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~ Sales and customer service in the luxury industry

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Category Archives: Luxury Sales Training

The Why of Luxury Selling: How Luxury Associates can Inspire Loyal Customers

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Experience, Customer Retention, Customer Service, Helping Customers Envision, Luxury, Luxury Sales Training, luxury service, Luxury Talent, Sales Coaching

≈ 2 Comments

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Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Retail, luxury service, Sales, Selling

attactive girl silhouette with whyOn a recent flight back from Boston, I re-watched one of my favorite TED Talks. Simon Sinek’s How Great Leaders Inspire Action.  It’s a great video in which Sinek describes why great companies inspire loyal employees. My thoughts turned to luxury selling and I thought about how great associates can inspire loyal customers.

In the video, Sinek talks about three different types of companies. Those that know what they do (the majority), some that know how they do it, and the few that know why they do what they do. Sinek refers to this as the Golden Circle. Every organization knows what it does – it’s the products or services they sell. Some organizations know how they do it. This usually translates into what differentiates them from other companies that do what they do – in other words, their value proposition. But very few companies know, or can articulate, why they do what they do. The Why isn’t about making money. The Why is about contribution and impact. The Why is about inspiration.

GoldenCircle

Sinek then talks about how the human brain corresponds to the Golden Circle. The neocortex – our “outside” brain – corresponds to the What. It’s the part of the brain responsible for rational and analytical thought. The middle sections represent the limbic brain that controls our feelings, emotions, human behavior and decision making.

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Luxury Associates Need to Become Luxury Curators

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Retention, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training, luxury service, Luxury Talent

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Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Retail, luxury service, Sales, Selling, Value Selling

Curator

I recently returned from the largest international conference for professionals in the field of learning and development sponsored by the Association for Talent Development (ATD). Nearly 11,000 attendees from over 80 countries attended 300 concurrent sessions in Denver, Colorado. The exhibition hall boasted more than 400 leading training services providers. As I wandered the aisles of learning content vendors, one word repeatedly caught my attention—curated.

‘Curate’ is not a new word. Its root goes back to the Latin curare, which means to care. The first known use of the word ‘curator’ as someone who is in charge of a museum or art gallery collection dates back to 1561. The word has evolved over the centuries and today Dictionary.com defines ‘curate’ as “to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation, as music or website content.”

Content curation is so omnipresent in consumers’ lives today that we barely notice it. Your shows on Netflix are curated based on your viewing history, Spotify tailors music selections specifically to your taste, most news services feed you content according to your specified preferences, and shopping services such as StitchFix will curate a personal wardrobe for you. Curation as a marketing and sales technique gained ground in 2011 with Steven Rosenbaum’s book Creation Nation.

I love the idea of turning luxury sales associates into luxury curators for two reasons. The first reason is the root of the word – to care. Care needs to inform everything a luxury associate does: caring about the customer, caring about the customer’s needs, caring about the luxury experience, and caring about the presentation. The second reason is the idea that the curated experience is a personalized experience for the luxury consumer. Today’s luxury customers seek experiences that are customized to their personal preferences, that are exceptional, and that they can share and remember. Recently, Saks Fifth Avenue launched a service through which associates are available 24/7 to curate personalized virtual boutiques for individual customers. But curation isn’t just about technology. As Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute says, “Technology today presents an immense opportunity for targeting potential customers, but it is ultimately the intimate humanistic relationships that sales professionals form with customers that keep them coming back.”  It is the luxury sales associate who holds the key to building those connections.

What do luxury sales associates need to do in order to become luxury curators? To find some answers I searched “How to curate?” and found some great tips on Coschedule.com. Coschedule is a marketing calendaring service whose tips are specific to how to curate online content. I’ve borrowed the heading for each tip and turned each into a suggestion for sales associates who are looking to create a curated luxury experience for their clients:

  • Provide your take on things – Add your own personal touch. To paraphrase Coschedule, provide every piece with context. You should always surround the piece with your views, knowledge, and insight. Share a story about your brand’s heritage or an intimate detail about the craftsmanship.
  • Don’t make it all about you – Remember your customers have different preferences than you. Research and understand the lifestyles of your luxury customers. Read luxury travel and style magazines, subscribe to luxury blogs, and know your competition.
  • Answer your audience’s common questions – Be knowledgeable about your brand, your services, distinguishing product characteristics, shipping and return policies, corporate responsibility programs, etc. Common questions may also include concierge-type recommendations on where to eat, shop or find local attractions.
  • Be very, very selective – Rather than rattling off a list of features, share two or three benefits (a personalized statement of value) you believe best meet your customer’s needs. To turn a feature into a benefit, think of the customer asking “Why is this important to this me?”
  • Take advantage of in-house expertise – Observe your co-workers. How are they interacting with customers? What can you learn from them? Be open to asking for feedback. Ask your manager to observe you and provide suggestions on how you can improve. If you don’t know the answer to a question, make sure you find someone who does.
  • Don’t forget your CTA’s (Calls to Action) – Your relationship to the customer doesn’t end when he or she walks out the door. Think about how you can proactively reach out to customers to grow the relationship by building upon additional needs. A hand-written thank you note is always welcome. You may want to invite them to an upcoming event, alert them to a new item, or just check in to see how they’re enjoying their purchase.

If you view your role as a curator rather than a sales person, you will provide the level of care and personalization necessary to turn every customer interaction into an extraordinary luxury experience.

 

Luxury: An Intimate Experience

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Dining, Luxury Sales Training, luxury service, Uncategorized

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Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Retail, Sales

roseI’ve frequently written about the importance of the customer relationship when selling luxury. I’ve focused on the need to use the right language and gestures to create an environment of elegance and grace. But, until now, I hadn’t thought about intimacy and how it relates to luxury.

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GRACE: The Perfect Recipe for Luxury Customer Service

09 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training, luxury service, Luxury Talent, Sales Coaching, Uncategorized

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Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Retail, Sales, Selling, Value Selling

GRACEDaniel Humm is the chef and owner for the Michelin three-star restaurant Eleven Madison Park and The NoMad in New York City. He’s also the recipient of six James Beard Awards, four stars from the New York Times and the S. Pellegrino Chef’s Choice 2015 award. Mr. Humm was recently interviewed by New York Magazine and asked how me keeps his team motivated. He replied:

We treat every service as if it’s the only one that matters, the same way a sports team prepares for a championship match. Everything we do is done with intention and the desire to make the guest’s experience the best it can be.

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Sharing Infographic: 9 Customer Service Phrases That Pressure Cook Problems ( and what to say instead!)

09 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Sales Training, Luxury Talent

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Customer Experience, Luxury, luxury service

This great infographic came into my LinkedIn feed and I thought it worthwhile to share with you. Hope you think so too!

9 Customer Service Phrases That Pressure Cook Problems ( and what to say instead!)

Coach the Coach: A collaborative coaching technique for sales managers

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Complaints, Customer Service, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training, Sales Coaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Coaching, Customer Service, Jewelry, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Sales, Sales Coaching, Selling

coachA few years ago I headed up a training team for a high-end jewelry brand. We were asked to create a learning initiative to help promote diamond sales. The blended program integrated different learning methodologies including e-learning, videos, webinars, games, support tools and in-store activities. The program required sales management teams to coach their local sales teams through a multi-week agenda. While the initiative did improve diamond sales, it unfortunately brought to light a mistaken belief that our sales managers were good coaches.

We looked for a way to help our sales managers improve their coaching skills. We needed a design that was both low-cost (we had exhausted our budget) and time efficient (sales managers were bogged down with daily operational tasks). In addition, we had other programs running simultaneously and could not afford to invest a lot of resources into designing a formal coaching program. Our solution was to create a program where the sales managers became coaches for each other. Here’s how it worked:

  1. We scheduled 30-minute phone calls with groups of no more than 10 sales managers at a time.
  2. We wrote a few scenarios of sales interactions “gone wrong.” I played the role of sales associate while another team member played the customer (you could also role-pay with one of the callers if you send out the script in advance. Each scenario lasted 2-3 minutes and focused on an issue such as being rude, giving wrong information, or not asking open-ended questions.
  3. Prior to the call, we asked one of the sales managers to role-play as the sales manager in the scenario. Once the scenario concluded, we asked the sales manager to provide feedback to the “sales associate” (me).
  4. After the sales manager finished coaching the sales associate, we asked the other sales managers if they’d experienced a similar situation and how they’d handled it. We questioned whether they believed the sales associate’s behavior would change as a result of the coaching. If not, why not? If so, then why had the coaching been effective?
  5. We encouraged the sales managers to coach each other (hence “Coach-the-Coach”). We allowed this process to happen naturally; our role was simply to guide the conversation back if it went off track.
  6. We spent the last 5 minutes of each call reviewing key learning points and emailed a summary to all participants afterwards. Several sales managers offered suggestions for future scenarios.

One unanticipated benefit of the program was that the groups learned over time to trust and depend on each other for advice. The Coach-the-Coach program proved to be a quick, interactive, fun, and convenient way for our sales managers to hone their coaching skills.

Please don’t be rude!

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Retail, Sales, Selling

rudeMilton Pedraza, CEO of Luxury Institute recently confirmed, “Luxury brands lose half of their top customers every year. The biggest reason why a consumer won’t come back is not the product—it’s a rude or inattentive salesperson” (The new face of luxury: breaking down the myths and stereotypes of the luxury shopper). On the surface this statement seems to contradict the finding of a recent study titled, Should the Devil Sell Prada? Retail Rejection Increases Aspiring Consumers’ Desire for the Brand (October 2014 Journal of Consumer Research). The study (co-authored by Dr. Darren Dahl, a marketing professor at the Sauder School of Business and Prof. Morgan Ward of the Cox School of Business) found customers who receive poor treatment from sales associates in a luxury retail environment are more likely to make a purchase.

Luxury brands lose half of their top customers every year. The biggest reason why a consumer won’t come back is not the product—it’s a rude or inattentive salesperson

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Once Upon a Time: Telling Luxury’s Story

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Fashion, Helping Customers Envision, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brand, Chanel, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Dior, Fashion, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Fashion, Luxury Retail, Sales, Selling

story“Only 19 percent of consumers believe sales associates have relevant information,” says Adam Silverman, principal analyst at Forrester Research, San Francisco. “That’s very shocking and that’s clearly an indicator that the sales associate role needs to change.”

One way in which you can change that role is to perfect the art of telling luxury’s story. A good story engages and excites the listener. Stories create emotions and those emotions, in turn, drive desire. We buy luxury items not because we need them, but because we desire them.

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The Rarity of Platinum Service

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Fashion, Luxury Brand, Luxury Sales Training

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bergdorf Goodman, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Fashion, Leather, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Fashion, Luxury Retail, Luxury; Handbags

platinumPlatinum is more expensive than gold because it is rarer. Similarly, a platinum level of service is more precious than the “gold standard” of service offered by most sales professionals. The Golden Rule states: “Treat other people as we would wish to be treated ourselves.” It is the rare sales professional, however, who knows and lives by the Platinum Rule: “Treat other people as they would wish to be treated.” The difference comes down to a small, but meaningful, change in perspective.

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Should We Try to Exceed Customer Expectations?

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Victoria Macdonald in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury Sales Training

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Customer Experience, Customer Service, Luxury, Luxury Brand, Luxury Retail, Sales, Selling, Value Selling

Happy CustomerYesterday someone told me there’s no point in trying to exceed customer expectations, because once you do, the bar is raised and the exception becomes the norm. It creates a never ending spiral upward. All I can say, is “poppycock” (yes, people used to say “poppycock,” probably the same folks who used to say “balderdash”). Anyway, you get my point. Continue reading →

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