Match the Product to the Customer's Skill Level

Sometimes the best item for a customer depends on the person's skill level. Take power tools, cameras, and sports equipment. It could be wise for a low-skill customer to buy equipment requiring high skills if the customer is in the process of building those skills. It doesn't make good financial sense to buy the entry-grade equipment and then have to put out more money for the upgraded version a few months later. Get out of the customer's way, especially when the highest grade equipment carries the highest price.

      But a tradeoff with high grade equipment is that it might require considerable skill to use it properly. You don't want customers misusing what they purchase from you. If they wreck the equipment and then come to return it to you, you'll either accept the return and take a loss on the equipment or worse, one of your staff will refuse to take the return, thereby losing that shopper as a customer.

      To keep up your profitability, sell skill-based equipment based on the customer's true skill level. Unfortunately, customers often misjudge their true skill level following biased product demonstrations. Katherine Burson at University of Michigan had participants practice putting golf balls. Half the participants putted from a distance of ten feet, the others putted from a distance of three feet. After completing their putts, each participant was asked to choose from among golf balls marketed to different skill levels. The balls labeled as being for higher skill levels cost more.

      The people in the three-foot-putt group had sunk more shots than those in the ten-foot-putt group, and as a result, the three-foot group chose the more expensive balls. They'd misjudged their capabilities.

      How well are your staff matching the skill level of the customer to the skill level required from the product?

Emphasize Energy Saving

In your advertising, in your signage, and in your salesperson-to-customer conversations, emphasize your products' energy saving features. According to an Advertising Age/ARC survey, saving energy is a high priority for your shoppers. Today's consumer wants to be thrifty, and energy costs continue to climb. Moreover, consumers want to be socially responsible, and we're told repeatedly that we as a society are wasting too much energy. There's a third driver behind your customers looking for products which save energy. They like products which use the latest technology, and a sign of state-of-the-art is that the product consumes less energy than older models.
     The mix of motivations for energy saving is different for different age groups, so you'll want to customize your approach. For teens, the driving force is using the latest technology. Tell them how energy saving prolongs the time they can use a product between battery recharges. For shoppers over age 35, on the other hand, the motivation has more to do with social responsibility. Tell these folks how their purchase helps promote a healthy future.
     Emphasizing energy saving means going beyond talking to your customers about it. It also means considering revisions in your store's merchandise mix to pay attention to energy saving as a product feature. It means that when you negotiate with suppliers, let them know you aim to carry products which conserve energy.
     Yes, many shoppers place a high importance on product features other than energy saving. And decades of consumer psychology research has shown that there is a subgroup of shoppers who actually aim to earn social prestige by being wasteful, including wasting energy. For your shoppers who fall into this group, you'll want to adjust what you say. But for most of your shoppers, hearing about energy saving energizes the urge to purchase.

Have a Retail Pricing Specialist

One employee in your store should have pricing of the merchandise as their primary responsibility. In Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening, here's how we describe the role of Bob the Profit Builder, the Retail Pricing Specialist:
"Bob puts up the bin tags with the new prices on them. Bob is authorized to recruit help if he's got a very large price change, but by and large, it is Bob who puts up the bin tags, and it is always Bob who takes responsibility for the bin tags being perfect. Bob knows about product locations in the store. And to pull it all together, Bob overflows with high-quality common sense."
Pricing must make sense to the customer. For example, with something like drill bits, the customer doesn't expect the price to go down as the size of the drill bit goes up. This is another area in which the Retail Pricing Specialist is invaluable:
"A really big benefit in having somebody do retail pricing in our stores comes when there's a pile of bin tags out on the sales floor. Employees who prefer to be doing lots of other things than put up bin tags end up putting up those tags as fast as they can so they can get that sheet clear and just throw it away. In doing it that way, they are missing one very important element: Once those bin tags are up, they forget to stand back, look, and spot the places where you have to say, 'That would not make sense to the customer.' You'd be impressed by how many thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars we've made in our company just by having Bob stand back to look at the relationships among the item prices."

Repeat Information When Selling to a Group

When people shop together in groups of friends or as a group of family members, the total of their purchases tends to be greater than when they shop as individuals. At the same time, their memory for what you tell them as a salesperson tends to be inferior. They forget what they are told more than do shoppers you address as individuals.
     Repeat the information more often when selling to a group. You don't want to offend your shoppers, though, and repeating the same information word-for-word could offend—or at least bore—any shoppers in the group who did understand you the first time and remember what you said. To lessen the chances of offending, look at the different members of the group as you repeat the information. Catch the eye of each of those who appear to you to have not understood.
     With some product information, you can repeat the message in different ways. Tell the group of shoppers verbally. Then show them written material that repeats the information. Next, demonstrate your points by showing the shoppers what you mean. And check for understanding by asking the shoppers their opinions about what you've said. Multi-channel teaching always helps improve learning. Because of the tendency of group shoppers to forget, it's especially valuable there.
     There are purchase situations where the forgetting can turn out to be useful. Researchers from Indiana University found that when members of the group are presented brand information, it disrupts memory for the brand's competitors in that product category. The effect is strongest when the group is collaborating in making the purchase decision. If you've decided that a particular brand would best serve both the needs of the shopper and the profit potential for the retailer, repeat information about that brand, but not about the competitors.

Stay in Touch for B2B Sales

In our overall economy, the dollar figure for business-to-business sales is larger than the dollar figure for sales to individual consumers. This means there can be opportunities for high profits in your B2B sales. Because B2B sales put special emphasis on the personal relationship between the customer and the salesperson, know who does what regarding each sale:
     Initiators: Who identifies the need for your product or service? Talk with these people to be sure you understand the need to be met. You don't want your business to be remembered for selling a solution to a problem that didn't exist.
     Gatekeepers: These are the people who are formally given responsibility for limiting the information available to the organization. Purchasing agents might maintain lists of approved vendors and required product specifications. Stay current on what the Gatekeepers expect of you.
     Influencers: Because Influencers work outside the formal network, it would seem hard for you, the retailer, to stay in touch with them. However, the most powerful Influencers are often those who have made similar purchases in the past, so keep Influencers informed about your latest and greatest products and services by keeping in touch with your past customers.
     Buyers: They sign off on the purchase from you. Purchasing agents could serve both Gatekeeper and Buyer roles. But if this is the first time you've dealt with this business, check to be sure. You don't want last-minute surprises about the terms of the sale.
     Users: These people might be the same as the Initiators. However, with purchases that take a long time to complete, there might be some different people who end up being the Users. Because you want to dazzle the users with the quality of your product or service, check in with the Users for a while after delivery.

Answer Customer Questions with Enthusiasm

After you've heard the same customer question a dozen times, do you look the next customer who asks you that question straight in the eyes and say, "Good gosh. Don't you know ANYTHING"? Well, okay, maybe not, but I'll bet your staff who are asked the same question repeatedly can forget how important it is to enthusiastically welcome customer questions. After all, questions signal the customer's interest in making a purchase from you.
     Whenever you answer a customer's question with enthusiasm, expect the customer to become enthusiastic. If that doesn't happen, analyze why. Maybe you misunderstood the question. Maybe you've not noticed whether the customer wants your answer to consist of product specifications or general reassurance. Customers usually want specifications pre-purchase, but after making the purchase, they're usually seeking reassurance.
     Essential to enthusiasm is a smile. Unfortunately, some people otherwise qualified to do retail sales have great difficulty putting a smile on their face or in their tone. They don't belong on the sales floor, at least until their stern look eases. Sometimes there is temporary sadness which will disappear if you have the employee start working in a different department, where they'll be energized by getting a whole new set of questions.
     Enthusiasm works the world over. But the way that enthusiasm should be displayed does depend on culture. When Wal-Mart first opened stores in Germany, employees were expected to greet customer questions with a smiling, enthusiastic welcome. Shopper analyses showed that the customers thought this type of enthusiasm fit better with Oktoberfest than with a Wal-Mart shopping fest. The customers felt the sales help were flirting with them.

      It was time to keep up the enthusiasm, but tone down the smile.