Introduction

How can you expect customers to establish strong relationships with your brand if your own salespeople have not built close bonds beforehand? As soon as the customers enter your stores, they come into contact with salespeople. Ideally, your sales force should be your brand’s true ambassadors, representing it in both their appearance and their actions. This encounter with your sales force is usually the only human contact a customer gets in any interaction with your brand. If salespeople play their part well, such an encounter can be memorable and full of emotion. It is generally the only time in the customers’ experience when they have a personification of the brand — for instance, Mr. Armani or Mrs. Prada, in front of them. They can breathe in the brand spirit, hear about its mystery and touch its creations. This is when they will learn all they want to know about the brand’s products, its history, its styles, its design. Yet, if salespeople do not play their part well, if they are focused on chasing money rather than being brand ambassadors, this encounter can be counter-productive. The act of selling will have become heartless.