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How do You Handle the “I’m Just Looking” Customer?
April 30, 2007
How do you handle the customer that says “I’m just looking”? First, I hope that you, as a salesperson didn’t instigate the customer saying I’m just looking by asking the age old question, “Can I Help You?” Through asking “can I help you” you are almost guaranteed to get back a “No thanks I’m just looking” response from the customer.
I believe that the whole concept of “I’m just looking” has gotten to the point where it is simply a programmed response from the customer, every time a salesperson says anything. In some cases the salesperson doesn’t even need to say anything and the customer still says “I’m just looking”.
I believe that when a customer comes into a store they should be greeted with a warm friendly greeting just as you would greet a friend of yours coming over to your house. Don’t pounce on the customer the second they walk in the door, give them a minute or two to get their eyes and ears used to the surroundings and then offer a nice, warm friendly greeting. At this point they may respond with “I’m just looking”. If not try to get into a non-business conversation with them, but if you can’t just ask “So what brings you into our store today?” At this point they will either tell you what they are looking for, or give you some version of “I’m just looking.”
No matter when in a presentation the customer says “I’m just looking” I would offer them a “verbal map” of the store. For example saying: We always welcome lookers here at our store, let me tell you where you can find things, over here we have a terrific ____ selection, our _____ is over here and our _____ selection is in this display case and so on.” As you are giving the customer a verbal map one of two things is likely to happen. They will say “Ok, thank you I will look” or they may come clean with you and actually tell you what they were looking for, or at the very least they will start heading in the direction of what they had in mind. Another option would be to start selling the store by saying something along the lines of: “We always welcome lookers here, let me tell you about a couple of things that you won’t find displayed. Then tell a company story selling yourself and the store.
Posted by Brad Huisken on April 30, 2007 | Comments (1)
