Milton Pedraza, CEO at The Luxury Institute, says we should be providing just as much information to the sales professional as we do to the customer. Makes sense. Somehow many retailers still aren’t doing that.

At a presentation he gave at eTail Europe this past June, Pedraza used Apple as an example. The company empowered its sales force by arming them with mobile devices that allowed them to interact with customers more efficiently and personally. But that’s just the beginning.

When retail stores are less full, Pedraza says there is a great opportunity for sales professionals to work on relationship building with their customers, and they can do so if they are given mobile devices with minimal functionality that allows them to reach out to the clientele they already have through email and other forms of mobile communication. Sales professionals can reach out to customers and nurture relationships in a way that scientific algorithms and data mining can’t compete with because, quite simply, they’re not as good as human beings.

It might seem radical – you might be thinking, “So you’re asking me to give my sales person in my store a mobile device and let them openly and directly email customers? NO WAY!”

According to Pedraza, it doesn’t have to be so scary. The two keys to doing this successfully are:

1. Hire the right people. Hire people who share your customer centric values. If they are selfish, they should work elsewhere.
2. Educate, educate, educate. And add to that Empower; use incentives that will empower them to build relationships with their customer base.

So why haven’t more retail operations done this already? Pedraza says it’s because it’s easier to create a technology app than it is to face the idea of finding the absolute best people, training them and paying them properly. He’s convinced though, that if we do this, it will pay off.

Customers who have admitted having a good relationship with a company and/or its sales force have been proven to spend more wallet share with said company.

Watch the brief video below to hear more about why this idea works – and why, if you’re not already – you should be doing it.