My first job was as a salesman at a Zara store. I didn’t see it as more than an opportunity to gain experience and money.
The experience was reduced to 5 months, but they were more enlightening than any Marketing chair at the University.
The excellence of the Zara brand in customer service is widely known and idolized by several retail brands, however the quality of the service more than depends on the processes, it mainly depends on the people who perform them.
In another day of service at the store, in one of the morning meetings held by our boss, where in most cases they were nothing more than mere circumstance, he said: “don’t worry about selling, but about helping”.
The phrase didn’t get out of my head so soon. Not exactly because of the impact it had on me, but because it seemed to me to be clearly contradictory. If we sell it will be doubly positive as we will be helping and creating income. That was my train of thought, and I came to find that I couldn’t be more wrong.
On the same day I was approached by a client who wanted a particular dress. He specified in detail the desired characteristics and colors. We had several dresses that would serve the purpose perfectly, but they weren’t exactly what the client wanted, and then I remembered the phrase earlier spoken by the manager “don’t worry about selling, but helping”. “We don’t have this specific dress here, but if you go to Stradivarius you will most likely find exactly this model”. The sentence itself seems from the outset to be a mistake, as I am almost certain to lose a sale and still forward it to the competition, but never underestimate the power of helping the customer. What I had just done was not to worry about the commission, with the sale to the company, but to help the customer in the way I knew best. The customer thanked me and came back 30 minutes later with a bag from the competition in her hands, thanking me for the nomination, because I had never thought of going there.
That same day we lost a sale and won a customer for life. She knew that no matter where she goes, there would always be a company there willing to be honest with the customer, willing to help, not thinking about the company but about the other, and this it is something that will mark this person forever, we created a brand, we generated positive feelings, and in fact this is what all brands want, or at least what they should aspire to.
By Vasco de Matos Ramos
Vasco Ramos 
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