'I will immediately turn around and walk out...' I worked in retail over 20 years ago and this is one of the first lessons I learned. If somebody wants help ma

'I will immediately turn around and walk out...' I worked in retail over 20 years ago and this is one of the first lessons I learned. If somebody wants help making a buying decision they will, usually, come and ask for it. If you let someone look around and walk out without bothering them they'll often come back later and buy something. It may be in the next hour or the next week or the next month but (assuming you have something people want) they do come back. I'm not saying completely ignore them, a simple 'hello' or 'how's it going?' will suffice. If they don't ever come back the place has got bigger problems than the salesman can fix. Of course there are exceptions where people are pressured into buying something they didn't want to buy. They're the outliers that drive this kind of perverse retail policy. But you can guarantee these people only ever buy once. Some of this is applicable to e-commerce today. Annoying chat boxes, false discounting and time limited offers are just another way of forcing a sale at the cost of building a long-term relationship.