Sell more by NOT selling! That is Apple’s new sales philosophy.
What do they mean by that? It’s all about solving customer’s problems, educating them, and getting them so passionate about Apple gadgets that they simply have to have one. Cool eh? It seems like a new approach and one that is working for them according to the stats. More people visit Apple’s 326 stores in 3 months than visit Disney’s 4 theme parks in a year! That’s about 60 million customers! Apple’s annual retail sales per square foot are $4,406, higher than any other retailer on the planet.
So what can we learn from their approach? Their formula for success in their stores pivots around a casual atmosphere and intensive control of how employees interact with customers. No detail is left to chance, the customer experience is orchestrated to the nth degree including what is pre-loaded onto the demo machines. It is a well known fact that customers will return to your store if the experience is good, however it is the culmination of all their interactions with your company touch points that give them the overall feeling of what it is like to buy from you, and in a highly competitive environment, nothing can go wrong. Sales assistants are taught to interact with customers and to help customers solve problems. They receive no commissions, however there are high performance expectations and if a sales assistant doesn’t make the grade they are re-trained or moved to another position.
So is it really so new? It’s certainly a different approach than the one our grandparents would have used. In many cases businesses still believe that an intimate and complete knowledge of their products will be enough to sell to their customers. Their sales assistants are talking in jargon and acronyms that go over the head of their customers. This is far from relationship building, in fact in many ways it looks like they can’t relate to customers and see themselves as superior. Old style selling was all about your products, their features, advantages and benefits. New style selling is about customers, their lifestyle, their dreams, their needs and wants. If you can understand these things then you can use your expertise to show them just the right thing to solve their problems and enhance their lifestyle. So, yes it really is about solving customers problems, not selling stuff – it’s subtle, but its important that your team can tell the difference.
Getting your team to understand and use sales techniques so that they can easily strike up a conversation and understand what the customer is looking for is one thing, getting them to use it all the time is another. Apple closely manages their sales assistants and the service that they give to their customers. The same top-end experience that happens in one store must happen in the other 325 stores and it has to happen every time, for every customer.
Having strong policy and procedure around service, sales and a customer moral code gives the structure to grow revenue. There is no other way to get brand domination. So what can we easily look to implement in our stores that will take us that step closer to the ‘new’ model of a bricks and mortar store?
1) Have a sales process that is written down and that everyone uses.
2) Have high expectations of your sales staff and their behaviours with customers.
3) Have a fair and objective way to monitor the interactions with customers.
4) Take action if their behaviour falls below your expectations.
Don’t allow poor performance, complacency and “I’d rather be somewhere else,” attitude to creep into your business. If it is already, go back to the beginning, set the ground rules and in the words from “Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. You need the right people who believe in offering outstanding experiences to customers to help you get loyalty from your customers and increase the value of your brand.
