This Episode: Two Stores, Two Cities, One Costly Retail Mistake
On two different trips to two different cities, I had two very different shopping experiences. In one store, I happily bought something I didn’t even know I wanted. In the other, I walked out empty-handed. So what made the difference? It came down to how I was treated as a customer. And it’s something worth thinking about as the holiday shopping season gets underway.
Speaking of the holidays, let’s kick things off together at our Holiday Sell-A-Bration this Wednesday, November 11th at 1 PM Eastern! I’ll share some quick holiday selling tips and tricks, along with plenty of ideas, energy, and cheer to help you get your season started right.
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2 towns, 2 stores, 2 entirely different experiences, and 2 entirely different outcomes. Hey, it’s Bob, and in this episode of Real Retail TV I’m going to explore two different experiences I’ve recently had on the road. Uh, disclaimer. One of these experiences in Philadelphia, the other is in San Francisco. These experiences have nothing to do with the quality of the towns, just particular stores. So, uh, we were In Philadelphia for the Platinum Mastermind Group. Amazing meeting. If you’re a successful retailer who wants to up your game, consider joining the Platinum Mastermind Group, but everybody went to the Reading Market and, you know, it’s, it’s small booths like, you know, uh, 6 by 10, you know, small booths. You’ve probably been in a holiday market like that, a market like, something like that. And I wandered into really real ginger. Two people working the booth, uh, and, uh, most of the booths only had one. Most booths had somebody standing behind the counter. This booth had one person behind the counter, the register, and the other on the floor. And this person engaged me skillfully. Uh, he talked about ginger. He asked me if I liked ginger. He said, try this. He talked about the benefits of making, of using this ginger in a tea. And I didn’t know I wanted a $30 packet of ginger. But by the time it was done, I left and I was happy that I bought this ginger. It makes delicious tea. Uh, you know, he talked about the health benefits. He engaged me and he sold me and I was happy that he sold me. This is an important thing. The engagement was real, the caring was real, and the sale was real. $30. Now, let’s fast forward and uh Susan and I went to San Francisco to meet our oldest son, Joe, who lives there now, and our youngest boy, Sammy flew in from Argentina where he spent a month backcountry skiing. So if the four of us are together, wonderful. Haven’t been together since Christmas. And uh Joe has a favorite bookstore, and the Nagins love books, and the Nagins love independent bookstores, and the Nagins love to spend money at independent bookstores. So we went to Joe’s favorite bookstore. And we walked in and no one acknowledged us. Now, this is not a bookstore filled with Lee Child and Janet Ivanovich. This is a store filled with literature. It’s a real bookstore, not that. Bookstores that sell Lee Child and Janet Ivanovich aren’t real bookstores, but this is a, you know, it’s a, a bookstore that appeals to people who love to read and who love good literature. And we went in and I wandered around and I spent time browsing and no one ever even acknowledged me. Now, I understand that often the vibe in a bookshelf, in a bookstore is to let people browse and I get that and I loved browsing, but here’s the deal. If someone would have just engaged me a little bit. You know, asked me what I liked to read, asked me what I was reading now, asking me if I was looking for a particular genre or a particular style of books, that person would have been off to the races. When somebody engages me and makes recommendations for me and to me, I tend to buy 23, or 4 books. Instead, I walked out buying no books. Now, this doesn’t show up in the point of sale system. This doesn’t show up as somebody came in and didn’t buy because they weren’t engaged. This just doesn’t show up. It’s invisible. I know this, uh, store didn’t have a door counter. Because a door counter would imply that they were interested in selling statistics, and I looked to see if there’s a door counter because this is the sort of thing I do. And so I think that there’s an important thing going on here. Number one, I didn’t know I wanted this. I didn’t feel pressured. I didn’t feel manipulated. I didn’t feel, uh, uh, I didn’t feel like I was getting that hard sell. I was sold skillfully. I was sold successfully. I have a $30 bag of ginger that I’m excited to use once my big jar of ginger. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, but If you don’t have skilled people out on the floor engaging your customers, you’re losing money. End of story period. Let’s go back to this idea. Selling, uh, good selling isn’t manipulative, it isn’t tricky, it isn’t pushy. Good selling is about helping your customers get to a perfect purchase, and that is exactly what they did at Real rear Really, real ginger. Congratulations to them. And by the way, 3 or 4 other people from the platinum mastermind group bought there too. Why? Because there was a skilled salesperson successfully engaging them. Now, let’s go back and compare that to my experience in San Francisco. They could have, they could have easily gotten $100 from me. And I would have been happy to spend it. I would have been happy to have spent it. I would have been happy to have those books. But they didn’t. And whether they think that selling is bad or whether it’s not part of their culture or whatever, the people never even looked up and acknowledged us or me anyway. And I just think that this is just such an important lesson, so important for, uh, such an important thing for us to think about as we go into the holidays because The teams that are trained, the teams that are skilled, the teams that care, the team members that engage are the people who are going to get the business. And assuming you’ve got the right merchandise, assuming that you’ve trained your people to sell in that, in, uh, that customer-focused, perfect purchase mentality, Those are the stores, and I hope that you are one of those stores that gets the business that Creates the kind of customers that come back throughout the year, you know, that you’re the kind of stores that make people want to shop at independent brick and mortar retailers. So I hope my little tale of two stores got you thinking and most importantly, I hope that my tale of two stores inspired you to start working with your Your team right now. Give them the skills so they can engage and sell skillfully. Give them the skills so that they are comfortable and confident talking about your products during the holidays. Give them the information about your products so they can speak about it intelligently and make the right recommendations. Do the work now. and reap the rewards in the next several weeks. All right, I hope that you found this helpful. If you did, I’d love to have a comment down below. Otherwise, I’m Bob and I’ll see you again next week.
Thanks for the reminder. Customer engagement is everything. you can go anywhere and get treated with enthusiasm. Trust me , people enjoy themselves and smile and the money will follow.