The design and layout of a department store are deliberate. The sum of a thousand decisions, choices made to optimise the customer experience and maximise profit. Cosmetics on the ground floor, furniture on the top. The fewer people shopping for big-ticket items invest time ascending six floors. You could argue that the customers who go to the trouble of reaching the top of the store are the most motivated customers in it.

And yet often the sales conversation that happens when the customer gets there seems haphazard and unplanned. Despite the marketing jargon about sleep systems and orthopaedic grade mattresses, one bed looks like any other. The salesperson’s script is the bridge between confusion and clarity, indecision and conviction, an enquiry and a sale. The questions she asks and story she tells are also a set of choices that should help the customer to get to where he wants to go.

Our job as marketers, teachers and leaders is to build better bridges to enable the right change to happen. We can choose to do it on purpose.

Image by Jo Zimney