The Opportunity....That We Sometimes Forget
Posted on Tue, Dec 22, 2009
The Christmas rush is on and the folks in the Northeast were dealing with a blizzard on the "Busiest Day of the Year", the Saturday before Christmas. Will that day's sales be made up? Not really but generally the impact of these type of events is never as devastating as we first expect.
However, there is one thing that can be even more devastating than a crippling snowstorm before Christmas, and that is our attitude and the attitudes of our employees in relationship to after Christmas returns. (Many stores have a credit only policy on Christmas returns, especially those smaller boutique shops that sell time-sensitive merchandise. I am not here to debate the merits of such a policy. There are strong opinions on both sides of the argument and this piece isn't about that.)
When someone returns something to our store, they are giving us an opportunity to sell them even more than what they are returning. Many times we get our guards up because we assume that the customer is going to give us a hard time. That happens when you deal with 2 customers in a row who are making unreasonable demands. You got it. We start to think that every customer is going to be unreasonable. It's simply not so. We know it, we understand it, we can intellectually deal with it, BUT emotionally we take it so personally that we start to develop this belief that every customer is out to take advantage of us. It's wrong and every time we do that it just hurts our business. It's something I call Last Customer Residue -- you carry over the effect of one negative customer onto all of the customers who follow.
It's Showtime every time a customer walks through our front door. The Last Customer Residue Syndrome must end. Understand that customers today know that if they yell loud enough they generally get what they want. (Sad but true...It's never worth the fight.) They also know all of the right buzz words to use that can get under our skin. Such as: "everywhere else I get"; or "no one every told me that policy!" spoken as defiantly as possible; and the classic "I'm never coming back and I am telling all of my friends". (BTW they generally don't have any friends!)
4% of your customers belong to the PLO, Pushy Loud and Obnoxious. The rest are OK. Customers have Christmas cash. Maybe not as much as they once did, but they are also aware of the savings after a holiday as well and they plan on buying. They are giving us a great opportunity and we need to be able to capitalize on it. All it takes is a compassionate smile, a willingness to listen, help, and an attitude of how you can turn a return into a multiple sale.
They are NOT the enemy. They are the customer, and they are giving us an opportunity to do business with them. Seize the moment, remember my famous line, "Did you see this?" and SELL, SELL, SELL.
Have a wonderful holiday and let's get ready for 2010. The long recovery has begun.
