When A Happy Face Doesn’t Sell
Christopher Philip
It may come as a surprise but putting on a happy face is not always the best default position, even in sales.
Researcher Nancy M. Puccinelli, Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University has found evidence that when a salesperson’s feelings differ substantially from the customer, they are poorly received.
In fact, she found that when a customer is in a bad mood and encounters a salesperson that appears to be happy, they tend to feel even worse than they otherwise would and this in turn decreases the evaluation of the products the salesperson is promoting. She also found that unhappy customers tend to avoid happy salespeople unless they are particularly motivated to purchase such that they ignore their own bad moods.
“Instances in which a firm’s representative does not display positive affect are rare,” says Puccinelli. “That is, the prevailing assumption seems to be that a salesperson who conveys positive feelings is the best salesperson to represent the firm.”
We believe that being around happy people will rub off on others, turning their bad mood positive.
However, this research proves that this is not the case.
Says Puccinelli in her paper: “Imagine the following scenario. After an awful day, you are standing in line waiting to check in for your flight. You discover that the flight you were booked on has been canceled. When you finally reach the ticket counter (seething), an enthusiastic airline representative greets you with a huge smile and says, “Hi, how can I help you today?” How are you likely to respond to this salesperson?”
The research says that it, in fact, makes it worse.
A customer’s mood influences his or her reactions to a salesperson and when people are in a bad mood, they tend to avoid salespeople who are overtly showing positive moods.
In other words, a person in a bad mood does not wish to have their own mood invalidated by the positive mood of another person.
Likewise, a person in a positive mood might feel invalidated by the negative mood of another person.
In daily life, one might encounter dramatically different moods in other people fairly infrequently and based on our own intuition, we do tend to match mood and emotion to the people around us, however, in sales, a manager might wrongfully train their employees to be particularly chipper to the determinant of overall sales.
The correct suggestion, it seems, is to match overall affect and emotion of the customer and bring them away, only slightly, from their negative mood to create more warmth and positive feelings without invalidating the other persons.
Image Credit: Leo-setä
Resources
Puccinelli, Nancy M. Putting Your Best Face Forward: The Impact of
Customer Mood on Salesperson Evaluation. Journal of Consumer Pyschology. 2006. 16(2). 156-162.