What Free Information Are You Gathering?

Every time a customer walks through the front door an impression is made. Just like a security scan at the airport that is trying to capture information from the person being scanned, our eyes make instant judgments of those people who cross the threshold of our stores. When people are well dressed, wearing perfect make-up with every hair in place, we tend to place a higher value with this type of person. Many of us will make the assumption that a well-dressed and well cared for person might have more financial strength than someone who might come in wearing dirty jeans, a t-shirt with holes in it, grease stains, unkempt hair and might even have a less than pleasant body odor.

Another way of looking at this scenario is that we tend to discount the value of the “messy person” while we hold the well-dressed person in higher esteem. Along with the way someone is dressed, we tend to judge people by the car they drive. Someone who is driving a late model Cadillac, Mercedes, or Lexus is certainly believed to have more money than someone who is driving a 10 year old Buick. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore.

We are living in the age of “stealth wealth.” Do we have to look any further than Steve Jobs as the perfect example of the type of behavior that downplays the importance of materialistic adornments? The real problem is that rich people just don’t look like rich people anymore, or perhaps they do. When people are comfortable within their skin and know what is important to them, they don’t need the impressions that appearances can give.

That is a wonderful altruistic way to live and if there were more people who lived their lives like that, retailers would be going out of business in record numbers. The truth is that people love to collect the trappings of a successful life. Think about the 30-something who leases the premium auto because it makes him feel good as he drives down the street hoping everyone will be watching. The woman who is constantly trading up her diamond to make it bigger and bigger for the personal high it gives her. The couple who stretches to get that bigger home, not that they need it, but because they want it.

To quote Michael Douglas’ famous line from the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good.” It moves economies, it creates jobs, it fosters great design and it makes a boring and unexciting world come alive, just like the lights on the Strip in Las Vegas. Let’s not judge people by what is important to them; let’s learn to appreciate that every person has the potential to become our best customers. Just as the person wearing the dirty jeans deserves the respect that your business has to offer, the same respect that Richard Gere had to insist upon when Julia Roberts went into a high-end store and was ignored. When Mr. Gere returned to the store he made it perfectly clear that they were disrespecting a customer who was bringing them a large source of business.

The real issue is; how do we control our natural tendencies of treating some people better than we treat others? Just because someone is dressed well or drives a late model car doesn’t mean that every sales associate is going to put them on a pedestal. In many cases they want to knock them off the pedestal as if to say, “What makes you better than me?” or “Who do you think you are?”

I recently worked at a high end jewelry store where the majority of the salespeople could not afford the products they were selling, yet they did a masterful job of feeling so fortunate to be able to work and play in an environment with the nicest things in life. It’s not just about celebrating one’s wealth; it’s about celebrating the excellence of the products we sell and the creation of those products. It’s the celebration of the designers who design those products. It’s the celebration of celebrating.

The customers who walk across our threshold are not as plentiful as they once were due to increased competition and, of course, the internet. None of us have the right to pick and choose like we once did. This is a simple lesson with far reaching affects.

The bottom line is; who gives us the right to decide who our customer will be? We win some, we lose some, but we dress for them all.