6 Ways to Win Over Retail Customers Who are Price Checking with Apps

Retail customers are in your store, asking personal friends and social media connections about the products you have for sale. Yesterday I blogged about what they were doing and about people checking out products in your stores and then 1 in 8 goes online and buys it over the Internet. Here are 3 ways to overcome that. 

1. Go and talk to them.

Obviously if they are talking on the phone, wait until they are finished. Don’t ask them if they have been fixed up. Ask them open ended questions, perhaps about the product they are looking at. Learn about them as people. People do business with people and the old adage “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is very true.

2. Get to know them.

When people are focussed on price and features that are on the box, the majority will not understand the implication and using the apps to find out who has the best deal will likely have them buying the wrong product. For example, if it is a home theatre or home stereo, what is it going to be used for. Who will be listening to it? What sort of music do they like to play. What are the room dimensions, how much space do they have? What do they want to connect it to as in other devices like TV, Internet, DVD, other rooms? Will it be future proofed? For example, my home theatre only has one digital input, but I need two.

Don’t forget to keep using their names, names are important and this is a great way to build a relationship.

Tupelo Hardware Store

3. Give them an experience.

Once you understand the customer’s needs, you can recommend and demonstrate products, try to find some demo music relevant to the customer’s taste. You might be able to upsell them. You will certainly find that by using your sales skills and painting word pictures of what life is going to be like after they have purchased the right solution, because its not a set of boxes they are buying, they will be thrilled with their purchase.

4. Offer them a bundle. 

Often there are additional things they are keen on buying, but perhaps don’t have budget for. While they are in your store, you have a captive audience. Let them know they can get a deal for buying more things. If they are asking about products that you don’t have good knowledge on, bring in a colleague ‘expert’. There is always finance, free delivery or other things you can offer. If they buy a bundle, throw in an accessory for free. There are always relevant items in stock that have little cost that can add value to the transaction.

5. Continue the relationship.

Give them your business card. Let them know they can contact you any time during working hours, even tell them what day you are not in the store. Ask if you can put them on your email list so you can invite them to in store member only nights. Put them in your CRM. Think about their lifetime value.

 6. Phone them a week after the purchase. 

This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it is very well received. Ask them how the product is working for them, make sure they are happy with their purchase. You have plenty of dead time when you could be managing the relationship. Whatever your industry, people aren’t one time customers, one day it might be a stereo, 6 months later it might be a vacuum cleaner. Do it right and they’ll come straight to you instead of using the app.

Of course you can also embrace the app and use them to your advantage, but that’s another blog, which you will find if you come back:)

I would love your feedback on your retail experiences.