Two Ears, One Mouth
John Nesbit is a name familiar to many DiveRetailing.com readers. John works for PADI and travels across the country doing presentations on the business of diving. John recently told me about a seminar he did for a group of retailers in which he posed the following question.
“A customer walks into your store and asks to buy a popular product that you have in stock. It just so happens, however, that you personally prefer another, comparably priced product over the one the customer is asking for. The question is:
- “Do you simply give the customer what he wants, or….
- “…do you try to convince the customer to purchase the product you prefer instead?”
Bear in mind, the situation John describes was not one in which the salesperson was attempting to get the customer to consider a higher quality (and more expensive) product. Nor was it a case in which the dive store did not carry the product the customer wanted, and the salesperson was seeing whether the customer would accept what the store carried instead. No, this was simply a case in which the customer’s and salesperson’s choice of products did not coincide.
If you are an experienced retailer, you are probably thinking, “If all other factors are equal, for heaven’s sake, just give the customer what he wants.” John told me, however, that he ran into one store manager who insisted that, if he truly believed product A was better than product B, he was duty bound to do whatever it took to convince the customer of that fact.
And people wonder why so many dive stores fail.
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