How to sell to superstitious customers

This article helps retailers in particular and salespeople in general deal with the emotional effect of customers’ superstitions and beliefs when closing a sale.

It is a guide on how to deal with superstitious customers; adjust your selling approach to be in line with their beliefs and eliminate any obstacles when you face unexpected events that delay decision-making.

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Throughout my career in sales, I always came across customers who would only buy a product that is agreeable with their beliefs and superstitions. These are not religious beliefs but a set of emotional triggers that control their decision making, especially if they are committing to a big purchase or to a product that represents a stage in their lives like an engagement ring or son’s first watch, etc.

In my previous blog “Why do we buy luxury products?” I presented the fact that in luxury retail we sell emotional products for, in most cases, illogical reasons. Our clients buy from us emotionally and not logically because who would “logically” spend thousands on an instrument that tells the time - a Swiss watch - when you have the time displayed on your mobile phone!

When selling emotions, we have to deal with the whole emotional personality of our client and this, of course, includes superstitions. When we make sales illogically, we have to be prepared to lose sales illogically too.

Once, I honestly had to postpone a sale to a client who refused to make a payment at the last stage just because someone in the room sneezed and, in his opinion, this is a sign telling him not to exchange money at this moment in time, so he asked me to reserve the item for him till the next day. You can imagine me the day after warning my team members against sneezing when the client returns to the store.

In Western Europe, I always sense the frustration salespeople have when we discuss superstitions in sales during my training courses, especially when dealing with international customers, mainly, the ones who come from Traditional or Eastern cultures like Arabs, Chinese, Nigerians, Indians, Japanese, Russians and so on. That’s because Western or Individualistic cultures like North America, North Western Europe and Scandinavia are more pragmatic and less superstitious.

When dealing with superstitious customers, you will have to abide to the following steps in order to have a smooth, frictionless and successful sale:

1- Never underestimate superstitions

Many salespeople can’t believe that they lose sales for, what they consider, a trivial reason like an unlucky number displayed on their product or a symbol that brings bad luck. Believe me, for many customers these are not trivial reasons at all.

When buying an emotional product, you will have to be emotionally comfortable about it. So let’s imagine that you are a Chinese customer who is raised believing that the number 4 is negative and would bring you bad luck if you associate yourself with it, would you spend a great deal of money buying a personal item that displays the number four? Of course not, even if you don’t fully believe in the number’s negativity, why take the risk?

It is a fact: if you are selling emotional products, you will have to deal with superstitions as an integral part of what you are selling otherwise you are so disconnected from your customer’s world.

2- Do your homework

Any salesperson agrees that you need to be very knowledgeable about your product’s features and benefits in order to gain the trust of your customer. So how about considering that what your product symbolizes superstitiously is a big part of your product’s features and benefits, in your customer’s perception?

In order to sell luxury products, you will have to include superstitions and symbolisms in your product training.

The difficulty here is that every culture has its own set of beliefs when it comes to superstitions. To tackle this issue, I suggest you identify the culture from which most of your clients hail and then do your research to find out the following:

• Lucky and unlucky colors, numbers, symbols, animals, stones, metals, fabric prints, etc.

• Cultural festivals’ dates and their meaning in addition to what is bought on these dates and why

• Hand gestures, body language and facial expressions linked to superstitions in your customers’ culture

You can find this information by either browsing the Internet, reading cultural books or, even better, by asking your customers and colleagues who come from the same culture. Oh or by attending my course :-)

3- Don’t be shy to use superstitions to your benefit when presenting your product

If your product represents or includes a positive sign or symbol according to your customer’s culture, please don’t ignore it even if you don’t believe in it. I personally closed sales much easier just by highlighting the fact that the product is lucky as I showed a symbol or a number on it that is considered lucky for my customer.

We sell emotions remember? Well, luck is the strongest emotion in my opinion.

4- Prepare yourself to face negative superstitions

If you are faced with an objection from your customer’s side related to superstitions, never take it lightly or, even worse, ridicule it. Customers consider this as an insult.

Always, do the following:

• Declare your understanding of your customer’s concern (even if you don’t believe that it is logical)

• Offer alternatives and try to maneuver your way around this objection politely by trying to understand the reason behind it and then offering a different explanation. For example, many Arab customers believe that the owl is a bad omen as it is the bird associated with graveyards and death. If faced with this objection, one of the solutions is to show your customer the positive meaning of the owl in the Western culture, which is associated with wisdom and love, as it’s face is the shape of a heart.

5- Deal with luck at every stage of the sale

Superstitions and luck do not only exist during the presentation stage of your product, they are looming around every part of the sale from the way you greet your customer to the manner in which you handle the payment process.

When researching your customers’ beliefs, you also need to find out the right ways of behaving positively. A colleague of mine received a negative remark from a customer when he picked her credit card at the till with his left hand! Another incident caused an unpleasant conversation with a Chinese customer in a Paris boutique when the salesperson handed him a red pen to fill up the customers’ details form.

Superstitions are not always an obstacle in sales, I actually enjoy them. If you look at this matter as another layer of selling luxury, as a world of fascinating beliefs and fantasies, as a way to enrich your knowledge of the world around us then you will enjoy dealing with superstitious customers more than dealing with realistic ones.

I hope that you enjoyed and benefited from this article and would really appreciate your opinion in the comments below.

Thank you

Said Chaarawi 2017

www.chaarawi.com

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