Over the next four weeks we’ll be taking a deep dive into consumer experiences, brand education and customer aquisition all through the lenses of assisted sell. We’ll take a look at the types of environments in which assisted sell works best and showcase some great examples where we’ve seen brands achieve success.
Today's shopper is smarter and better informed than ever before, so brands and retailers alike must find ways to empower those people to experience and learn more to make a sale.
Customer-centricity is at the heart of assisted sell. This whole proposition centres around finding a match to a consumers individual needs and desires to ultimately help them purchase the best product or service for their specific requirements.
These teams can work well in brick and mortar retail, online retail and outside of retail at events or in high traffic areas like highstreets or transport hubs. In any environment, meaningful conversations enhances credibility and builds trust in relationships. This helps the consumer feel that they want to buy because they can discuss their requirements at a detailed level.
Whether you’re trying to get your product noticed, encourage signs ups, or sell your products, you first need to capture the attention of your audience. What better way than through events, sampling activities or vivacious brand ambassadors that live and breathe your brand.
We’ll bring to life examples where location, a bit of pizzazz and people can work in perfect harmony to create joyful and memorable experiences that evoke emotions to make more consumers want to associate themselves your brand again and again.
According to recent figures, 88% of consumers say they are more likely to buy when they receive recommendations or assistance from retail staff. This makes assisted selling one of the best point-of-sale strategies in retail - take the consumer on a journey until the sale is complete.
Almost 70% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale, so engaging retail staff and converting them into advocates of your brand so they sell on your behalf is essential as they are ones who can most influence purchasing customer decisions. To achieve this, brands must prioritise their efforts into converting the employees into advocates to give them the competitive edge.
When making significant purchases it’s common for consumers to have done their own research before they speak to a member of staff so it’s up to you to make sure retail professionals know your products and their category inside out to help instill confidence and trust in the consumer to make a purchase.
This is where retail staff education and advocacy programs become important. It’s the perfect way to stand out from your competition, build customer loyalty to generate long-term sales and make sure your customers feel time spent in store is time well spent. We’ll show you examples of how brands like xx and xx have used this model to achieve success and increased their online and instore sales.
Consumer feedback and mystery shopping are just a few ways to check your strategy works. Here, we’ll showcase brands who have prioritised auditing everything from their execution, availability, staff knowledge and general experience to ensure their real consumers are getting everything their strategy sets out to achieve.
Lindsay Hey, Customer Development Director comments,
“Engaging consumers is all about keeping it fresh, exciting and relevant to them. Too many brand messages turn into wallpaper really quickly. You have to capture people's attention and work hard to keep that messaging fresh and exciting. When tackling consumer engagement, you need to pick the right partners within your chosen space.
Whether that's creative agencies or field agencies like us that can adapt really quickly and are willing to try new things. A lot of our brand clients have been really pleased about the way that we can turn on activity at the drop of a hat because of how agile our teams are - whether they need to rethink structure or objectives. We have the resource to support brands as and when required with a variety of services on offer to engage consumers. We love a challenge and wouldn't ever be really comfortable if we didn't have a pipeline of new challenges in the plan.”
The quest is on to convert shoppers into buyers as well as create an army of engaged and loyal consumers. Stay with us over the coming weeks as we explore how to achieve this by engaging your consumers, supporting your retail partners and helping brands understand how their products are seen, experienced and sold in outlet.
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