Don't Talk Yourself out of a Sale

Here's a retail conversation I witnessed while holiday shopping yesterday:

Customer: (bringing jacket to cash-wrap counter) "I'd like to buy this"

Salesperson: "Oh, cool, I just bought something similar to this for my son"

Customer: "How old is your son"

SP: "14"

Customer: "Oh, my son is 14, too!"

SP: "Yeah, he one I bought had a similar print on it; these kinds of prints are all the rage with the kids right now."

Customer: "OK, that's good to know because I wasn't sure if he'd like this."

SP: "The one I bought was actually more of a sweatshirt than a jacket, though"

Customer: "Oh really? Where do you have those?"

SP: "I bought them at [insert store name here]; we don't have anything like that here."

Customer: "It's more of a sweatshirt than a jacket? Hmmm...I wonder if my son wouldn't prefer something more like a sweatshirt than a jacket."

SP: "It's really cool. They had plenty of them when I was there. It had a blue and black print on it, similar to this one."

Customer: "You know, I think I'm going to hold off on this jacket. Thanks for the information about [insert store name here]."

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I have three observations/thoughts:

1. This is an example of a retail clerk, not a sales person. I think businesses would be better off if they would hire (and train) more sales people than they do clerks.

2. One could make the argument, "It's just a jacket...no big loss to the clerk's employer." But my counter argument is this: If this sales clerk would learn that sales people shouldn't talk so much, she would sell more every day, so the issue goes beyond merely one jacket.

It goes to the root of how a sales person sees their role, and what skills they have in working with their prospects, especially when a sale is lost after the prospect announced they were buying an item. The customer didn't want a sweatshirt until the sales person started talking about a sweatshirt; the customer wanted a jacket, or she wouldn't have brought it to the cash-wrap to purchase it).

3. When a customer wants to buy something, sell it to them, smile, and quit discussing the product or the purchase. Don't be your own worst enemy. Don't talk yourself out of a sale.

Skip Anderson is a professional speaker, sales coach, and the Founder of Selling to Consumers, a B2C and retail sales training and consulting company. Subscribe to the free Sales Tips newsletter.