How to Keep Up with the Customer-Led Sales Revolution

12/12/18

Retail computer salesThe retail landscape has undergone a quiet revolution over the last decade as customers gained access to almost unlimited research resources on the internet for their purchasing decisions. Whereas they once relied on companies and brands for information, today they source multiple websites to compare prices, read reviews, or converse with other customers.

Read on to understand how the present paradigm continues to evolve increasingly customer-led sales strategies as exemplified by Always Be Helping (ABH).

Avoid Bumps in the Customer Journey

With so many levels of information about products, solutions, and pricing at the fingertips of customers today, it is no wonder that roles in the buying process have flipped 180 degrees.

From a customer's point of view, businesses are no longer a must-have repository of information where they find solutions to their needs. Buyers are in the driver's seat when it comes to comparing and evaluating your tech products.

Fortunately, for the majority of customers, your store is still the last stop in their journey. Most customers prefer dealing one-on-one with a well-informed sales associate to validate their online research, interact directly with products, and complete their purchases.

Savvy retailers realize they are not necessarily where customers begin their quest. They are another step in the customer's exploration, which they are wise not to disrupt, lest the customer harbors regret about not having completed their purchase online.

Focus on the Customer Purchasing Process

A business’ customer-centric aptitude depends on taking to heart what it means to put the customer first in everything they do. This means sales staff must relate, from the customer's viewpoint, to finding solutions that meet their needs:

  • Foremost, your sales associates must be confident that their own objectives are met by focusing on the success of their customers.
     
  • Regardless of personal interests, sales staff strive to build lasting relationships with customers.
     
  • Sales associates look for ways to minimize any inconvenience to customers.
     
  • Your staff continually seeks ways to increase relevance in the customer journey.
     
  • In every decision made by sales associates in the selling process, customer satisfaction is top priority.

In short, a seamless customer experience plus fostering long-term customer relationships must drive the actions of your staff. If each member of the sales team can virtually step into the shoes of the customer before them, they will have acquired this critical skill.

Customer Engagement Through Always Helping

Conventional customer marketing strategies target customers via demographics, pushing information out on television, radio, and mail to try and gain their attention. 

Customer-centric selling, in contrast, acknowledges customer leadership in the buying process by seamlessly blending in with that process as another source of product "stories." This allows businesses to take part in customer conversations and build sustainable relationships with customers.

In this role, retailers are not telling, but listening and helping in order to understand their customers' needs better and to offer assistance. Such help may even extend beyond product information to learning how you might improve internal processes that enhance customer shopping experiences.

Principles of ABH

Always Be Helping is a smart tactic you can implement to elevate your customers in the engagement process. Its principles can be utilized at every step of a customer's journey from awareness to consideration to decision.

Once your sales staff adopts an ABH mindset, there are a multitude of ways to apply it:

  • Stores work hard to be a primary content provider in relevant channels. Instead of selling, they add real value to customer conversations by, say, providing background to technology trends. Product guidance must always be relevant and supportive.
     
  • Associates strive to fully understand their customers' goals and relevant solutions. Their active listening skills are fully engaged. Associates should even be prepared to offer solutions not directly leading to a sale, since customer satisfaction comes first.
     
  • Detailed PC product knowledge is a must for sales associates to help customers validate their research, sort out doubts, and guide them to relevant devices that meet short- and long-term requirements.
     
  • Above all, your sales staff must be authentic in their efforts to help customers. This requires adopting the customer's viewpoint wholeheartedly not just as a ploy to win their confidence. This mindset must also permeate all organizational levels involved in delivering customer value.

Give Your Sales Associates an ABH Edge

Your sales team is in a crucial position to implement the principles of Always Be Helping. Your training should encompass these methods to enhance customer journeys and ensure your associates impress customers with relevant, in-depth product knowledge that closes more PC sales.

The Intel® Retail Edge Program not only fine-tunes sales associates' product knowledge but improves their soft sales skills with relevant tips and strategies such as ABH. Encourage your associates to become a part of our robust and interactive community to stay on top of the latest information regarding Intel® products and technologies and how to best present them to customers for sales success.

Find out more today by clicking here!

 

 

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