A little story....

Sunday my wife and I are out for a drive and stop in a small boutique wine shop in Clifton VA, very quaint. It's a high end store and we browse the racks - I couldn't find the Italian section and the owner of the store came over and asked if she could assist. I told her I was looking for a Classico Chianti and couldn't locate it in her store. She took me over to it and it was priced at $ 34.95 a bottle. As I looked at the label she said "I have some other nice Italians that are less expensive than that" and she began showing me some Tuscany table wines in the $ 18 to $ 26 range. I was amused, because she was committing a classic error in sales, she began the downsale before she has the first objection from the customer. I didn't gasp at the price (having worked for Gallo Wines in my prior career, wine prices don't stun me) or otherwise give her any reason to think I wanted something 'cheaper'. I wasn't dressed very fancy as I had been cleaning out my garage earlier, so perhaps the jeans and t-shirt were the sign I wouldn't buy a $ 35 bottle of wine but that was a rookie mistake on her part. NEVER do that unless the customer states flatly - "I won't spend that much". Why would you abandon your product and encourage the customer to buy something less costly? The correct response would have been for her to explain to me the value of that particular bottle of wine and what I'm getting for my money. Finally I told her "I'm not interested in the blended table wine, I'll take that Chianti" and she made the sale - but she almost blew it, too.

This illustrates all too often what happens in furniture stores as well. Salespeople think all customers are price-driven and take them to the promotional items in the store - they didn't LISTEN to the customer to see what they were looking for. If they did listen, then they can get them the product they would like and expect. It's a process of determining needs, finding the right item, informing them of the benefits and then handling objections. You're not really selling until that first objection pops up anyways - until then you're just an order-taker. While everyone likes to save money, that's not always the driving force behind a purchase. What customers DO want to know regardless of price is "What is this product going to do for me?" And that is the art of sales. If I'm coming in your store for a Classico Chianti, why are you trying to sell me a Merlot?

At this past Market, one of the CEO's of the showrooms I visited said to me in front of several of his staff "Duane here is the greatest furniture salesman in the industry today, I kid you not, he does it better than anyone else in the trade". I laughed and said to him "Its not magic. Listen. Communicate. Be Honest. Know your Product. Follow Up." But its nice that he said that!