Qualify Your Customers by Interacting

Want to swindle your shoppers? Then learn from the business model of the Nigerian 419 Scam. This is one of those where the target of the swindle gets an e-mail saying that if the target sends money or their bank account information, they’ll get an unbelievably large amount in return. It’s called the “Nigerian 419 Scam” because the e-mail solicitation comes from Nigeria and the section in the Nigerian criminal code forbidding the scam is numbered 419.
     But, of course, you don’t want to swindle shoppers. In this case, too, there’s something to be learned from a Microsoft Research paper titled “Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria?”
     The answer to the question, according to the paper, is that the scammers want to qualify their prospects quickly. Because many people already know about the Nigerian Scam, an e-mail coming from Nigeria with improbable tales of West African riches and a request for the recipient to send their own riches will quickly eliminate all but the gullible.
     And it’s the gullible the perpetrators of the swindle are aiming to entice. As the Microsoft Research paper points out, a Nigerian Scam sufficiently profitable for the swindlers requires a substantial amount of back-and-forth coaxing. The maximum return comes from continuing to milk the cash cow. Only the highly gullible will stay with it long enough.
     It would seem that a lesson for retailers, whether or not they want to swindle consumers, is to have a question or two which enables retailers to discover if a shopper should be eliminated from consideration for making a profitable sale.
     Well, that might work when you’re screening thousands of prospects online. For the store-based retailer, the interaction should come from the start. It’s not one or two questions to the consumer you’ll use, but a series. Facilitate a dialogue. The question you’ll ask yourself is, “In what ways, if any, might this person be qualified to make a purchase here?,” rather than, “Is this person qualified to make a purchase here?”
     A related point: Keep your interactions sufficiently professional to protect against you unintentionally scamming shoppers: The scam e-mail generally includes poor grammar. Research at Carnegie Mellon University found that, for many consumers, poor grammar lowers the consumer’s guard, making them more susceptible to being cheated.
     A casual tone can open up shoppers to your positive influence. But a sloppy tone can be misused.

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