Involving More of the Senses makes $ense in Retailing…
By Craig Miller, Senior Vice President, Procaps LP
Go Ahead… Try them on for Size!
One of the most effective retail sales techniques known is to simply get your Customers to hold, touch, smell, hear, or actually wear your products. For decades, marketing studies have consistently proven that fundamentally, the more human senses you can involve, the higher your odds of completing a sale.
When a potential Customer merely views a displayed gun, mask, barrel or tank on a wall or in a counter, it does evoke a mild response. But statistically, retail shoppers become far more emotionally involved, and therefore far more likely to buy, when they’re gently urged to actually interact with an item, which automatically engages more of their senses, which in turn measurably increases your completed sales each day.
The simplest and smoothest way to do this is to simply hand the Customer a product they’ve shown interest in, or better still, by handing them TWO similar or competing products, you assist their decision process even more by offering a Choice. By training your entire staff to just casually hand every Customer an item they’ve shown interest in, while simply saying, “Here…try this out” or “Try this on”, automatically and immediately engages more senses:
The Sense of Touch: by actually holding the product, feeling it’s weight, feel and build quality, by shooting a test-drive model in the case of markers, Air Systems or motorized Loaders, or by gently encouraging Customers to actually try on a product in a fitting room the case of masks, pants, jerseys, gloves, etc.
The Sense of Smell comes into in many of these product encounters, delivering the exciting Paintball equivalent of the “New Car Smell”:
- the smell of new fabrics and dyes when trying on a jersey or other apparel,
- the smell of high quality plastics, polymers, foam and adhesives when trying on a mask,
- the smell of ultra-smooth gun oil emanating from a marker,
- the smell of CO2 (or compressed air) when testing a marker on a shooting ange…
smells like… Victory!
The Sense of Sight is dramatically enhanced when a shopper can see themselves in a mirror, wearing a new mask, jersey or pants. Regarding in-store mirrors, bigger is better, and more is merrier - full length if possible! Mirrors add the impression of size to any store, and sales of “Try-On” items will measurably increase. Guaranteed.
The Sense of Hearing can be engaged with a small shooting range in your store or Pro Shop, enabling shoppers to try demo models of your fastest moving markers, and allowing them to hear the difference between barrels to help their buying decision.
For accessories like motorized hoppers, demos work great by adding the sound experience – or by demonstrating a reduction of noise - to the emotional purchase. Always keep fresh batteries in your demo models of your store’s best selling loaders for testing on your shooting range, to ease the buyers’ decision process and to make a good 1st impression every time.
The Sense of Taste is the one that has you wondering… since most Customers won’t eat paintballs…except at Big Game Paintball-Eating Contests…but you can easily keep your Customers taste buds active while they’re in the store by having a soft drink machine stocked with favorites and sports drinks, a coffee machine, and sell snacks and energy bars on site.
Every one of these steps takes time, but Customer time spent in a store builds a sense of psychological connection to a store, and a subtle feeling of obligation to the salesperson. This is one of the basics of “Value Added Service” that separates the best from the rest. And best of all, it costs nothing but a few moments of time. This is just one of many little things that you and your staff can do, that no website in the world can match. And that convenience is certainly worth a little extra. If you’re willing to do the little extra things that your competition won’t do, you’ll always win in the long run. So here… try this on!