I just read an interesting article today about a study that was recently conducted by the Verde Group. According to their research, Americans deem front-line sales staff as "the single biggest detriment to their shopping experience, resulting in more lost business and negative word of mouth than any other shopping problem."

The number one goal of their study was to find out what annoys consumers the most—and as it turns out, the answer was simple: salespeople. In particular those salespeople who don't have the product knowledge they should, are not around to service customers, are over solicitous or ignore customers (it's a very fine line, as you can see).

The findings reveal that American retailers lose six percent of shoppers due to lack of help, and even more alarming, three percent of shoppers won't ever return to a store where they have been ignored (meaning they didn't receive a smile, greeting or any eye contact).

So what does this information mean to you? It should encourage you to train your sales staff to greet customers and educate them about what you sell. This will lead to loyal repeat customers, and you'll have an edge over the big box retailers (the study found that big box stores are responsible for the largest number of shopping problems… 66 percent). Department stores are somewhat better, but shoppers still report problems 52 percent of the time.

Do you have a policy for your staff when a customer arrives? Are they supposed to greet them in a certain period of time?