Class 5: Drawing from your experience at the Shopping Mall today, what strategies worked in gaining insights from the stores’ staff, managers and customers; what would you have done differently?
Thursday was our second trip to the mall so we were getting pretty good at chatting it up with the employees in the store. Here’s what I think worked best for us (sorry this is so long):
Method 1: What do you call it??? Bending the truth…
Walk in with 2-3 people. One person (Team Alpha) should pretend to be interested in purchasing something by checking over an item carefully until a sales rep engages you. The others (Team Beta) should be blatantly not interested and clearly only there because of the other person by wandering around the store aimlessly. Try touching/examining things without focus – out of curiosity but not genuine interest. The staff sees this all the time: One person wants to buy something and drags their friends in the store. This sends a clear message that Team Alpha is interested in purchasing something and that Team Beta isn’t. Now the staff is engaged with one person and understands the others are not going to lead to a sale. If you’re the only group in the store, the employees not assisting the person feigning interest will act as if no one is in the store and either relax or return to their normal duties. Congratulations, you’ve just disarmed the entire sales team. The most important things here are that you 1) have a reason to be in the store and 2) the employees have no reason to believe you’re up to anything out of the ordinary.
The employees engaged with your interested teammate will answer any questions even vaguely related to the store. Why? They want to make the sale and think you’re a hot lead showing interest in their store/work. They’re so focused on selling to you they may not even realize that you’re pumping them for information.
Since members of Team Beta are not seen as a sales opportunity, Team B can continue wandering around the store undisturbed. After Team Beta has soaked up the store by aimlessly making laps around the store (and maybe snapping a few covert photos), a member of the team can approach one of the disarmed employees and drop a line like “I’m a fan of architecture and I really like your store.” With this simple statement you’ve claimed to be an authority regarding architecture/space/lighting/style/whatever and then praised the person for their store. Here you confirm that you’re not a sales lead and that you’re actually so bored that you’ll talk to the employees while you wait for your friend. My experience was that the employees generally loved any opportunity to have a real conversation with someone instead of the normal:
“Hello, welcome to _____”
“Hello”
“Can I help you find anything today?”
“No thanks….just browsing….”
“Okay, well let me know if you need any help finding anything…. Have you heard about our Friends and Family sale?”
“No”
“For every $150 dollars you, your friends, and your family spend, you get $25 back.”
“Okay, great.”
–3 minutes pass until the potential customer walks out the door with no intention of purchasing anything–
“Have a great day! Enjoy the weather!”
“Thanks, you too…”
Okay, so you’ve go the bored sales rep talking. Most of the time when we started asking about the store, the employee quickly dumped 100% of the information they knew about the store, its layout, and how they use space. This is the easy part because now you’re talking about this person’s job. You’re talking directly to the person who sets up and maintains the displays, dresses the mannequins, irons the shirts, sweeps the floors.Now might be the time to turn on your voice recorders covertly (I don’t even want to know if that’s legal).
It’s like asking an engineering student about their favorite pencils, paper, and calculator. They’ll tell you every detail about how they hold their pencil and what they tried in the past…or at least I will if you ask about my favorite pencil…
Oh yeah – once you get the info you want, Team Beta might want to go help Team Alpha get out of buying a $400 dress or $1,000 purse. “Do you like this dress better? or the one you put on hold at _____?” Don’t leave your teammates hanging or you’ll be trying dresses on next… Thanks Rachel!!
Method 2: Or…lay it all out on the table
If you want a lot of information about a store (probably the store you’re choosing), it may be best to have studied the store enough to walk in and just lay out our project for the manager. We got to film every inch of a store we really liked because we did this. First we spend 5 minutes in the store poking around. When the employee asked if she could help the 2nd or 3rd time, I asked about the store’s logo and origin…a harmless question. We left after some friendly banter. We really liked the store and wanted more so we came back 30 minutes later. She greeted us with: “You’re back!” and I said “So we’re doing a project for a class and we really like your store. Could we ask you a few questions?” She gladly let us take video of the entire store (3+ minutes) and record her (15+ minutes) on the spot. Each time a customer walked in we casually pretended to be browsing and let her run the store like normal. We stayed out of the way. I’ve got more to say about this, but come ask me if you really want to know more about what we tried.
Other Tips:
- Have a plan – decide what everyone’s role is before you walk in the store. Employees get suspicious if you’re always whispering to one another and not showing any interest in the merchandise.
- Dress for success – dressing up can rarely hurt unless you want to be ignored. Looking too shabby in a high-end store may lead to the staff thinking you’re a thief. It may not be true or fair, but that’s how first impressions work. Put the notebooks and recorders away until the right moment too (an early lesson for us).
- Be confident – if you say your an architect, then you’re an architect. The only person who can really blow your cover is you.
- Be consistent – it’s probably best to only use one method per store. If you lie and say you’re some hot shot photographer one minute and then say you’re a student working on a project the next time you come in, you may ruin any chance of learning more because the employees won’t trust you anymore.
- Experiment – go outside of your comfort zone. If you don’t usually chat it up with people, then try it. There’s really nothing to lose. Personally, I don’t like shopping or malls but I got to learn a lot of new things by putting myself out there a bit. Retail folks are really interesting people too!
- Have fun & be friendly!! – there are lines that you probably shouldn’t cross. Imagine how you’d feel if you ruined someone’s day or accidentally got them fired.
Bottom line: Acquire enough empathy and common ground to gain the trust of your target employees. Quickly leverage that trust to get the information you want. Be smart, have a plan (esp when bending the truth), and be ready to think on your feet…