Friendly, Professional Salespeople a Winning Formula in Phoenix
David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 29, 2011
PHOENIX - Looking for perfection in mattress retail salespeople? Head to this Southwestern city.
As part of our Secret Shopper series, we sent a group of female secret shoppers into furniture and mattress stores in Phoenix. We reported on those results in our Aug. 22 issue, but it's worth highlighting some of the key findings here as well.
Four of the retailers we visited - Bassett Home Furnishings, Bedmart, Del Sol Furniture and Thomasville Home Furnishings - greeted our secret shoppers in such a professional, service-oriented fashion that they received perfect scores on the salesperson's grading scale that we devised for this project.
Based on survey findings consumers have shared with us in the past, we created a scale that rated salespeople on 15 attributes: Friendly, attentive, educated, helpful, professional, didn't hover, non-threatening, connected/related to me, caring, good listener, patient, design-oriented, outgoing, trustworthy and confident.
It's quite a testament to those four retailers that their salespeople aced that challenging list. And six other retailers - Norwood Furniture, Mattress Firm, The Dump, Select Comfort, JCPenney Home Furnishings Store and Mor Furniture for Less, also scored high on the salesperson scorecard.
What makes for a great salesperson? Here are some of the comments from our secret shoppers:
► "I found the staff very inviting."
► "The salesperson tries to match the customers with product."
► "I really liked the salesperson - she was wonderful."
► "Great service. He made sure I tried out every bed possible to fulfill my needs."
A great greeting also helps. "Hello, how did you sleep last night?" a Bedmart salesperson said to our secret shopper. That's an inviting opening.
Kudos to those high-scoring Phoenix retail salespeople.
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