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The question posed in the March 2007 e-ret@iler newsletter, with the suggested solutions below:
"We have heard you speak at a trade show each year and have tried to implement your ideas with regard to distinguishing a customer's wants from needs. However, we have one of our staff members that can't see to be able to get past wanting to keep talking and telling the customer all they know about the products and services we offer. We need an idea of how to change this."
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Listen! WE are the ones educated on the use and success of products in each application. Often you must de-program mis-information consumers have gotten from bad sources, or the internet.
Practical application usually wins out when a customer understands why another product might more fit their need than their original request.
Tell your employess, the point of this business is to make sure ecah customer leaves with what they need, sorry, it's not always what you want to sell them.
V. Lee Hutchinson
C-Side Decorating, Inc
Hi,
I think that your question is very good. It sounds like you have a real
people person on the floor selling which is great but perhaps the selling
skills that go with the personality are not fully there yet. It sounds to me
like you have tried to coach this person to what you want but the result is
still not what you want. I have had this situation in my shop and what I had
to realize is that it was perhaps not my material of coaching but the
delivery. I being the business owner and very busy was just getting to the
end of my rope about it, so what to do?
Well, I got two of my other staff who are very good and very long term
employees. I sat with them, explained where I would like the direction of
training with this other staff member to go and then gave them a time line.
I told them that they had a month, they are all full time so this seemed to
work, to help the employee with her selling skills. I also had them track
the sales that they were each doing, this is easy because our POS does this
for us. At the end of the month I had a very good 'team' of people that were
all now working together on selling skills and I did get the result I
wanted. I did reward the two people who trained and the employee that they
were helping.
What this taught me was that I am not always the best person to train the
staff. I have been the owner and manager for a while now and sometimes I
think that my view of the store has shifted so that I don't always see it
from the employees point of view. I also can get really frustrated if I
don't see results but I have to be honest that I can't give that consistant
direction and follow up because I have too many other things that need my
attention. I am lucky that I can lean on the others on my staff to help with
this because it works like a charm!
Good Luck
Lisa Osachoff
This may be the best use of the role playing suggested on other questions. If the salesman plays the role of the customer and hears someone else talk his ear off, it will be come obvious how it sounds. It’s another use of the Do-unto-others practice we should always use-- but with a twist:
“Do I really do that to customers?”
Arlen Bryant
The Country STOVE WAREHOUSE
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