It’s Not What It Is, It’s What It Does (For You)

Approach, Benefit, Close

We used to run training seminars for retail personnel in our factory in Linden. We would invite a half-dozen or sales professionals and spend a couple of days giving them an education in our kind of menswear — textiles, design, manufacturing — and as a bonus, how to use this as a sales technique. We gave each of them a manual prepared by a sales training consultant, “The ABCs of Selling,” which stood for Approach, Benefit, Close.

The first part, something easy for the natural-born salesperson, was important to learn for those of us less confident types. “A” stood for Approach. To create a rapport, to reduce any tension and make it easy going from the start, the manual taught us to engage the customer as a friend, not an sales-prospect. To create an atmosphere of enthusiasm and mutual trust. First advice: “Don’t ask, ‘Can I help you?’ ever!” And don’t make small talk, about the weather or the traffic. Instead, go right to the products you’re offering. Say something like, “Hey. These sweaters just came in. We have them made for us in Scotland,” or something to directly engage the customer. As if you have a secret you’d like to share.

Features, Advantages, and Benefits

All this leads up to the essential thing: “B.” Above all, the heart of the ABC process, and perhaps hardest for the retail salesperson to master. Okay, it’s cashmere. Okay, it’s made especially for us. But are either of those facts important to the customer? The shopkeeper or merchandiser has made this decision and it’s their job to inform the sales staff of the benefit it offers to the wearer. The good merchant communicates these buying criteria to the staff with memorably positive emotion from the designer’s idea to the sales floor. Then the salesperson must listen carefully to find out which feature will satisfy the customer’s needs.

Presentation, the “B” phase, is a process with another helpful acronym F.A.B. Starting with Features, like fabric, design, cut, the obvious qualities of the thing itself. These attributes, however, have no meaning unless you can point out the Advantages they provide. If you really know the product you can tell the customer what it will do for them. This will lead directly to the most persuasive part of your presentation: the Benefits of owning it, of wearing it. Rather than say, “Isn’t it soft?” or, “That’s a hot color this season,” tell them what the attribute does. “You can wear it all day long in any weather and it won’t wrinkle.” (It’s practical and versatile.) Or, “That brings out the color of your eyes.” (Makes you more attractive.) “It will last for years and years.” (Saves you money.) Something compelling, practical, and most of all, relevant. The Feature must provide an Advantage which works to Benefit the buyer.

Properly presented, success is guaranteed, but there is one more technique to master: the all-important “C” of selling: the Close. How to listen, to read the customer’s mind, to know the right moment and what to say to get a positive decision. “So, shall I call the tailor?” for example. Or, better, “We have pants that will go nicely with that…” This leads to the add-on sale, the icing on the cake.

(But What About) The Catalog and the Internet

However, like so many things in this ever more impersonal world, the benefit to the customer may be something else. Something completely irrational. The excitement of paying a lot of money for sneakers with a famous logo, of buying (or of maybe just being able to buy?) a cardigan sweater from the Neiman Marcus website for $2650. No sales pitch of any kind; just a picture of a blue sweater. In the pages of the Gorsuch catalogs which arrive (no one knows why) in our mailbox, I am offered products unaccompanied by any persuasive word or idea, only the designer’s name, the fabric content, sometimes the country of origin, and the often exorbitant price. “Wool-Cashmere Sweater Jacket by Hermes. $3,750” Perhaps a customer most able to spend enormous sums of money is least likely to need a reason to do so, let alone the proper approach, presentation, or compelling comment? Let’s just say it’s another species of retailing; as different from the specialty store as is industrial seafood from fly-fishing. If the brand name or the picture in a catalog provides sufficient incentive is that all the customer needs to know? I suggest that the demise of the department store proves otherwise.

The quaint idea of offering fewer, better things and being able to explain not only why they’re better and why we’ve chosen to carry them, but why they will serve you better, more enjoyably over time, is the kind of business we’re in, and we are pretty sure it’s a safer bet in the long run.