Catch Customers by Helping Early

The first impression you’d like to leave with a visitor to your store is that you can help them out. Shoppers prefer to give their business to helpful people.
     A consumer’s brain starts evaluating a retailer within seconds of initial contact, and the consumer’s impressions that follow tend to be interpreted to fit in with those first impressions. If those first few seconds convey that you want to be helpful, whatever you do next becomes more likely to be interpreted by the consumer as helpful. It’s an example of what psychologists call “priming.”

• When a person unfamiliar to you enters you store, promptly greet them with an offer of help. Asking “How may I help you?” is much better than asking “May I help you?” Of course you can help them, even if it’s just to show them where the rest rooms are or how to get back out of the store. Why ask it as a yes/no question? Better yet is “What may I help you find today?”
• Reach out to them even before they enter your store to consider making a purchase today. For instance, distribute coupons as early in the shopping process as possible. Researchers at MIT found that coupons presented at the store entrance drive up sales much more than do coupons available in the aisles of stores.
• Be helpful to them at the end of their current purchase in order to prime them with the right impressions for when they’ll make their next related purchase. Mizuno, based in Japan, is partnering with U.S. sporting goods retailers to help build sales of Mizuno baseball equipment. As part of this effort, Mizuno is installing glove steamers at the retailers’ stores so that whatever brand baseball mitt you buy, you’ll see a machine with the Mizuno name helping you to break it in. Then next time you think of buying a baseball bat or equipment for golf, track, or yoga, you’ll remember the helpfulness of the retailer where you bought your mitt.

Click below for more:
Use Closed-Ended Questions Selectively
Give Coupons Early and Proudly