Phil Dourado writes: Whenever you see a customer walking towards you, you are ‘segmenting’ – categorising them in your head based on their appearance. There are real problems with the whole philosophy of ‘treating different customers differently’ when your perception of their difference can be so incredibly WRONG. Here’s an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink to explain what I mean. He’s talking about an incredibly successful car salesman:
“There is another even more important reason for Golomb’s success. He follows, he says, another very simple rule. He may make a million snap judgements about a customer’s needs and state of mind, but he tries never to judge anyone on the basis of his or her appearance. He assumes that everyone who walks in the door has the exact same chance of buying a car.
‘You cannot prejudge people in this business,’ he said over and over when we met, and each time he used that phrase, his face took on a look of utter conviction. ‘Prejudging is the kiss of death. You have to give everyone your best shot.
‘A green salesperson looks at a customer and says, ‘This person looks like he can’t afford a car,’ which is the worst thing you can do, because sometimes the most unlikely person is flush,’ Golomb says.
‘I have a farmer I deal with, who I’ve sold all kinds of cars over the years. We seal our deal with a handshake, and he hands me over a hundred-dollar bill and says, ‘Bring it out to my farm.’ We don’t even have to write the order up.
Now, if you saw this man, with his overalls and his cow dung, you’d figure he was not a worthy customer. But in fact, as we say in the trade, he’s all cashed up. Or sometimes people see a teenager and they blow him off. Well, then later that night, the teenager comes back with Mom and Dad, and they pick up a car, and it’s the other salesperson that writes them up.’
What Golomb is saying is that most salespeople are prone to a classic Warren Harding error (Editor’s note: Gladwell is referring to the US President who was elected based on the fact that he looked presidential, but turned out to be entirely non-presidential in ability).
They see someone, and somehow they let the first impression they have about that person’s appearance drown out every other piece of information they manage to gather in that first instant. Golomb, by contrast, tries to be more selective. He has his antennae out to pick up on whether someone is confident or insecure, knowledgeable or naïve, trusting or suspicious – but from that thin-slicing flurry he tries to edit out those impressions based solely on the physical appearance. The secret of Golomb’s success is that he has decided to fight the Warren Harding’s error.”
<
Privacy Statement