10 Brilliant Responses to the Customer Who Is 'Just Looking'

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Imagine you walk into a store and are interested in buying a gift for your spouse. A salesperson quickly approaches and you quickly, and mindlessly, respond, “I’m just looking,” and wave him off. Perhaps you want some more information, you might have a question or two, or maybe you don’t even know what you want -- you just know that you don’t want to be pressured. Millions of people in retail showrooms around the nation today are telling salespeople “I’m just looking” as a defense response mechanism, an automatic response we make because of previous bad experiences with salespeople.

There is a difference between a customer giving an objection and a defense response. You can’t be successful in sales without learning the difference and mastering objections. Salespeople believe falsely that “The price is too high”, “I’m not buying today”, or, “I need to talk to my wife,” are objections, but they are not. You need to know how to handle them if you are ever going to sell anything.

The untrained will leave the customer alone, likely not selling them anything. You need to understand that, “I’m just looking,” is a good sign -- they are looking! Here are some ways to handle the customer who is “just looking.”

1. “My best customers do the same thing. My name’s Grant, and yours?”

2. “Great, my job is to find you the right product that fits your needs and wants at a cost you can agree with, even if you’re just looking.”

3. “Excellent, no problem. Would you be looking for something bigger or smaller than what you have now?”

4. “Excellent, we have a great selection of products to choose from, what are you most interested in looking at?”

5. “Let me know what you’re looking for and I’ll point you in the right direction so you don’t waste any of your time.”

6. “Let me know what you’re looking for and I’ll put together some information together for you.”

7. “That’s why we display our products, so you can see what we have—where would you like to start looking?”

8. “You can kill as much time here as you’d like, so take as much time as you need.”

9. “When you are more serious, in the future, do you think you’ll be going for a bigger one or a smaller one?”

10. “My job is to give you all the time and information necessary so when you do get around to making a decision you’ll consider us.”

The point is that you need an arsenal of responses locked and loaded for the customer that is “just looking”. If you get customers saying the same thing over and over again, you must figure out responses to help you move forward with the sale. Your income depends on your ability to make sales, and making sales is dependent on your ability to handle any defense response mechanisms that your customer says.

Do you know the difference between objections and complaints? This week I’m doing a live webcast on Mastering Objections. Time is running out.

Written by: Grant Cardone

Credit: Entrepreneur.com

How to deal with customers who are not right

Remember, the customer is not always right. And, for the sake of your business and your sanity, you need to address a bad customer right away. "The customer is always right" is a motto which exhorts service staff to give a high priority to customer satisfaction. The belief was popularized by pioneering retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field. They advocated that customer complaints should be treated seriously so that they should not feel cheated or deceived. So what do we do when the customer is the one, in an online world, doing the cheating and deceiving?

Here are three tips for dealing with a customer who isn't right.

Why do you need a website

Making good use of the Internet can be one of the biggest tools for growing your business; even for businesses that consider themselves as primarily offline. Despite the ever-increasing importance of an online presence for businesses of all sizes and descriptions, many businesses are not adjusting their strategy accordingly. Your performance can be enhanced greatly with your website and how you present your business to the world. Other reasons may include; 

Information Technology (IT) - A customer-oriented department

The IT department has a reputation of being removed from the customer service sector a bit too much, and being too wrapped up in their own techie things. They are often seen as rude, insensitive, authoritative and obstructive.

These stereotypes limit the effectiveness of the IT department and make it difficult for the IT staff to do their jobs effectively. This, in the long run, affects the business and makes everyone's day miserable. Therefore, there is the need to foster a relationship of friendship and trust, which will improve the efficiency and productivity of the IT department in an organization.

What About Marketing?

Banks, in most cases, have always been profitable and it has been easy for the banks to get clients to open accounts. Even though the banking industry is very competitive, banks have always had the customer coming to them for banking facilities. Banks hardly win customers by going to the consumer; with a presentable branch and great customer service, the customer is easily won.

Now bankers are being threatened by the likes of retail outlets such as supermarkets that have so much information about their customers. Most of these customers would visit these outlets whether offline or online than go to their local banks. Some banks are struggling to get their customers to log on to their websites and use the online banking facilities but these same customers will be found online visiting online retails sites such as amazon.com.

Making the Uniqueness of your Brand Known

Imagine this; you have finally been called for an interview you have been looking forward to for months. Now is the moment of truth and you do not want to miss any detail;  you bring out the new skirt suit and shoes you have been saving for this special day; all necessary documents set and confidence hoisted;  you are indeed poised and set for action. You get to the organisation’s premises; you are ushered to the waiting room and then boom! It happens; two other candidates, all but their faces, are rocking the same outfit as you are. This was totally unexpected and you do not have any backup plan. What are you going to do? For some people, this will be like the derailing moment of their life or more like the Titanic sinking slowly with just twenty lifeboats onboard. Now the question is; how do you convince your prospective employers that despite wearing the same outfit as the others, you have something unique your fellow applicants do not possess? This is where advertising comes in. You need to create awareness about yourself; enough for your potential employers to take action, in other words, choose you!

Finding Innovative Ways to Play the Name Game

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, organizations hate missing an opportunity to leverage their assets. It is an instinct that has led many to consider whether they can get more out of their names – that is to create corporate brands in addition to their product brands.

The question is particularly relevant for companies in the consumer-goods industry, which typically market their wares under a variety of different names such as Kasapreko’s Alomo Bitters, Unilever’s Dove soap or Nestlé’s Maggi Mixpy.

Ambush Marketing

2014 is here with us; bringing in its wake the FIFA World Cup tournament. This is possibly the biggest sporting event in the world. Everyone is talking about the World Cup; who made the list, who is tipped to win, etc. Even me, a sworn anti-football fan is writing about it now. 

Well, while some people (very few), like me, want to run away from this event, others are over the moon about the opportunities that come with it; footballers are eager to show what they are made of, countries are doing all it takes to make sure their teams have the right preparation that will help them win their matches, fans are excited to travel to Brazil and cheer on… In the background are marketers and advertisers, who will be taking advantage of this global interest to advertise and market their brands.

Real Time Marketing - The Power of Now

Some years ago, it was rare to get information or news around the world just when it happened. When an event happened in one part of the world, it took days or sometimes months before the news got to the other part of the world. However, the story is different today, the world has become, what some experts call, ‘a global village;’ information reaches people from one continent to the other within a blink of an eye. Now you can get access to information concerning new inventions and you do not necessarily have to be in the country where it took place. Why? Because we live in a real time now.

Good Product vs. Good Marketing

The ultimate goal of a company is to deliver a product or service to its consumers. Having a good product is a given. Consumers expect your product or service to be good. But having a good product is almost certainly not enough to ensure success. As a general rule, sales and marketing success is a function of how your product or service is perceived by customers. It does not matter what you think about your product or service. It ONLY matters what customers think about it.

 

The Future of Branding

Brands are more like “best friends” – they form an important part of our lives, carry specific meaning for every individual and are accepted or rejected based on how well they keep promises. Brands are so ingrained in our daily lives that we cannot do without them.

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

 

Signs That your Brand is Headed for Trouble

Personal Branding: You Must Build Your Digital Empire

Consumer Psychology

                                                                             

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The key object of every marketing strategy is to develop lucid customer-specific solutions that are superior to competing solutions. To achieve this objective with precision involves understanding the psychology of the target markets who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of that solution.  Developing the solution is only one part of the equation, the target market needs to be aware of the solution, they must believe that it is unique to their needs and also have faith that it is superior to competing ones available. This part of the equation even makes the relevance of understanding the consumer’s psychology more crucial.

Customer Service: Hotlines and Their Myths

 

Customer service in Ghana is as real as the Faun in Pan’s Labyrinth. No seriously, think about it. How many times have you not felt like a service provider was acting like they were giving you freebies when you are actually paying for the service? Sometimes you enter a shop to buy something with YOUR money and the attendants make you feel like you are some homeless beggar asking for handouts. Usually, these people get away with this.

Today, however, my rant is not about customer service as a whole, it is a little targeted at hotlines and the seriousness and attention companies pay to them. It is like most Ghanaians take the name of hotlines seriously… it is actually so hot that no one dares to answer these lines lest they get burnt or scalded. I live in the technology era where I believe everything should be a click, email, text or phone call away, but no! Companies are good at frustrating their clients.