Today’s amusing sales strategies

There is a sales trend that we notice and I’m wondering if it actually works. From my perspective, as a customer, it does not. Remember that episode in ‘Friends’ when Joe got a job in a men’s fragrance department? He dressed up as a cowboy and his task was to spray a fragrance on as many men as possible.

Many men would walk away and he’d be chasing them with the bottle. When I first saw that I thought it was quite funny for these companies to think that you could persuade people to come over to your counter by just spraying them with a fragrance.

So let me ask you this. How many times have you been accosted by a fragrance bottle wielding salesperson at a kiosk in a shopping mall? How many have held out the fragrance bottle and beckoned you as you walked by? I guarantee that there isn’t a single person reading this who has not.

Then earlier this week I began to wonder if the strategy of spraying the fragrance on a passerby results in a sale? Or does it just result in a bottle of fragrance being wasted every day?

I think that buying perfume is actually a big purchase. It’s not like buying chocolate where you taste it and then think, yes I like that, I’ll buy it. Those sorts of items might result in a sale because they’re not that expensive and people do buy them on a regular basis anyway or when they feel like a snack and want to treat themselves.

But I’m pretty certain that because perfumes are a big buy (a decent bottle will set you back around Dhs400-500) and no one is just going to buy something because they might like the smell. In fact, I reckon that most people stick to a particular scent and tend not to deviate from it. Scents are very important. Not all fragrances are pleasant, despite being named fragrances. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that someone is just going to buy something because the fragrance smelled nice on them 5 seconds ago.

Fragrances are weird. They have notes. Usually the top note, the one you smelled when it was first sprayed on you and you liked, will quickly evaporate and the second note will make you pinch your nose. Now some customers don’t mind being sprayed. But I think that’s because they are being courteous and don’t want to hurt the feeling of the salesperson.

Others, on the other hand, might just want a free spray and might come back the next day or, go to another kiosk, to get another spray again because it’s free. I might be wrong but I’ve sometimes accepted being sprayed because I feel bad for the person behind the kiosk; his boss might be watching, but I’ve never bought one. I usually stick to the well-known brands of perfumes.

I also wonder the same thing about pharmacies. There’s a growing trend where the front entrance is inundated with staff trying to beckon you in to buy supplements. Now, I take supplements, like Vitamin C and multivitamins, but I also think that not all supplements are for everyone. Supplements, I think, need to be taken under the care of health professionals because many can have their side effects.

And I also think that not everyone needs supplements. They might be overdosing on them, especially when it comes to Iron and Calcium. Then there are weird sounding supplements, whose names escape me right now, but the names themselves are scary enough to make you want to stay away from them.

The last one baffles me and is to do with estate agents making cold calls to people asking if they’d like to come to an opening to buy something. This is an even bigger purchase than fragrances and I guarantee that not everyone is looking to buy anything. And if they are, they will approach estate agents with a budget.

To be fair, selling is a tough job and the poor salesperson is given a target. Sell or be out of a job. Perhaps we ought to give them a few minutes of our time, out of courtesy?