Retail Selling & Service, Marketing

These last couple of years have been all about strategies that involved cutting and reducing. As a result, companies with their resources downsized, became known for their ‘good enough’ approach to business. Unfortunately, while this approach might have worked for these companies’ bottom line, it did not work for the customer. With less money in their pocket yet plenty of options, guess where they would go to spend it? Not at the ‘good enough’ stores but at companies that know that this is the time to upgrade their service level. ‘Give more for less’ has become the new imperative where ‘more’ means more attention to the customer’s real needs. From the time when you welcome the customer in your store, to the time you ask them questions about their unique needs and get to really know their likes and dislikes, to when you make them trust your recommendations for a complete solution to their needs and finally to when you re-connect with them after the sale to get them to continue shopping with you, that is when you can truly make a difference in their life and, of course, in your company’s profits. (Based on James Dion’s book "Retail Selling Ain’t Brain Surgery, It’s Twice As Hard")

Congratulations! You have a new sales and service excellence program and your associates are all excited and ready to use the new techniques. But that’s a short-lived excitement and most companies are faced with the grim reality that sales training efforts very often produce short term sales improvements. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. If any sales training effort is truly aimed at improving sales performance then tying the training to a disciplined sales performance measurement program, a program that tracks the outcome of that investment, becomes imperative. That’s what makes the training stick by holding associates accountable for applying the new sales techniques to drive higher sales numbers. You can teach your associates how to add on and sell more to the each and every customer, but until you measure their average transaction or units per transaction and show them how their efforts actually made a difference, there is little incentive for them to continue applying those behaviors. Learn how to make your new sales training work via a comprehensive sales performance management program which includes measuring sales performance, analyzing results, providing feedback, coaching and incentives to improve.
 

Adding on and trading up have always been a retailer's main goal to drive profit and growth. However, the last economic downturn has also taught them to be more empathetic with their customer and understand the real (or presumed) limitations of their finances. Showing empathy is a great thing but it could be detrimental to your business, not just in terms of your profitability but more in terms of your customer satisfaction. Because selling more to a customer or more expensive product is not about pushing product onto them. It is about providing a true service. More product means a complete solution to their needs, that will save them time, money and frustration down the road. It is about selling them a better performing, longer lasting, or better looking solution. Similarly, selling a higher price product is not about making customers pay more than what they need. It’s about sizing their needs and selling not what we believe that they can afford but what their actual need calls for and to make sure that they are not wasting their money on a product or a solution that will not deliver what they need. Learn to deliver superior service by focusing on the two key steps that will amaze your customer and positively impact your business results.

Selling is about understanding how and why human beings, your customers, behave the way they do. Customers’ shopping behaviors have changed and are set to change in the future in very dramatic ways. When and how they shop, the way they assess your store, how they view your prices, how they look at your product and the choices you are offering them, the way they respond to your marketing and service options. The Psychology of Today’s and Tomorrow’s Consumer is a powerful session that draws upon some key psychological truths about human beings and change dynamics to teach you how to better connect and be more relevant to your customer.  

In tough economic times everything becomes negotiable and everyone expects and is willing to negotiate. That’s what we learned after two years of slumping economy and although we are starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, negotiation savvy people and businesses will continue their progress towards more subtle and sophisticated forms of negotiation that will get them ahead of everyone else. Selling to customers, buying from vendors, managing staff, dealing with banks and landlords, buying advertising and everything else that you do every day requires the ability to come to the best deal possible. This workshop is the "Swiss Army Knife" of negotiation skills, giving participants the highest payback skills to ensure a successful negotiation.