As a retailer, your success is almost entirely dependent upon how successful your sales team is. Not all salespeople are created equal. There are tremendous variations in personability, physical attractiveness, and understanding of human nature as well as the sales process to take into account. Some of these factors can be controlled for with hiring practices and training, and that is what good retailers do.
True brand dominance becomes possible when a retailer takes things to the next level. The reason some salespeople sell more than others is due to the way the salespeople appear to the buying public. This is an external factor that is easy to control, yet the potential here is woefully underutilized by most retailers.
Foot Locker is one step ahead in the game. The athletic footwear chain has 3,400 stores in 23 countries, and has earnings that put them far ahead in the race with their closest competitors, Finish Line and Shoe Carnival. The brand does have a preferential relationship with Nike, a superior brand in and of itself, but that is not the only reason the chain does very well.
Foot Locker’s sales team sells more sneakers than other shoe salesmen. Why is that? Take a look at the way they’re dressed.
Retail Genius: Archetypal Images
When Foot Locker has their sales team dress as referees, they’re harnessing the power of archetypal images. Obviously, the sight of a referee is familiar to the athletically-inclined – Foot Locker’s primary market – but the referee is also symbolically powerful. Throughout the world, a referee represents authority. They stand as a person who should be listened to.
Through generations of human experience, our collective symbolic understanding has grown and evolved. Our conditioned response to show respectful obedience to referees manifests not only when we encounter them on the playing field, but subtly extends to referees outside of the expected setting. Additionally, you don’t need an actual referee to bring out that conditioned response – it can be provoked by distinctive elements of the referee’s appearance, such as a striped shirt.
In other words, while a Foot Locker customer is in the store or even on the brand’s website, they are continually being supplied with the visual cues that tells them how to respond to messaging they receive. When a Foot Locker employee suggests a certain pair of sneakers — or perhaps a second or third pair, or a T-shirt to go with the new kicks — that customer is primed to agree, and make the purchase.
What Archetypal Images Will Help Your Sales Team Sell More?
What your sales team wears, as well as the colors, imagery, and iconography they’re surrounded by, has a tremendous impact on how much merchandise they’ll sell. Yet if you do a quick survey of the retail environment as it stands right now, you’re going to find that the vast majority of retailers have their sales teams in some variation of black pants, white shirt or khaki pants, primary colored shirt — combinations customers have been taught they can disregard without consequences.
Nobody ignores the referee.
A Brand Model can help you identify which archetypal images will command the attention of your target market. The most appealing archetypal images are those that embody the vision our customers have of themselves at their very best. These images draw customers in. They internalize and reflect upon these images, searching for the identifiable factors they can emulate or adopt to become more like the person they admire – the idealized version of themselves.
Having the right archetypal imagery in your store, whether that be through your messaging, marketing, employee apparel, signage or other visual elements, attracts attention and assures your customers that they’re in the right place.
It works for Foot Locker. It can work for you. Transform your sales team into the one that can’t be ignored. Help your sales people sell more. It all starts with a Brand Model. You can get yours here.