How a daydreaming Buyer could be sending a smart buying signal

Given that lack of time often causes a NAM to attempt 100% engagement with a buyer, only to be distracted in mid-flight as the buyer’s attention seems to wander, such ‘lack of attention’ may in fact be a strong buying signal.

Latest research indicates that daydreaming can actually make you smarter…

In fact, apparently mind-wandering can offer significant personal rewards, including self-awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion...

From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50% of their waking hours engaged in it.

So next time the buyer ‘wanders off’, prepare for the moment by front-loading your presentation with needs-based benefits and welcome the signs that the buyer is devoting 100% attention to optimising the business application, leaving you time to daydream about a mutually profitable outcome...  

Optimised multi-device access: helping people buy?

Following an era of making products available and selling to potential shoppers, perhaps it is time for retailers to help people buy?

This means adjusting the dimensions of the shop ‘doorway’ to enable access in whatever way people want to buy. In fact, latest research from Venda reveals that retailers are failing to adapt to the shifts in online consumption and purchasing habits. In fact, just one of the UK’s top 50 most visited retail sites, Currys, currently hosts a responsive website – where content on the site automatically adapts according to the device being used.

Consumers now use phones, televisions, laptops, desktops and soon even glasses and watches to access their favourite brands and retailers. In fact, the wearable device market has been tipped to ship 485 million devices annually by 2018.

But how can we deliver a consistent user experience across such a range of devices and capabilities? The answer lies in a suite of technology and design techniques which are collectively referred to as Responsive Web Design.

With the actual site content and functionality being determined by the dimensions and capabilities of the device being used, customers are kept more engaged by no longer having to navigate a site designed for desktop PCs. With consideration also given to the speed of the device and its connection, further improving user experience, the solution encourages repeat site visits, higher conversion rates and ultimately sales.

Operating on a single responsive site, retailers’ SEO authority is maximised, with all mobile traffic being directed to one consistent URL, allowing customers to share links knowing that, when viewed, the content will always be optimised for the viewing device and not the device the link was shared from.

Not just retailers..
Given that a supplier’s site can be the first port of call for a curious consumer, are brand owners missing a trick in serving up one dimensional access, translating into ‘take-it-or-leave-it' for the savvy visitor?

Plastic discovered on Saturn's moon Titan

Details here

Instore display in a minimal footprint. A Box That Will Blow Your Mind!

Given that instore display has to be assessed in terms of its ability to exceed the selling intensity of the 'lost' selling space, what better than to achieve the 'instore theatre' impact by going all the way to projected displays, with a difference?

...and all within the footprint of a projection screen...

Opportunity or Threat for other retailers - (and suppliers!)?

"Amazon.co.uk:
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company"

Source: Instant Refund notice on 'no quibbles' returned order....

Impulse buying: the real reasons?

With research showing that half of UK shoppers buy on impulse, for instance spending £3.6bn a year on clothes, shoes and handbags they just don’t need. In fact, the average wardrobe contains £92 worth of unworn clothes, causing the appropriate level of guilt each time the door is opened.

However, the real advantage of the research lies in the main reasons discovered for why people buy on impulse:

Top ten impulse-buy excuses:

1. ‘I’m feeling really down so I deserve a treat’

2. ‘I’ve just been paid so I deserve a treat’

3. ‘There’s only one left in my size, it’s meant to be’

4. ‘I’ve had a terrible day and this will make up for it’

5. ‘If I buy this in a smaller size it will encourage me to slim into it’

6. ‘My life will be better because of it’

7. ‘All my friends have this and I’ll look silly if I don’t’

8. ‘If I buy this it will make the other things I own better’

9. ‘Everyone’s seen me in all my things on Facebook so I have to buy something new’

10. ‘I’m too embarrassed to say no to the sales assistant’

In other words, apart from the above list providing dead-cert ideas for appropriate signage instore - in case a shopper forgets an excuse in appropriate categories - there is surely a market for wardrobes that are built to conceal rather than display the contents, with a narrow door at one end allowing a suit to be clipped onto a rail and slid quietly into the darkness, ideally vacuum-packed to maximise the available space, thereby making it years before a reality-check is required...

The key issue is that in these flat-line times it is vital to take a positive approach to research, all research...

Experiential Recruitment Process?

Closing the deal in the showroom

Given the massive advantage of having potential mobile-consumers actually in the store, obviously in the market, albeit showrooming on price, it seems a no-brainer that conversion of the visits into a sale can be more productive than closing down the instore wifi and driving the customer further online…

Latest thinking indicates that many potential purchasers want immediacy of access to the product, advice and real-world assurance of the wisdom of the purchase at a price that is not too far out of line with available alternatives.

In ‘olden days’, this would have been more than an opportunity for an instore salesman to close a sale. Nowadays we are supported by a wealth of consumer-shopper insights to make it that much easier…

If your business is about helping the offline retailer to optimise mobile-driven sales in the aisle, then latest research (September 2013) on ‘Showrooming and the Rise of the Mobile-Assisted Shopper’ by the Columbia Business School will help.

The research profiles and explores the five types of mobile shopper, but even more interestingly, reveals why some consumers prefer to shop offline…

This 35 page report will tell you all you need to know, but if you simply need some key insights, then see the Econsultancy site where their summaries of the findings, and interviews with the CBS authors can take the busy NAM a long way forward.

Mobile-assistance may have made the buying a little more complicated,  but deep down, selling is still about needs-based-persuasion…