We have become extraordinarily sophisticated at engineering the sale and strangely unsophisticated at helping someone buy.
I was in a small retail shop on Cape Cod recently, wandering around without anything particular in mind. A nor’easter was expected that day, so my companion and I paused when I saw a rack of raincoats.
A woman working in the store was nearby, seemingly preoccupied with straightening things and various other tasks. She didn’t walk over the minute I touched something and ask, “Can I help you?” However, she was paying attention to what we were interested in. She didn’t hover or ask if she could help us with something. When we started looking through the raincoats and checking price tags, she said, “Those are from Spain.” She went on to talk in knowledgeable detail about the quality and caliber of these raincoats. This salesperson certainly knew her stuff.
I wish I remembered exactly what she said because that information changed the way I looked at the coat. A minute earlier I was thinking these are nice raincoats and looking at a price tag. Now I understood more about the product and thought it well worth the money. The price now had context. When we understand the value of something, we have something besides price on which to base the decision. I bought the raincoat, by the way.
Now, there was no need for her to hover. She had demonstrated her value to me and the hidden value of items in the shop, and then went on doing other things, confident I would come back to her if something else caught my interest, which I did.
We continued wandering through the shop, and I remembered I wanted a thank-you gift for the people taking care of my chickens while I was away. I went looking for her because by then she had become my person in the store, someone I trusted to help me find something. I gave her a rough idea of what I was looking for and she showed me possibilities, saving me time and adding to my enjoyment of the experience.
I made my purchases, picking up a few gifts as well. After the sale, she mentioned that if I liked the store and wanted to stay in touch, there was a QR code I could scan that would take me to their website.
I scanned it without hesitation. By then I wanted to stay connected to the shop. People do want help buying, they just don’t want to feel managed toward someone else’s objective. They want someone whose knowledge helps them make a good decision.
Think about the order in which all of that happened for a minute. She waited until the end to tell me about the QR code. By then I had bought things, asked for her help more than once and actually wanted to stay connected to the store. I never felt she was trying to move me through some predetermined sales sequence.
We spend an enormous amount of time figuring out how to sell things. Goodness, there are a lot of marketing mechanics in play, from sales funnels to lead magnets to email drip campaigns. These systems are designed to get the lead, nurture it, convert it, then close the sale.
And then there’s an actual human walking into a store. He or she may be browsing or may actually need help but doesn’t want to enter the uncomfortable sales stalking dance.
Those sales and conversion tools have their place. I just wonder how often we spend more time thinking about how to move someone toward the sale than why they would want to buy from us in the first place.
We’ve become preconditioned to expect the sales pitch. We know the website wants our email and the lead magnet wants our information. I’m pretty sure the salesperson wants the sale, too. So we arrive a little guarded before the first hello. Plus, we’ve built whole systems around the idea that their job is to separate the customer from his or her money. Isn’t that a terrible place from which to begin a relationship?
This explains why we walk into a store prepared to automatically say, “No thanks, I’m just looking.”
A good salesperson knows the brand, knows the products and pays enough attention to recognize when that knowledge can solve a problem or make someone’s life easier.
A frontline employee is representing much more than inventory, products or services; they are teaching you what kind of store or business you are in. The product knowledge shared by the woman in Cape Cod communicated what kind of store I was in and the caliber of what they carried. Her restraint communicated how customers were treated. Her recommendations revealed something about the store’s taste. And the QR code invitation came after I had already liked the place enough to want to stay in touch with the shop.
The entire experience had me reflecting on the store itself, and of course, me being me, I wondered—is this the store’s training and mindset, or is this the employee herself? And, if it’s the employee, what happens to the brand when a different employee greets customers? Or when the woman I met chooses to leave her employment?
I still don’t really know what the store’s brand stands for or what promise it consistently makes to its customers. I understood the store through a single employee. A strong brand gives frontline employees a clear understanding of what the company stands for, why people choose it and what experience it has promised to deliver.
A company with a clear brand should ensure its frontline people understand: This is who we are. This is why people choose us. This is what we want someone to experience when they walk through that door. Then give them enough autonomy to be very human about delivering it.
We have become extraordinarily sophisticated at engineering the sale and strangely unsophisticated at helping someone buy.
A salesperson can only be genuinely helpful if they know enough to help. Training provides the product or service knowledge, including the details and differences that make that knowledge useful in customer interactions. Employees also need the freedom to use their judgment because every customer walking through the door is different. That is how a good customer experience becomes repeatable. After all, brand consistency doesn’t come about by getting lucky enough to hire one naturally gifted person.
A great employee can absolutely create a great customer experience, but a strong brand defines the experience, trains its people to deliver it and makes sure the experience stays even when the employee leaves.
If your best employee left tomorrow, would your customers still recognize your brand?
Interested in Jennifer’s latest thinking? Check out all of her articles on Substack.
