Peachtree Product Team

[#1]

 I had the worst shopping experience ever the other night. Ok, maybe not the worst but it definitely didn’t leave me with a warm fuzzy. I was shopping for a gift I needed for the next evening. Procrastination? No, never. I like to think of it as giving a lot of thought to something before committing. Long story short, I knew exactly what I wanted, had already been to 3 stores looking for it and finally found something that wasn’t perfect but it would do. The problem was that it wasn’t exactly what I wanted so the price seemed a little too high. The sales lady obviously saw the deliberation on my face and after I fully explained my situation (procrastination validation included), she told me that I could come back tomorrow and the item would be on sale. Tomorrow?! The store closes in 45 minutes but I have to wait till tomorrow to get a measly 20% off? Needless to say, I didn’t buy from the store – not that night nor the next day.  

What should she have done to retain me as a satisfied customer? Let me point you to a blog from Seth Godin entitled “Cheating a clearance sale culture.”  

…Two years ago, your customers might have said: "My time is really valuable, [so] it's okay if this is a little more expensive than the store down the street." These days, however, they willing to wait until the story they tell is, "I got a steal!" It would be a mistake, argues Godin, to respond by cutting prices across the board. Customers will likely interpret this not as a good deal, but as a sign that your company is in trouble; further, it reduces revenue from clients who didn't expect—or even want—a discount in the first place. 

Instead, Godin proposes giving every member of your staff the authority to knock a percent off the price of a product if a customer asks for a break or hesitates to close the sale. "For retailers or personal selling situations," he says, "you can give your staff a pile of 'manager's coupons' that they can just whip out ... peel one off and quietly hand it to the waffling customer." The tricky parts are to manage the distribution of these discounts and make sure that this tactic isn’t leading the actual sale. 

“Is this something you want to do? Probably not. Almost certainly not. But it might be something you have to do. The alternative is shoppers who walk out of the store and leave you with nothing.” What you lose in cash you gain in customer loyalty and satisfaction. It would have worked for me!