Selling is not an art–it is an act of common sense. Rather than wasting time creating the perfect pitch, inventing a fantastic gimmick, or crafting discounts and special offers, focus on getting back to basics–the fundamentals of human interaction.
1. Make your first contact count. The first moments you spend with your customer will set the tone for any purchase that might happen thereafter. Approaching a customer with kindness, substance, and clarity unlocks a customer’s desire to buy more than anything else. I had made plans to meet some business contacts for dinner last week, and had reserved a table at a nice restaurant for the occasion. There were 4 people attending, including myself, and all were coming from different places. When I arrived 5 minutes before the scheduled reservation, I went to the hostess stand to check in. I gave her the reservation name, and number in the party. Instead of welcoming me and telling me I was the first to arrive, she curtly asked if everyone in my party was present. Because the tables were all out of eyesight, I told her I did not know. Rather than letting me know that no one else had arrived yet, she told me I would be seated when my party was complete, in automaton style. Instead, I found a table at a place nearby, and met my guests there, leaving her 4 diners short for the evening.
2. Give your customers your undivided attention. By nature, people don’t like to feel like burdens interrupting someone who has better things to do. On the other hand, they don’t like to be ignored either. The happy medium is making them feel like you are focused on them. When they sense that you are really listening, they ask questions, offer objections they would like to have solved, and ultimately prepare themselves to say yes. In other words, they sell themselves. The woman who saw me looking at gift items for children in her boutique acknowledged me when I entered, but never bothered to get off her clearly personal phone call to come and connect with me. I was looking for gifts for 4 of my son’s friends that day, and probably could have found them all in her store, but I needed some guidance and expertise that only she could provide, and she chose to focus on everything but me.
3. Don’t ask customers to buy without seeing the menu. At a restaurant where I eat fairly often, I noticed that they stopped bringing me the menu. The server obviously figured I was a regular and decided I didn’t need it anymore. While it’s nice that she paid attention to my face and treated me like a frequent guest, she didn’t help her company’s or her own bottom line in so doing. By removing the menu, she wiped out her chance to tempt me with the day’s specials or an extra dessert, diminished my ability to order something new (and perhaps more expensive), and eradicated her hope that in my haste or hunger, I would over-order.
4. Find out what your customers need, rather than telling them what you want them to buy. I went to a housewares store near my house the other day, and the girl at the counter told me that I could get a buy-one-get-one-free deal on some hand soaps they had placed in big bins near the register. I took a pass. I wasn’t shopping for soap, and I wouldn’t have pickled up the brand on sale even if I was because it’s not the kind I use. Her company was trying to use her interaction with me to extend the sale, which was good, but they were coming at it from their needs, not mine. They wanted to get rid of the extra stock of hand soap much more than they cared about what I needed to buy. Had they asked if I had found everything I was looking for, or even looked at the contents of my cart and suggested some auxiliary items to help me make more of my purchases, I would have easily added more to my tab.
5. Don’t ever stop selling. Even as you ring up a customer or walk him to the door, know that the sale is not over. Last week I went to the grocery, and as I walked away from the register, I realized I had forgotten something I needed. I glanced back at the line I had just waited in, and decided I would have to live without it. Had someone seen the hesitation in my step, and asked if I needed something else, I would have said yes. Had they offered to run and grab it for me, or even just to green light me back to the register so I could bypass the line, I would have turned around in a heartbeat and made the purchase. A customer on the threshold of the exit is no less and no more a customer than one on her way in.
Customers buy when they are engaged, informed, seduced and convinced. Every employee at every company has the capacity to be kind, provide answers, enchant, and persuade, which means every company has the necessary tools to help customers purchase more and more often.