Would You Rather Have a Team of a Sales People or Solution Providers?

“We need to create a differentiated customer experience.” “Our customers need an experiential environment when they shop.” “We need to create a selling culture within our stores.” These are popular phases spoken by many retail leaders of today’s brick and mortar stores. In many ways, all are true. Customers are looking for more of an experience. They do want a reason to shop in a store versus buying online for the convenience. However, I am not sure most customers would reply positively to the idea of ‘being sold to.’

Intuitively, I think we know when we are shopping in a store, an associate’s role is to help us buy more stuff. Done well, there are two equal yet important sides to the equation. On the store’s side, that would be the ‘selling.’ On the customer side, that is delivering a positive customer experience. (Remember I said, ‘done well.’)

I would like to think of the store side as being more about providing a great solution for the customer. I often ask managers and associates alike a simple question -

Would you rather be a salesperson or a solution provider?

Few people answer that they would prefer to be known as the ‘salesperson.’ It just sounds so much better to be someone who provides solutions.

It is one thing to ask the question and another to have a team of leaders and associates actually demonstrating and practicing the skills of providing solutions. It is hard. If it weren’t, every retailer would have full teams of people who provide extraordinary levels of service and solutions. There are examples of it for sure, but most retailers will admit they have work to do in this area.

The difference between selling and solutioning ¹

The very best salespeople do provide solutions and likely do not even see themselves as salespeople. But for those who do not engage at that level - selling is largely seen as adding more ‘stuff’ to the basket. Selling drives average order value. It is transactional and short-term in nature. Becoming a solution provider looks beyond the moment, beyond the transaction at hand. Solutions are defined by what the customer not only needs right now but what they will need in the future as well.

In some cases, the best solution is fulfilling the immediate need and solving for a convenience or speed request from the customer. But it expands beyond that to provide the customer with other considerations, if not now, then for the future. A good solution is much more than just an add-on. The idea of an ‘add on’ is much more rooted in the concept of selling. Options and ideas are in the realm of solutions. A solutions-based environment looks to build not the basket of each transaction, but the lifetime value of that customer. Solutioning is about building relationships with customers beyond the immediate interaction. It is about seeing the customer beyond the single transaction and providing a journey for them to follow with you.

Solution is about engagement

As with everything else I have mentioned so far, engagement represents both sides of the coin. Customer engagement requires associate engagement. The two are interlinked. The concept and how they are woven effectively together is best explained as part of the service profit chain. There is also an excellent article from Harvard Business Review , Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work, that helps to explain how the two work together. Associate engagement is at the root of providing full solutions to customers. In short, associates have to want to provide a better experience for customers. They have to want to engage with customers beyond a terse greeting or the basic ‘can I help you find something’ mentality of too many retail employees today. As leaders, we not only have to expect more but provide the environment and reasons to want to provide more for the customers in our stores.

Providing solutions and developing an engaged and enriched culture is a deep subject. I intend to continue to explore this further, but I believe the ideas are good thought starters. They provide a point at which to change perspective and seek to create more than a ‘selling culture’ in your store. You will need to go beyond saying the words, ‘we need to have an experiential customer environment.’ This takes time and grit to work through the struggles that come with finding great people who want to engage at higher levels. You will need associates that choose to be a solution provider and not just another salesperson in a store.

Where can you start on your journey to create a team of solution providers?

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1. I am adding a new word to the retail lexicon. I realize that solutioning is not technically in the dictionary. But I feel as though it is the best way to describe what we need to evolve to in our ever changing world of retail customer engagement. ↩