The unequal power of the hand-sell

I write a lot. I sometimes forget what I’ve written. I found this in a file, and thought it might be of interest. Or not. It sort of made me feel better about the future of retail wine stores. Also why some customers seem to have a pathological fear of wine salespeople.

Building trust with a wine customer is a lot different from building trust with Amazon. Amazon has algorithms to figure out what you like. But books and DVDs are not like wine. You can order a sample of the latest best-selling book or movie or .mp3, but you cannot order a sample of the bottle you want to drink tonight, or tomorrow night, or three or four years from tonight. Once you understand this, you will understand that you actually have quite a bit of power over the buyer, and you must not just defuse this but demonstrate that you really are working in the buyer’s best interest. This may require saying something unkind about something you have in inventory. Bosses, as you might imagine, get very uptight about this. Until they realize that you are simply responding to the buyer’s preferences, beneficial information in terms of making further recommendations, and that the product subjected to unkind characterizations vary depending on buyer preference.

The hand sell IS definitely a hugely powerful interaction. Combined with quality product and a proven reputation for successful recommendations, it can literally make a retail wine business.

The shop I work in is in a tourist spot so much of the traffic is transient. That makes the interaction more tenuous, except when the customer has enough knowledge to realize that the sales person knows what they’re talking about.

I found it disturbing to read a YELP review of the shop (which does some wines by the glass, weekend flights, and has a refrigerated dispensing unit) which took issue that we wouldn’t open a $40 bottle so the customer could taste before buying. We would have been happy to provide a taste of anything already open, but apparently this person wasn’t satisfied. Maybe thought we should be like a winery, though they don’t always pour ALL everything they will sell you. This guy obviously wasn’t buying based on hand selling.

This reminds me of a negative Yelp review of my favorite Tacqueria which complained that they put a wedge of lime on the fish taco. How was anyone supposed to eat that? It had the rind on and everything! [shock.gif]

My response to hand selling depends on lot on the approach, the venue, and the person. I’ll listen to what just about anyone at Chambers St. says since they’ve earned my trust. With an unknown salesperson I have to feel them out as much as they should be trying to assess what I like.

Hand selling can be powerful, IF and WHEN the salesperson actually listens to what the customer says they want and hand sells appropriately. Far too often, some retail sales staff want to make a recommendation before the customer has said anything substantive. Or, no matter what the customer says, the sales person wants to steer them in a particular direction (often to try to move something with a lot of inventory).

Bruce

I wasn’t there when the incident occurred, so I can’t comment on the context of what level of ‘trust’ could haven been built, or not, in a short time. I do get the feeling sometimes that people just think we can open anything for them and then sell the rest by the glass. No problem with them asking, but a bad YELP review for saying no???

Hand selling can be powerful, IF and WHEN the salesperson actually listens to what the customer says they want and hand sells appropriately. Far too often, some retail sales staff want to make a recommendation before the customer has said anything substantive. Or, no matter what the customer says, the sales person wants to steer them in a particular direction (often to try to move something with a lot of inventory).

Bruce[/quote]

Absolutely. Selling begins with listening.