Do you look at their clothes? Perhaps it’s their watch or the car they pulled up in? When you first meet a client, what are the tells that might give away whether they’re going to be big spenders or just tyre kickers?

Most retailers will always have gut feelings about potential clients, whether they like to admit it or not, but those with plenty of experience know that judging books by their covers can always be dangerous.

There’s no question though that we, as humans, are predisposed to make judgements about others when we first meet them thanks to a few hundred thousand years of evolution. The question in retail is whether or not you act on those judgements, knowingly or unknowingly, and treat different types of people in different ways. If you do it means that, at best, you could lose out on potential sales or, at worst, severely damage your precious reputation.

These judgments are known as cognitive biases, often called unconscious bias, and they are as Verna Myers, head of diversity and inclusion at Netflix, eloquently put it recently “stories we make up about people before we get to know them”.

Phillip Adcock is a behavioural science expert specialising in retail. He consults with retailers big and small to advise them on how to consider the psychology of consumers in their stores, showrooms and sales strategies.

“Unconscious bias is triggered by our brain automatically making quick judgements and snap decisions,” he says. “So if it sees something, it’ll judge it. If it sees somebody, it’ll judge them. It could be their height, their weight, their names, their clothes and many other things.

“It comes way back from when we were in the trees or down on the savannas and if we saw something coming towards us, we very quickly needed to know if it’s friend, foe or possible mate. So evolution trained our brains to spot this stuff, sometimes in a hundredth of a second. We look at the face, then eyes, then teeth, we make all these judgments and although that was thousands of years ago, we still do it now.

“So if somebody goes into a showroom, they’ll get judged by the people in there and, in turn, they’ll judge them back – all in a split second.”

Brain power

This all evolved to simply keep us alive and help us spread our genes on, rather than decide how likely someone is to have a big budget for their new bathroom, but first impressions really do count.

One of the most common unconscious biases a retailer might make is perceived wealth – a quick glance at their car, their clothes, their watch or their haircut and they’re already setting the budget.

“The best thing retailers can do is recognise that they can’t stop their brain judging,” Adcock says. “If you see a cheap car or a posh car, your brain will judge that, you can’t help it. It’s happening below consciousness, it’s much more powerful than cognitive conscious thought.

“The only thing you can do is always remind yourself that everybody coming through that door could be a paying customer. You need to think about what’s in it for you and make that emotional connection. Our brains are lazy and will always look for the path of least resistance, so thinking ‘that person’s never going to buy so I’m not going to bother with them’ is much easier for our brain than entering into a half-hour sales pitch.”

The reverse is true too of course, a really expensive car and designer clothes doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve got loads of money to burn. 

Modern problems

There are, of course, more odious and uncomfortable unconscious biases too, the snap judgements based on, for example, gender, race, age, sexuality or disability. These are the ones that won’t just lose a sale, but also lose trust and damage a good reputation.

“There’s no question that we are in a different world than our grandparents,” Adcock says. “If you watch TV from the 60s, 70s or 80s, it’s positively shocking but, while we’re hyper-sensitive to it now, those biases haven’t gone away, we’ve still got them. 

“So we have to acknowledge that what we’re doing is suppressing those biases rather than eliminating them. It’s a bit of a sweeping generalisation but you see this a lot in car showrooms where they will talk about the colour of the car to the woman and the speed and engine size to the man…”

Unconscious bias isn’t just about the customer coming into the showroom, it also plays a big part in the staff you employ to work in that showroom. We are hard-wired to be tribal, Adcock says and subconsciously like people who look and sound like us.

“There’s been quite a lot of research on this and it’s quite damning,” he says. “They sent CVs into companies for job applications and got completely different response rates simply by just changing names or genders of applicants. 

“It just shows how biased the world is and how sweeping generalisations are made. Your animal brain is trying to find the next member of your tribe and is making sure it’s not someone from a different group that’s likely going to sabotage yours.”

“You need a conscious response to this unconscious hardwiring problem we have as a species,” Adcock says.

“The only thing retailers and their staff can do is have a mantra of ‘this could be a paying customer, this could be a paying customer’ and make your brain concentrate on that.”