You’ve been in one Wal-Mart; you’ve been in them all, right? Not anymore.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the world’s largest retailer is dropping its “one size fits all” approach to retail sales. Shoppers will no longer enter a cookie-cutter store featuring the same products as every other Wal-Mart store where they’ve shopped in the past. Instead they’ll discover the retailing giant is rearranging the locations of its merchandise displays and stocking the shelves with products more closely reflecting the buying habits of its local clientele. What’s this strategy mean to you as a salesperson? If you’ve ever thought low price was the only thing your customers wanted, read on.

Wal-Mart built its niche on the power of standardization and the belief that buying in huge volumes could keep prices low and force the competition to drop its prices or go bankrupt. (All your customers want low prices, right?) The plan worked well for several years, particularly in the late 1990s and early part of the new millennium. However, their momentum has slowed dramatically in the last two years, forcing Wal-Mart CEO Eduardo Castro-Wright to rethink his company’s selling strategies in the wake of falling stock prices and a revenue growth slowdown.

Wal-Mart’s new approach is based on categorizing their customers into six different demographic markets and offering them more selection of what they really want, not what Wal-Mart used to think the needed. Armed with detailed information about their customer base, local store managers have been empowered to move merchandise displays to new locations within the store as well as increase, decrease or remove altogether inventories on various product lines.

For example, at one Wal-Mart near Chicago, the manager has relocated his music section to the front of the store and quadrupled the floor space of CD displays. His calculated risk appears to be paying off – sales are clearly on the rise.

Is there a lesson in Wal-Mart’s initiative that all of salespeople can learn from? I believe so. If the biggest retailer in the country can re-think its views on selling, maybe you should too.

Perhaps your sales presentations have become too standardized and lack the flexibility to adjust to the fact that every one of your prospects may want something different. Have you fallen into the rut of “telling” your customers what they should be buying instead of “listening” to them?

Customers want to work with salespeople who ask the right questions, listen to their answers, make solid recommendations and provide outstanding service. If they want an order taker, they can buy all they need over the Internet or through mail-order catalogues.

Perhaps it’s time you take a closer look at your target markets to determine if they can be sub-divided into smaller niche markets for your business. You could find that each niche offers potential opportunities to open doors to new revenues you never dreamed existed. Certainly it’s worth a serious look, wouldn’t you agree?

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