When you enter a supermarket or a retail store don’t you find sales executives greeting you and trying to make you feel special? The warmth shown is totally overwhelming- makes you feel as though you are a Hollywood superstar! How many times haven’t you bought new items just to oblige impressive sales persons even though you don’t actually need the product? Even children are wooed into buying new varieties of food and toys in shopping malls by attractive sales executives. You and your child develop rapport at a personal level with the store staff and become its permanent customers, which is the ultimate aim of the executives. After each and every trip of yours, you return home with more and more items that were not actually in your budget- courtesy sales professionals!

Earlier, it was only businesses that were in the hospitality or customer relationship industries that were actually customer-centric. Their guests were supreme to them and they did everything to satisfy them. But now, we see this trend increasingly being followed by almost all businesses regardless of the industry to which they belong. A bookstore, a departmental store, a movie hall, an entertainment park, a hardware store etc. are places where you are treated like a VIP. Come to think about it.

However good a product may be it does not get sold if it is not marketed properly. Businesses have shifted their focus from product-centricity to customer-centricity. Entrepreneurs have to come to realize that satisfying their customers and taking the additional step of creating and maintaining strong bondage with them, is the key to business success. You might have manufactured a utility item with hundreds of novel and beneficial features, but if you don’t present this well to your customer and make her feel as though she cannot do without it,  you will probably see the item on your shop shelves for the next six months to come!

Did you know that mystery shoppers are specifically appointed by companies to get feedback on level of customer satisfaction their front office and sales staff are giving to their customers? Well, I don’t blame the marketers for choosing to over-impress you with their hospitality. It does feel good. Nobody would like to visit a shop where he/she would be made to feel unimportant. But you just need to watch out where things are being overdone and save yourself from falling into the sales traps.

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