I sometimes wonder whether some retailers ask themselves the following question:
Why should you provide better services if your clients are likely to buy anyway?
Absurd though this question may seem, the impression one gets as a client, at some stores, is exactly that. What puzzles me most of all is that nowadays it not getting easier to sell in the Brazilian retail market, because most products are now becoming more and more available at an ever higher number of POS, at practically the same prices; sometimes the only difference between one POS and the other lies in details such as the number of installments and their value. As a whole, in the Brazilian retail market, products now tend to be seen as commodities. If you analyze the situation from this point of view, you can easily reach the conclusion that the major distinctive factor should really be the services provided to the client, that is, the end to be gained by all possible means should be the providing of better, differentiated services, aggregating value to a product that could otherwise be easily found in hundreds of other Brazilian stores.
But this is not exactly what we see when we visit certain POS. What we find instead is that, in Brazil, the number of salespersons in getting smaller all the time, with a growing number of self-service stores that provide no services whatever to the consumer.
As an example I could mention something that happened recently while I was doing shopping for Valentine’s Day in a large chain of Brazilian clothing stores. My wife chose a set which consisted of three prices of clothes, one pair of slacks and two blouses, which were bound to each other by a safety device. When she took the clothes to the fitting room to check the size, she asked the saleswoman whether the safety device could be removed so she could try the clothes on. She immediately got a plain no for an answer: “We cannot remove the device.” Notice the utter lack of personnel training; in this case the person in question wore an identification card that said she was a “Department Supervisor”.
Attitudes like this are a lot more common than one may think. We can all understand the reason for the negative answer, but we have to remember that these rules exist in order to guarantee the sales operation control, and not in order to restrict the consumers’ actions. In this case the problem could have been resolved in a very simple manner: they could have provided a three-piece control in the fitting room, instead of a single piece control; when the client left the fitting room she would have to produce three pieces instead of one. Another solution would be to stick safety devices on each piece separately.
As retail professionals, we should carefully watch the purchasing behavior of our clients at the POS, as well as the reactions of our salespersons.
Retailer:
How much time do you spend watching the purchasing behavior of your clients at the POS?
The answer to this question will most certainly define the level of satisfaction of your clients, because the closer you get to them, the more you will know about them; the ensuing result will be better achievements in sales.
The training of the sales force is of fundamental importance in order to guarantee a high level of operational effectiveness, especially in situations when a quick improvising of solutions is required, because it is on such occasions that your store will prove itself different from the competition.
Have this in mind:
Tell me how your sales team solves all those unexpected problems that pop up everyday involving your clients and I will show you what kind of results you will obtain.
Also, we shouldn’t focus our attention on the sales team alone, because everybody - and I do mean all the employees at the POS - involved either directly or indirectly with the providing of services, should be ready to come up with quick, effective improvised solutions whenever these are required. Employees should not receive only the usual product-oriented training; they should be duly trained for adequate personal consumer attendance as well. This will assure positive results in the whole sales operation.