The Art of the Soft Sell

The low-pressure sale is back. How to use customer-centric selling to build loyalty and revenues

Jun Kim, Yoforia: "I take the pressure off my employees" Ann States

By Jeremy Quittner

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Walk into one of Yoforia's three frozen yogurt stores in Atlanta, and you'll get a warm hello from a server, who will encourage you to try all four of the company's frozen yogurt flavors. The server might also describe the organic milk used to make the yogurt and talk about the all-natural ingredients that go into the premium dark chocolate, mango, pomegranate, and blueberry desserts.

What you won't get is a hard sell. If you look as if you want to be left alone, you will be. Staffers are told to put themselves in customers' shoes, to interact and be pleasant, but never to nag. Although after tasting the yogurt and hearing about how healthy it is, you're certainly more likely to make a purchase. And Kim's sales are up 40% over last year.

"I take the pressure off my employees that they have to make sales," says Jun Kim, co-founder of the 25-person, $1 million company. All of his staffers are former customers who are passionate about his yogurt. Although Kim doesn't have formal staff meetings, he works on a daily basis with his employees, instructing them to sell service as much as frozen yogurt. He awards staffers bonuses of up to $100 when he sees them going out of their way to help customers and work well with other employees. Says Kim: "We try to focus on the customers, making sure they have a good experience when they come to the store, so they feel their money is well spent and well worth it."

On the surface, that may not sound groundbreaking—treat your customers well, figure out what they want, give them information about your product, and sell them something you care about. But wrapping it all together and persuading your sales folks not to obsess over, well, sales, is something different: customer-centric or consultative sales. A customer-centric sales process emphasizes a low-pressure environment that lets your sales staff act as consultants, offering information and showing how your product or service can help solve a customer's problem. When it comes to yogurt, that may be as simple as helping a customer pick the best flavor. The end goal of customer-centric sales is not only to boost sales and trumpet your brand but also to make customers happy they shopped at your store, building the foundation for future sales.

Consultative sales has its roots in the early history of retail, when our grandparents went to buy something from the local five and dime, where they probably knew the name of the clerk who retrieved their items and told them how much they cost. But the art of the low-pressure sale got lost somewhere on the way to the big payoff, and in the mid-1990s, big companies realized they were jeopardizing their relationships with customers—and the possibility of repeat sales—by being overly transaction-oriented. Today, companies both big and small are rethinking the way they sell their products. "This is a consumer society, but virtually no one likes to be sold to," says Adrian Miller, founder of Adrian Miller Sales Training in Port Washington, N.Y. "[Customers] like to buy what you do in a store." In other words, it's a mistake to think customers simply purchase a product or service. They are buying an entire process, including the customer service, the knowledge of the salespeople, and the quality of the interaction leading up to the sale.

If you've ever shopped at an Apple Store, say, or a Container Store, you already have some familiarity with this type of selling, at least from the receiving end. At Apple, customers can attend ongoing screenings about the latest iPhone or get free technical help from the Genius Bar. At a Container Store, sales associates are screened for problem-solving ability, affability, creativity, and experiences that will help them connect with their customers, who are mostly women in their mid-30s to mid-60s. Sales staff then go through about 240 hours of training to help them excel at the light, informative touch. Rather than working on commission, full-time salespeople start at an annual salary of roughly $45,000—about 50% to 100% more than other retailers pay.

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