How To Sell To The Time-Stressed, Time-Starved Customer

When a customer is shopping while stressed for time it is up to the retailer to be able to optimize the time they spend in the store, no matter how brief it may be. They might have just popped in on their way home from work and need to get in, pick up a tool to make dinner, and get out. If that customer walks out of the store feeling like they have met their goal, they will feel satisfied about their experience and walk away with a good impression of the business even if they were only in the store for seven minutes. To achieve this, retailers must have a layout that is well merchandised to the footprint of the store and have sales staff make contact with the customer immediately.

Rich Kizer and Georganne Bender, of Kizer & Bender Speaking, are self-proclaimed consumer anthropologists. They are professional speakers who specialize in retail strategies and consumer research. Their presentations to retailers at trade shows, markets, associations, and private events reflect 25 years of experience and research they have conducted through focus groups, one-on-one customer interviews, and field work that involves observing customers on the sales floor as they shop, collecting pre- and post-shopping impressions, clocking shopping times and more. They also work primarily with independent retailers directly in their stores and do sales training with store associates.

“We look for the very best, and sometimes the very worst, and try to share those experiences with people so they don’t make the same mistakes; they can take advantage of those success strategies,” says Kizer.

Kizer & Bender point to the store layout as the starting point for accommodating time-starved customers. The store must be well organized so that a shopper can easily navigate, find what it is they’re looking for and get out. Think about the layout logically, so that every fixture and display is put in a specific space for an identifiable reason, not simply because there was an open space.

For example, the first five to 15 feet inside the store, depending on the size of the sales floor, is the “Decompression Zone,” where customers are unlikely to notice merchandise, no matter how great it may be. Once a customer has moved past that decompression zone, they begin to fully take in the store. They only begin to do that once they are at least five feet inside the front door and have adjusted to the new environment. That’s when they start to notice products. Avoid placing key merchandise too close to your front entrance.

Next, 90 percent of people will walk in and first look or turn to the right. “That area has to be impeccably merchandised to get people thinking about products and categories, and garnering not just one item, but more than one,” says Bender.

With a well-merchandised layout, a good salesperson is able to easily guide a customer towards what they are looking for, while giving that salesperson the opportunity to weave a story along the way. It makes the store a bit more of a treasure hunt to the customer without a big effort.

Another aspect of the story created for customers within the store involves signage. Story Teller signs tell a customer why they should buy something. Story Tellers might read, “Imagine being able to juice whole oranges in five seconds flat!” Product Seller signs are those that provide vital information on product specifications and include a price point. For a customer who is burning time, signs are a representation of the store that can help them make speedy decisions. After all, 70 percent of purchasing decisions are made in the store, says Bender.

The other part of the equation for the time-stressed customer is the interactions they have with retail associates. Customers must be greeted immediately with a quality greeting, not just a simple “May I help you?” Kizer & Bender suggest thinking about how you would welcome a friend who arrived to your home, keeping in mind that the customer relationship starts as soon as they walk in the door. In conducting exit interviews with customers after following them through the store with a stopwatch, Kizer & Bender will ask how long it took for them to be greeted. If the store is not good at greeting people, the perceived time will always be greater than the actual time. They might respond that it took 10 minutes to be greeted when in reality it was only four.

“Even with the person that’s on a mission, say something other than ‘May I help you?’ That will minimize the perception inside that person’s head,” says Kizer. “A person who wants to come in and run out quickly can have an incredible experience in their mind after they leave. It was really only a transaction, but they turned it into a great experience because of the way it was handled.”

It can also be helpful to visually assess a customer by their body language upon entering the business. A shopper who is walking at a fast pace and quickly looking back and forth is sending signals that they are in a hurry. Be sure to offer help to this customer, but don’t get stuck on thinking that they are only going to be in and out – your interpretation might be wrong, or the customer might change their mind about how much time they have once they’ve received some contact and feel more at ease.

Beyond the initial greeting, staff must keep in mind at all times that the customer is the most important asset in the store. A sales associates might go back to whatever task they were doing once a customer says they do not need help, but they must keep an eye on that customer in case they decide they do have some questions.

“At some point in time you determine that you need help, you’ve been in the store for a while and nobody’s approached you, or made eye contact, or said anything to you. That’s when people become stressed out and they start to think negative things about your store,” says Bender. “It’s one of those things that people turn on in a second, but we hear it over and over and over again in focus groups.”

It is especially important in the realm of kitchenwares to give customers guidance so they know and understand what their options are. Retailers and salespersons are the experts that need to impart knowledge to their customers.

“When you walk in a store you know that you want to buy a particular item, but there are 14 different ways that you can use them, so which one is right for you? That’s the key. A good salesperson can weave a story around it and say, ‘Let me show you how it works.’ … This just gives the customer confidence and, unfortunately, that’s what customers don’t get enough of when they walk into stores,” says Kizer.

It all boils down to the customer walking away feeling satisfied about their experience, no matter how much time they spend in the store. “If a customer walks in and they’re really in a hurry, they’re time starved, stressed out, thinking, ‘I need this and I need to get out of here fast,’ and they are able to do that – they’re thrilled to death. The next time they think about your store, they’re thinking about it in a positive way because they had a good experience,” says Kizer.

This story was originally published in the March 2015 issue of Kitchenware News, a publication of Oser Communications Group.