Shhh: The Secret to Closing More Sales in Retail
By Bob Phibbs
How do you move store visitors from shoppers to customers?
In the Broadway musical Hamilton, the character Aaron Burr offers this advice to the fast-talking Alexander Hamilton, “Talk less, smile more.”
Here are five ways to do just that.
1. Pause after the shopper has spoken. This sounds obvious but it isn’t. Product knowledge specialists or newbies, particularly those with no retail sales training, get their self-worth by showing what they know and trying to avoid awkward silence. Training to pause before speaking ensures the shopper has finished their thought and gives the sales associate time to respond.
2. Restate before offering solutions. In that pause, you want to be sure to have understood the real reasons the shopper is looking for a new, replacement or upgraded product. Using the pause beforehand, you focus on the real frustration — it is too heavy, worn out, never worked and so on. Understanding the reasons or emotions that led the shopper to your store will frame the sale.
3. Ask clarifying questions. This is where so many poor salespeople jump the gun and start rattling off options from financing to delivery and various models to a litany of features. To keep you from talking so much, try to clarify what is most important and listen to the answer.
4. Give only one solution at a time. If I were standing in front of you holding a goldfish in my hand and I said you can only talk about one product feature — from the hundreds it could have — or I’ll squish the fish, which one would you tell them? Know your most important feature and give it first. And be able to connect that one feature to a benefit as if you were talking to a friend over a cappuccino. Leave the lingo and minutiae out of it.
5. Ask yourself, why am I still talking? Being concise is a learned trait. One of the hardest things to balance is the need for active listening and the need to speak. If you ever question whether you are talking too much, train yourself to notice how much you speak. Just get to the point, the only point — and make one point at a time.
If you’re seeing people in your store who are not converting, consider the training of your associates to see if it leaves out how to build rapport and the structure of a sales process. A big clue this might have happened is hearing shoppers tell associates, “We have to think about it,” as they walk out of your store.
So, how can you increase retail sales?
Customer engagement leads the shopper to buy more than they stated they came into your store for.
Many salespeople don’t realize they slow down a sale by pushing as much information on a potential customer as possible. That’s because too much information presented too early in the sale confuses the shopper and often makes them ask the associate to restate the information or repeat themselves because the shopper wasn’t ready to hear it. Shopping had become work they didn’t expect they’d need to do.
The key to talking less to make more sales is to give only the necessary information the shopper requires when they need it to make a purchase. Anything more and you risk losing the opportunity for them to buy from you altogether.
Bob Phibbs, known as the Retail Doctor, is a renowned expert in brick-and-mortar retail. As CEO, he provides international business strategy, customer service expertise, sales coaching and marketing mentorship. An author of three books and motivational speaker, Bob recently expanded his online retail sales training program, SalesRX. This on-demand platform has led 83 per cent of clients to achieve double-digit growth within six months.