Selling Best Practices- Best Buy Style!
Due to a recent personal experience purchasing electronics, I thought it was a good time to share sales best practices “Best Buy” Style.
As I have been out of the country, I somehow managed to fry most of my major electronics while in China. Even though I had invested a substantial sum in currency converters, and adapters, I was forced to bury most of my US Electronics and appliances, including a TV, stereo, toaster, and a hair dryer that caught on fire.
As I am now in a new home in the US, that meant my wife granted approval to replace the deceased items, and my son and I happily set off for Best Buy with the newspaper sales in hand. As most of you know, Best Buy seems to be one of the lone survivors of the electronics retail battlefield, with competitors like Circuit City and Rex Electronics down for the count.
Based on my experience, and their utilization of sales best practices, I think I know why!
It was Saturday morning, and my son and I were there with strict intention of buying a 32 inch TV on sale, and one of those surround sound systems in a box. The key goal was to somehow get everything on one remote, which I have struggled with over the years. After engaging with several members from the local electronics Mensa chapter, who happened to be on Best Buy’s sales staff, we loaded our car with a substantially different haul. We had no idea that the items listed on sale, were in no way sufficient to satisfy our craving for superior picture and sound. In fact, it was fortunate that they had helped us, before we made a horrible mistake, and were forced to suffer with sub-standard quality, which would never have satisfied our sophisticated tastes.
By the time we left the store, we had agreed to having Geek Squad and a team from NASA, come to complete the install. It was explained there was certain necessary education including a degree in quantum mechanics, and nuclear physics would be helpful to insure optimum system performance.
While I’m not really sure how I ended up buying the system that I did, my wife was even more perplexed. It made me reflect on some of these crucial retail sales best practices observed.
Upsell, upsell, upsell- I’ve never understood how there could be more add-ons, than the actual cost of the product. (Warranties, Technical support, NASA engineers, installation, and lifetime upgrade packages to include free massages) You can’t beat the support.
Advertise some low cost piece of item to get them in the door!: There are many variations on this one, to include supplemental strategies like only having one of whatever you are advertising at that price. It’s similar to stopping in some place for Happy hour because they advertise “2 for 1”, only to find out that the special only applies to Sewage Pilsner bottled in the Okefenokee Swamp. Hey, you’re there anyway, why not have a taste. They sell one Sewage pilsner, and they upsell by replacing it with something that doesn’t taste like sludge.
Position yourself as the expert, and sell consultatively: This one can be recognized by many variations, but normally takes advantage of several key ingredients. The customer must be a little uniformed or downright stupid helps even more. In Best Buy’s case, if an individual is technologically challenged, and wants to get 27 pieces of equipment on one remote control, they have hit the gold mine.
In any event, my compliments to Best Buy on taking selling to a new level.
I also appreciate the support with window replacement after all the windows on the back side of the house were blown out after system initiation.
It sounds great!
Happy selling.
As I have been out of the country, I somehow managed to fry most of my major electronics while in China. Even though I had invested a substantial sum in currency converters, and adapters, I was forced to bury most of my US Electronics and appliances, including a TV, stereo, toaster, and a hair dryer that caught on fire.
As I am now in a new home in the US, that meant my wife granted approval to replace the deceased items, and my son and I happily set off for Best Buy with the newspaper sales in hand. As most of you know, Best Buy seems to be one of the lone survivors of the electronics retail battlefield, with competitors like Circuit City and Rex Electronics down for the count.
Based on my experience, and their utilization of sales best practices, I think I know why!
It was Saturday morning, and my son and I were there with strict intention of buying a 32 inch TV on sale, and one of those surround sound systems in a box. The key goal was to somehow get everything on one remote, which I have struggled with over the years. After engaging with several members from the local electronics Mensa chapter, who happened to be on Best Buy’s sales staff, we loaded our car with a substantially different haul. We had no idea that the items listed on sale, were in no way sufficient to satisfy our craving for superior picture and sound. In fact, it was fortunate that they had helped us, before we made a horrible mistake, and were forced to suffer with sub-standard quality, which would never have satisfied our sophisticated tastes.
By the time we left the store, we had agreed to having Geek Squad and a team from NASA, come to complete the install. It was explained there was certain necessary education including a degree in quantum mechanics, and nuclear physics would be helpful to insure optimum system performance.
While I’m not really sure how I ended up buying the system that I did, my wife was even more perplexed. It made me reflect on some of these crucial retail sales best practices observed.
Upsell, upsell, upsell- I’ve never understood how there could be more add-ons, than the actual cost of the product. (Warranties, Technical support, NASA engineers, installation, and lifetime upgrade packages to include free massages) You can’t beat the support.
Advertise some low cost piece of item to get them in the door!: There are many variations on this one, to include supplemental strategies like only having one of whatever you are advertising at that price. It’s similar to stopping in some place for Happy hour because they advertise “2 for 1”, only to find out that the special only applies to Sewage Pilsner bottled in the Okefenokee Swamp. Hey, you’re there anyway, why not have a taste. They sell one Sewage pilsner, and they upsell by replacing it with something that doesn’t taste like sludge.
Position yourself as the expert, and sell consultatively: This one can be recognized by many variations, but normally takes advantage of several key ingredients. The customer must be a little uniformed or downright stupid helps even more. In Best Buy’s case, if an individual is technologically challenged, and wants to get 27 pieces of equipment on one remote control, they have hit the gold mine.
In any event, my compliments to Best Buy on taking selling to a new level.
I also appreciate the support with window replacement after all the windows on the back side of the house were blown out after system initiation.
It sounds great!
Happy selling.
posted by Curt at 6:27 PM
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