Defining and Developing your Salespeople
January 25th, 2011 – Michael Tonkin
If you have high staff turnover in stores and your store management team are weak, you’re feeding the online retail phenomenon. Better still. Shut up, shop now and convert your stores to kiosks or vending machines. You’ll make more profit! Ouch!
For your physical stores to stay relevant for customers today, you need to embrace the word ‘experiential’. Experiential retail can be defined by the following statements … “When I first walk in the door I feel a sense of energy and life to the store. I feel something immediately inviting about the store.” “A store filled with ideas that stimulate me.” “When I leave this store I always feel good – like I got something out of the experience above and beyond any products I may have purchased.”
Team members on the shopfloor need to be pro-active, relevant, personalised, engaging, collaborative and … experiential!
We recently developed a program for a leading retailer in Australia to develop team members to drive this experience for customers and awaken the spirit within. This program was built around the 4 pillars of Mindset, Motivation, Knowledge and Behaviours.
Mindset is how you think and is related to your own set of values and beliefs. It includes things like prioritising the customer above everything else, keeping an open mind, always thinking about how to achieve store budgets and a pride in personal appearance. Hiring someone without all of these is a recipe for disaster; hiring someone with all of these and you’ve struck gold!
The second pillar, Motivation, is based on how you feel and your connection with the retail brand. No matter how capable you are with customers, if this is low, life on the shopfloor becomes hard work. This includes things like taking the initiative and not waiting for others to make it happen, being genuinely optimistic, being positively contagious to those around you and going out of your way to do extraordinary things outside your role.
The third pillar, Knowledge, is what you know. One goal for team members should be to have customers leave the store with more knowledge than when they entered - to be the informed expert. This includes knowing company policies, competition, your customers, products and product trends/direction.
The final pillar is Behaviours – what you do on the shopfloor with customers, whether it’s how you engage with customers, understand their needs, mix and match, close the sale or leave a positive lasting impression. It’s only with strong communication/people skills that these behavioural interactions come to life on the shopfloor.
So, what does all this mean? To develop a sales program that keeps both team members and customers engaged and delivers results for your organisation, you need to understand these four pillars and how they relate to each other on the shopfloor. Your program needs to be holistic that’s all about your people and your customers. And your program needs the tools and processes for managers in store to drive the program and hold team members accountable.
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to world-class salespeople development. Reflect on where your organisation is at and give us a call to throw around some ideas.