Market Stall Selling Secrets: By a Psychology Expert

As an expert in the psychology of sales, I will divulge tried and tested ways to maximise your market stall revenue through subtle changes in display, body language and secret selling techniques. These practices will get your customer to want to buy from you without knowing exactly why. I will share some Supermarket Secrets and Retailer Strategies, 6 tools in the Science of Persuasion and look at Buying Signals.

The advantage of having a market stall rather than a shop is that your potential customers do not need to decide to walk into a shop. They can be persuaded to approach your stall as they walk by without them even being aware of why.

First, let’s look at your Customer. They are at a market or event to soak up the atmosphere, to have a nice time and perhaps they might buy something. They are generally tuning out the detail, scanning the scene and meandering, until something shifts their focus.
Your job is to take them out of their reverie and get their attention to focus on your stall. How do you do it?

First Steps

Make eye contact. Sounds basic but a successful stallholder knows they must be actively searching for eyes to connect with. You will be scanning the scene in front of you, connecting visually. All the time, all day. Then,
Smile. It may sound cliché but it works. Not only is your smile boosting your own mood but it has a positive impact on the other person. Being friendly yourself lifts your own day and increases endorphins.
Talk, communicate, speak. Welcome them into your space with your body language. Customers who buy hand-made or local goods are interested in the provenance so they can tell their friends about it and it adds to their buying experience.
Stand up, be engaged and look happy and approachable and ready to chat.

At the same time that you are making active steps to engage with your customer, they will be scanning your stall, seeing if there is something that they could be interested in.

Have a clear, unambiguous display:

What do you Sell? Use height to clearly display your business sign. The higher your sign, the further away you can take advantage of steps 1-4. Make sure your sign clearly explains what your business is about and ensure people can see it from a distance.
Have clear pricing from afar. A secret weapon to get folk to approach you will be to advertise at least one attractive but realistic price point which helps customers judge if they want to spend time with you. If you have a large and clear sign that says e.g. Silk Scarves £10 or 3 bars for £10 these are hooks that will pique the interest of your buyer. Often buyers are wary of approaching because they have a notion that your products may be too expensive. Displaying a good price for a key product works extremely well in getting folk gravitating to your stall.

Test: Take a picture of your stall and show it to someone who has never seen your stall before. Could they tell what you are selling and your price range?

Display your products in interesting ways. Try differing heights (suspended or on boxes) and perhaps have key focal points (interesting objects) to draw the eye. Never clutter but group similarly priced items together.
Lighting always increases your income. Only on very bright days will it not make a difference. The small fee for having electricity on your stall for lighting will pay for itself with a boost in sales. Lighting is crucial – to the point where some department stores lower the lighting in their lingerie departments so that customers feel more relaxed. However, generally, on a market stall the point of lighting will be to make your wares visible

*Two very different ‘feels’ to what is essentially the same product.*

Music can help in more specific sales settings. French music will boost the sale of French wine sales (or any French products) and German folk music will do the same for German wines and products. Music generally lifts people’s mood, so if there is music in the form of buskers or any other music, it is often a good thing.

Positioning by Association. This is a very useful psychological device used by businesses that want to be specific in how they position their product (usually high end). For example, if you are selling leather handbags with a high price ticket, you could dress a half torso mannequin in a luxury branded jacket (Chanel, Hermès, Burberry) position it in the centre of your stall and have your handbags hanging off the shoulder, thus associating your brand with a known luxury brand. Perhaps have a Hermès scarf tied to one or two of your bags too. Displaying items on a plinth also shows exclusivity. If you are positioning your brand as luxury, obviously sell in situations that will have your kind of customer readily available.

Having your packaging visible helps your customer to assess if buying from you is for them. If a customer is going to spend £300 on a branded silk scarf, their experience of buying will be severely affected if the shopkeeper puts it in a brown kraft paper bag! That is why the iconic orange Hermès boxes with their tissue paper-lined insides are as collectable as their scarves. If you are in the business of selling cakes on a market, consider what your customer will take their cake away in. Practically and visually a box is better than a paper bag, but do your costs allow for this and will your customers be happy with less ‘posh’ packaging? Perhaps the customer wants to purchase your wares as a present for a special occasion and a smart gift bag or box could persuade them to ultimately buy from you. If you ensure your packaging options are on display, it will give your customer more reasons to buy from you.

*Examples of packaging depending on your product.*

Buying Signals

Questions – when customers on a market stall ask you questions about your products, these are buying signals. They are considering buying so make it easy for them to come to a conclusion by asking them questions in return, if appropriate.
Body Language – when customers touch their face or stroke their chin, they are considering buying. Also, if they move closer to you that is also a positive buying signal. Help them out by getting a bag ready!

Supermarket Secrets and Retailer Strategies

Retailers use a wide variety of psychological tools to entice shoppers to buy products. They are increasingly more sophisticated and effective. How often have you gone into a supermarket for one thing and arrived at the checkout with a trolley-full?

Bread, eggs and other staples are often at the furthest point of the shop, getting you to walk through the isles past a tempting array of colourful goods, special offers and delicious smells.
End caps and islands increase sales. On a market stall, if you have the luxury of being on a corner, remember to make full use of its potential and have items positioned in a way that attracts the customer and at the same time interests the customer enough to move around to the main body of your stall.

*Card carousel on a stall increases your selling space*

Middle shelves are also valuable on a market because they are at eye level, rather than being down on the table. Market stall browsers moving from stall to stall do tend to have their eyes focussed downwards and almost get into a ‘market trance’ but if you can lead their eyes up and into the detail of your stall you can break their hypnotic state and begin your conversation.
Words that touch on the emotions – ‘Home-made’, ‘hand-made’, ‘traditional’ – words that activate memories of meals in warm cozy kitchens, good feelings of nostalgia and longing will help generate sales.
Price Point. £1.99 instead of £2.00. We are completely used to it by now but one digit off of the whole number really makes us feel that we are getting something cheaper and we round the price off to the next lowest monetary unit, so prices of £1.95 may be associated with spending £1 rather than £2. We all KNOW the psychology but as sellers we mustn’t underestimate the lucrative effects of this.
Offers Multibuys, Buy One Get One Free, 2 for 1 and free gift offers all work and encourage higher volume of sales.

Folding Clothes is a useful retailer technique to get you to touch the item and see what the rest of the garment is like. Once you touch something it is more likely that you will become more emotionally attached and thus more likely to buy.

6 tools from the Science of Persuasion – useful tools for Face to Face Selling

1. The Contrast Principle – shows that when two things are compared next to each other, rather than individually, we form an unconscious bias. We tend to measure them compared to each other rather than on their own merit. So if we are comparing two similar items on a stall one of them might be considered as fairly cheap by comparison, when in fact it is more expensive than the average cost of the thing. E.g. £400 cashmere jumper compared to a £199 cashmere jumper.

2. The Liking Principle – We like people who are like us and are more likely to be persuaded by people we like and who we want to be like. With this in mind, dress as your customer might and display your goods in a way that your customer will like and identify with.

*If our customer can identify with us, we are half way to building rapport*

3. The Scarcity Principle – When people feel that they may have to go without an item, often they will want it even if they don’t need it. E.g. “Only a few left” or “While stocks last” . Usually finding an item at a market stall quite often can mean that it is only available at the market. Items that are only exclusively available at your stall and can’t be found anywhere else – is in itself is enticing.

4. The Reciprocation Principle – is the social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action. So, offering tasters at a market will be more likely that customers will feel obligated to buy from you. However, this has backfired in recent years with customers seeing offered tasters as the ‘norm’ at a food market and no longer feeling obligated to return the favour by purchasing from you. Some cheeky people even expect to be offered a taster before they will buy. However, it is still an effective tool to use, particularly if you engage in conversation alongside this technique.

5. The Authority Principle – people are more likely to buy from an ‘expert’ in their field so the more you promote that expertise the more profitable your business will be. ‘The man I bought this from at the craft market won the award for the best X last year’ When your hairdresser suggests you buy X product because it will help your hair become thicker, thinner, less frizzy etc., you are more inclined to purchase that product because they are the professional and know what they are talking about! When a food seller at a market stall wears their chefs whites, it give the customer confidence.

*Wearing Chef’s Whites not only looks clean and professional but also gives you authority.*

6. Social Proof – if others do it, say it, buy it, etc., then it must be ok – or do-able. For example,. in the case of Roger Bannister in 1954. Before he achieved the ‘impossible’ of running a mile in 4 minutes nobody thought it was possible for a human so nobody tried. Now, over 1,400 athletes have achieved this and it has become a standard. When we see other people doing something we tend to follow suit or accept that as others are doing something it must be ok to do too. In your conversations you could mention ‘your regular customers’ or ‘that is everyone’s favourite’. If you arrange your stock in piles, remove a few items to make it look as if someone has already bought from a pile, it will make people think others have been there and bought. Or notice that when you don’t have much of a certain type of stock, just a few left, they will sell out faster than the remaining stock. Show Social Media Reviews on your stall to show what customers think of your products. Having a queue at your stall is a good thing!