May 14, 2014
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First, a quick story …
Getting your haircut is universally awkward for everyone, right? You go in and sit in this unusually comfortable chair and a stranger touches, washes, cuts, colors and styles your hair. And if that’s not awkward enough by itself you also have to come up with small talk to entertain your hairdresser with, because heaven forbid you sit in silence as you hair gets managed.
A few days ago I was in this situation when I went to get my haircut and as my hairdresser was spouting off the usual small talk I noticed that she kept mentioning a specific hair product, and as I started to leave she became more pushy in explaining why I should buy the product.
We have all been in this situation right? Maybe not in the hair salon, but at some point everyone has. For example, you’re walking in the mall and a salesperson walks up to you with a colorful bottle of lotion and says the words, “Just try this lotion just once and you’ll wonder how you lived your life without it.” Or maybe you are in the comfort of your own home when someone knocks on the door asking to buy their product that you “absolutely have to have.”
I won’t lie. When this happened to me in the hair salon I got a little annoyed. Even if I had wanted to buy that product before, now I wasn’t going to because the employee had been so annoying about it. And it made me start thinking, surely I am not the only person that gets annoyed with pushy sales people. And if I really am not the only person, then is this whole “pushy sales approach” that effective from a marketing standpoint? Well, like most marketing strategies, there is a pros and cons list for this approach.
Pros
Increases product awareness
Commissioned sales workers have motivation to make your company money
Increased sales
Cons
Potential customer gets annoyed
People view the brand or product as desperate
Customers that feel pushed into the sale don’t have much brand loyalty
People interpret pushy as rude
Customers avoid pushy salespeople at all costs
What does this mean?
When it comes down to the ugly truth of pushy salespeople, potential customers don’t like them. If you read product reviews often, you will see that one of the most common complaints about a product or service is the pushy salespeople. Customers want to think that they need a product on their own terms, not on yours. If you can make your potential customer believe that they decided to buy your product on their own terms not only have you made a sale, but you’ve just found a loyal customer.