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Recognizing the opportunity to increase sales with the existing foot traffic in a retail store is not new to us – it is our business. Our company, Smart Circle, provides assisted sales services in retail locations like Best Buy, Home Depot, Sam’s Club, and Costco. When we are in a store, we are not magically creating a new consumer – we are working with the existing foot traffic and increasing sales in different categories from lead generation to product sales by 500–2000 percent. This utilization of the existing foot traffic is one of the greatest untapped assets we see in our retail partners today.

There have been many studies about consumer behavior – entering the retail store, spending time at the checkout, where to approach the consumer, and how. Most of these studies take into account variables that are used for passive impressions on the consumer, generated by displays based on their walk-through flow in retail stores.

Utilizing these studies and consumer surveys to increase sales by just a couple of percent is the status quo in the retail industry. Recognizing the real value in these analytical exercises is to adopt passive display-driven sales engagement into consumer interaction – engaging the consumer in one-on-one sales conversations. The old world rule – to not engage the consumer into initiated sales conversations while shopping – is just wrong. Our sales representatives are managed and trained to assist the consumer in his/her purchasing decision and to drive the attention of the shopper to products that are of interest to him. This is just good business, but unfortunately it has been lost in today’s retail environment by too many retailers.

Positive consumer engagement is not a passive activity; it is a dialogue initiated by sales representatives. With this notion, I like to introduce an article from Business Week. The most profound quote in this article is from Paco Underhill, a retail observer who films thousands of hours of shoppers’ behaviors a year for his retail clients: “There is no new retail customer!”

While reading, utilize the thought process of Paco’s analysis to develop better positioning of displays in retail stores and engage the consumer with sales representatives who are interacting and responding to consumers’ needs and wants.

[view the article from www.businessweek.com]

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 4:08 am and is filed under assisted sales, retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.