and consulting have been consuming my life. At the beginning of the month, I took a week long cruise with some very good friends and had a blast. We started off in Miami, went to the Bahamas, stopped off in Jamaica and then back to Miami. It was an eye-opening experience on multiple levels and it really made me realize how much these countries rely on tourism around the ports. We had a chance to venture off in the countries and saw some pretty dismal areas. But that’s a later conversation.
While in Jamaica we visited an area called “The Free Market” which was essentially a swap meet style set up where locals would sell merchandise. It was interesting to see the local commerce because there was a mix between brick-and-mortar retailers and these individual sellers and re-sellers. The market was huge with hundreds of vendors, many of which were selling similar goods. What really troubled me, as a marketer, was the methodology of these vendors. They would swarm each member of our group attempting to lure them to their merchandise. They had lots of good lines like “looking is free”, which made me laugh. The strong majority, 95% of them, were extremely pushy and inconsiderate of their consumers interests and time; they were more interested in pushing product. One of them even began carving a friend’s name into a statue in attempt to make him purchase it.
They just wanted to hard sell everyone. But as every marketer knows, customers don’t want to be sold… they want to buy. So these evasive techniques really turned me off to purchasing from the vendors. You can only say “No, thank you” so many times to one person– they didn’t want to take no for an answer. Whereas they may have been good at playing a pity card, they lacked the essence of sales. While selling a product with substitutes (or even identical products) within 5 feet of each other, it helps to have some finess and grace.
On the ride back to the boat I started thinking about aggressive salesmen that I have worked with in the past whose sole goal was to push product and churn and burn clientele. The issue was many (if not most) of their customers were left with a bad taste in their mouth. Good luck getting a referral out of someone who feels ripped off. What if all salesmen were like this? What if we all ignored our customers desires and stuck to our own personal agenda? I’ll tell you: they’d go to our competition.
Relationship based selling is a great way to win over your customers to you, your product and your organization. By learning about your customer, it will likely turn them into a client and they will love your company for it. One of the easiest things to do is know their name [I have another story and I’ll write a post about that soon enough.] If salespeople took a step back and tried to figure out what the customer wants they would likely see a surprising, prosperous result. Get to know them, figure out their needs– why do they want you product and how would it help them, and let them buy. Don’t sell them.
This is a very interesting topic and one that probably strikes close to home to many people who have ever shopped in a retail store. I was recently at a seminar and listened to a presenter on marketing practices and self marketing, and he briefly talked about retail sales. The relentless pressure you got Jamaica was actually something that companies in the USA had at one time promoted, and some still do. It was not to long ago that Best Buy (before it’s massive financial crisis) had incentive/commission programs for their employees. These programs lead to extreme pressure on the sales force to up-sale everything. Like you had mentioned in your post, this left a bad taste in customer’s mouth, and people didn’t want to go into the store anymore. This of course ended up causing a decrease in sales as opposed to an increase in sales Best Buy had predicted due to increased incentives for employees to sell products. This changed how so many retail companies paid their sales staff. Unfortunately these business practices have obviously not hit the mean streets of Jamaica yet.
On the flip side of the coin, Apple has a very strict “no selling” policy. Jobs was a firm believer in the products selling them selves. And o you know better than any one Jayme that Apples sales, especially per square foot of store space, is one of the highest of any retailer ever.
I could watch Schindler’s List and still be happy after reading this.
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