Which of these scenarios have happened to you?:
A customer comes into your store looking for a diamond. You show them everything you have in stock, but nothing quite speaks to him. So, you offer to bring in some new goods on memo. You describe what you’re going to bring in, and he’s nodding his head and agreeing. Two days later, he’s back, and nothing on the memo is “quite what he was looking for. . .”
A customer comes into your store looking for a diamond. She has a very specific idea in mind, and spends a lot of time describing it to you. You don’t have anything like it in stock, but you offer to bring in some samples on memo to show her. Two days later, she’s back, and she’s SO excited with the examples you’re showing her. But they’re all “above her budget . . .”
We could go on and on, but you get the gist. The gap between what’s in your inventory and what’s on your suppliers shelves takes two days and two shipping fees to close. The gap between what’s in your customer’s imagination and what it costs to meet her expectations is sometimes hard to close. But what if you could close those gaps?
Of course, you can. Better sales qualifications will close gaps between desire and budget and the gaps between mental images and reality every time.
The key to closing those gaps is to use both images and prices in your conversations with your diamond-hunters. If you’re a person that looks at diamonds all day every day (and if you’re reading this, you probably are), then you have a fantastic mental encyclopedia to serve you when you try to imagine a stone. But your customers don’t have this mental encyclopedia. You need to show them actual images of real diamonds.
By looking at images of the diamonds you are going to bring in on memo, and discussing the prices of those diamonds, you have closed the two biggest gaps before your vendor has even pulled the inventory to pack it.
The next time you’re looking beyond your own inventory to meet a customer’s diamond fantasies, pull up the VDB app, and start searching . . . together. You’ll be surprised and delighted at how much better that sales experience will be.