The noble art of retail selling is an area that is surprisingly often overlooked. Fiction: Anyone can sell. Many retailers believe that every trained sales person can engage the customer in a non business approach, assess customer needs through skillful questioning, retain the vital information, ready for playback at a later stage, and skillfully introduce the product to the customer, through to a benefits laden package, based on customer needs to the right product. But wait: it gets better than
an this when this skilled salesperson effortlessly bundles the add on to the package of product that the customer simply must have.
Elated, the customer leaves the store ready to tell 20+ other advocates and turn them into evangelists for that business’s brand customer experience.
Fact: Customer service is not the same as selling.
Some sales people actually don’t know how to sell very well. A smiling face, sunny disposition, and helpful manner is nice and important, although it doesn’t make these people profitable salespeople.
The greatest asset that a sales person can have is to be a strong active listener, confident, with the right degree of humility, and genuine interest in the customer.
They should know their product and be enthusiastic when explaining its features and benefits.
The right sales training supported by an effective people framework will go a long way to delivering these increases and help you stay fit and resilient in today’s market.
We see plenty of selling data across a large range of retailers. One area where opportunity is lost consistently is the add-on or up sell, yet this is just profit walking out the door.
Once again, a strong sales strategy will never deliver if the investment in selling skills and performance frameworks are not in place.
Between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of purchases are impulse.
These people will buy that add-on with their product purchase, if only somebody would ask.
So this begs the question, are we selling more to the customers we have and are we measuring this by items per sale, average sale, conversion, and gross sales by team member?
Did you know that the conversion ratio of shoppers to buyers in specialty retail only averages approximately 15 per cent?
This means that 8.5 out of every 10 people who walk through your doors leave empty handed.
Think about what the effect would be on your bottom line if transactions stayed static while your average sale figures were up by 10 per cent, your conversion increased to 30 per cent, and items per sale rose by even just one.
For example, a specialty retail store makes $2000 on an average day while selling to 15 per cent of its shoppers.
By selling to an extra 15 per cent of people entering the store, it increases its conversion ratio to 30 per cent and has the potential to double daily sales to a whopping $4000 without attracting a single additional customer!
If you then extrapolate this increased amount across the retail channel, we can start to see the missed opportunities occurring.
Selling more to the customers you have is a vital objective in today’s environment.
Operationally fit companies have fully integrated and complete effective people frameworks which allow them to maximise sales conversions and therefore dollars, without any capital investment or increase in overheads.
What would it take to increase the fitness of our sales people so they have the skills and motivation necessary to convert more shoppers into buyers?
Fitness tips for effective people
Think, talk and make sales – across all roles in the business. Set clear performance standards and goals, provide coaching, training and feedback and offer reward systems for excellence.
It’s all about great, motivated people. Recruit enthusiasm for selling by applying the old adage of ‘recruit the will, teach the skill’. Keep your staff happy with you and they will make you happy in return.
Standardise your recruitment guidelines to encourage alignment of goals and culture. Strong engagement starts with strong induction so ensure sufficient training is provided to new staff so they engage in the sales culture from day one.
The top three. Ask your managers and staff to anonymously nominate their top three goals in the business. If 100 per cent of your staff are not nominating sales as their number one goal it’s time to think about increasing your cultural alignment (think back to that conversion rate).
Provide teams with knowledge for confidence. Are your sales people fully confident in their product ranges and the features and benefits of the products they are selling? If the answer is not a resounding yes, work on further training in this field. Introduce new products and have your sales people ‘sell’ them to their fellow team members at weekly team meetings.
Knowledge is key in making those additional sales.
Happy ‘Fit’ Retailing
Brian Walker, Retail Doctor Group
* Brian and Retail Doctor Group can be contacted on 02 9460 2882 or by email on businessfitness@retaildoctor.com.au. For more information please visit www.retaildoctor.com.au