Sweet & Sour of B&M Retail

Recently I had a firsthand experience of exactly what’s wrong and right with B&M retail. Now for a minute let’s forget about Amazon and all things ecommerce, this is about 4 walls retail. Upon entering the store, I got the usual and effortless welcome as soon as I crossed the lease line, then within 5 sec the preverbal “can I help you” which I autonomously responded, “no just looking”. I asked the nearby associate a question about one of their products and got back a very generic answer. The sad part, I was not even disappointed, this sadly was just a very common and normal customer experience in B&M these days. However, what happened next gives me hope not all is lost. One of the other associates came over to me and spoke with me, I mean, actually engaged in a real conversation which lead to us discussing multiple products, diving deep into the what I needed and what they had to solve my problem… Boom, customer converted and happy. The polar opposites of this store visit were crazy. The difference was people talking to people, an art so often lost these days. It proves to me that engaged salespeople have purpose and disengaged salespeople have problems and in face to face retail, businesses literally can’t afford to put problems before purpose.