Check That Your Store Smells Good

Is your real estate agent holding an open house in hopes of selling your place? Don't forget to put those chocolate chip cookies in the oven! Oh, and then turn those ceiling fans to low so the delicious aroma stays in circulation.
     A classic finding in consumer behavior research is that odors influence buying behavior. When a smell hits our brain, it starts out its processing in the limbic system, which is one of the most primitive parts of the brain. We—and the people who shop with us—make decisions instantly and unconsciously based on smells. As it happens, the chocolate in those cookies gives an extra kick because the brain neurons it sets off are associated with sexual pleasure.
     Now don't get me wrong. Smell's not enough to close the sale all by itself. Even the best perfume or cologne has to be backed up with the goods in order to move a relationship forward. But smell does set the groundwork. And it's not only with smells we think of as alluring. For instance, researchers find that sales of cleaning products go up significantly when a faint fragrance of Formula 409 wafts through the area.
     The key word in that last sentence is faint. Make the odor of cleaning liquid, perfume, or even cookies too strong, and the customer might faint. And then there are the smells in a store that at any strength will chase off shoppers. How about the air around a dirty restroom?
     As you and your staff walk the aisles, breathe freely and deeply. Your store has one chance to make a first impression. Be sure that first impression is rosy. Well, unless your shoppers are allergic to roses.

Use Open-Ended Questions With Shoppers

In Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral, or Fattening, Art Freedman and I praise open-ended questions. An open-ended question is one that asks for more than a yes, a no, or a choice from limited alternatives. "What may I help you find in the store today?" is an open-ended question. "May I help you?" is a closed-ended question.
Continually coach your salespeople to ask open-ended questions when welcoming a customer. The question might be, "What project are you working on today?," "Which aisle may I take you to?," or "What did your husband think of those earrings you bought last time you were in?"
If you ask a customer, "May I help you today?," chances are they'll instantly say, "No," and that gets in the way of you serving the customer. People coming into your store are there for a reason. When that reason is to consider making a purchase, the open-ended question lets the sales staff discover how to complete the sale most effectively and efficiently.
Of course, there are many other reasons the customer might have walked into your store, aside from wanting to make a purchase. An open-ended question like "What may I help you find in the store today?" is also useful then. The customer's answer could be, "Show me where the men's room is" or even "Sure. Point me to a place to sit while my family is spending my money."
In answering those questions for the customer, you've opened up a service relationship, and those kinds of relationships build store profitability in the long run. When your staff ask open-ended questions, it shows a recognition of the customer which is more than just in passing.

Suggest Referrals, Even With Disliked Products

Keeping current customers coming back for more is essential to the success of your business, and a good amount of research says it's less expensive to keep a current customer than to win over a new customer. Still, for your retail business to thrive, you must grow your customer base.
     Fortunately, it's not either/or. Suppose a current customer tells you how much they like a product or service you've sold them. You might say, "Please be thinking about other people you know who also would like it, and I hope you'll recommend they come in. May I give you a few of my business cards in case they want to ask for me?" When a happy customer refers you to others, you not only get a new prospect, but the customer making the recommendation builds commitment to you.
     But what if the current customer HATED the product or service? Well, your first task is to make it right with a refund or exchange. Next is to discover why it happened. Researchers from University of Michigan and McGill University found that people who dislike a product or service often are surprisingly open to the idea that people they know would LOVE it.
     If a customer is dissatisfied because they found the product or service to be defective, it's insulting to ask them to think of who else might want to buy it. On the other hand, if the problem was a matter of taste, it can work to say, "I understand why the product was a bad fit for you. Now that you're more familiar with it, you might know of some people who you think would like it. If you decide it could help them out, I'd very much appreciate you telling them the product is available here."

Maintain a Niche So You're a Destination Location

Category Killer retailers stock a broad range and depth of merchandise in a specific category. For Best Buy, it's consumer electronics. For Borders and Amazon.com, it's books. For Zappos.com, it's shoes.
     You don't need to have hundreds of locations to be a Category Killer store. With only 22 stores in just eight U.S. states, Scheel's is a Category Killer when it comes to sports, hunting, and fishing merchandise. The Scheel's in Sparks, Nevada has a carnival-size Ferris wheel inside the store.
     But you don't need to have a giant footprint either. Consider Sunglass Hut. Each store—merely a gnat on the scale of store sizes—carries a wide-ranging assortment in a very narrow merchandise category. Even if you're a small to midsize retailer, you can develop a niche that makes you a destination location.
     There are a few things you do need, though. First is some diversification. Your profitability is at risk if you depend on a narrow product offering. Even a tiny Sunglass Hut carries accessories. Zappos now outfits the body above the feet, and Amazon will sell you shoes.
     Also, you must maintain the trust of shoppers that your store has expertise about your niche. In surveys conducted by Advertising Age/ARC, consumers in every age group from teenagers on up said that what was most important to them was brand trustworthiness. For retailers, your store is your brand.
     So are your staff experts in both the technical details and the fashion trends? That requires ongoing employee training. Do your ads and displays give valuable information to the shopper about the niche category, such as shopping tips? Is the merchandise arranged to prove you understand the important features that distinguish one product from another?

Keep Creating Advocates for Your Business

Advocates are customers who praise you to others. You might think that if you increase the number of Advocates by, let's say, 10%, this would lead at best to about a 10% increase in sales. In reality, though, according to research reported in Harvard Business Review, the effect of creating new Advocates is much greater than that.

• You create Advocates by maintaining a welcoming shopping environment where your customers love to be. The result is that Advocates spend more time with you, and this makes it more likely they'll buy more products.
• Advocates are people who appreciate you and your staff for meeting their service expectations. Advocates want your business to succeed. If they see something they know they could buy at another store or website for a bit less, they still prefer to give their money to you.
• Advocates want to help you out. They'll tell family and friends, and even shoppers they come across in your store or in competing stores, what a good job you do. If they hear criticisms of your business, they want to reassure themselves they're right in their feelings, so they'll talk down the criticisms.

     It's no surprise then, that when you increase the number of Advocates by the 10%, you can easily realize a much greater increase in sales. In the before-and-after chart at the top of this posting, the gold bars plot the number of Advocates the retailer has created and the green bars plot the retailer's sales per square foot.
     Have I convinced you of the value of developing more Advocates? Then now is the time to start pumping it up with your staff!

Have Shoppers On a Mission Look at Possibilities

When you watch shoppers entering your store—or track their browsing patterns on your website—do you notice how some of them are clearly on a mission? They go right for a particular item and, if the value is right, they want to buy the item as soon as possible.
     Other shoppers love to look through the possibilities. Even if they've a specific item in mind, they enjoy digesting the alternatives.
     Are men more likely to be Mission Shoppers and women more likely to be Possibilities Shoppers? Yes, at least when it comes to clothes, according to some Stanford University researchers. In general, men come for clothes out of necessity, and when they do bullet on in, it's with a targeted purpose in mind. On the other hand, women are more likely to circulate around so they can socialize, analyze, and discover what's new.
     Be grateful for your Mission Shoppers. They're spending money with you, and they don't waste your time. But also move Mission Shoppers towards being Possibilities Shoppers. This helps improve your profitability because the longer the shopper spends with you, the greater the chances you'll make a bigger sale. The Possibilities Shopper buys more items and is more likely to upgrade to higher-quality items.
     Do your store/website displays and merchandise arrangements encourage browsing and upgrading? Are your store aisles wide enough for customers to stand in front of the merchandise without getting in the way of other shoppers? Are your staff strong in recognizing the difference between a Mission Shopper and a Possibilities Shopper so each shopper's needs can be met superbly?