Retail Sales

Shopping is a great Saturday afternoon past time for most people across the world. All of us have wondered aimlessly many times with your loved one, even if you rather wanted to do something else. But many of us are quite successful in avoiding this type of shopping most of the time. When we occasionally do the bit of shopping for some reason or the other, we might be disappointed at the lack of sales skills that the retail staff posses with doing retail sales. It even looks as if most of the biggest brands don't even offer proper retail sales training; therefore workers choose not to use it. This in the end causes a huge amount of proper retail sales opportunities to be lost.

Most of us have been there more than once - we walk into a shop and almost instantly the sales assistant enquirers if he may help you or if you need any help. Without trying to be negative, about nine out of the ten times our response is "no thanks you" or "I am just looking". The "just looking" response is a strange one - surely nobody looks at items for sale unless they are interested in buying them in the first place. But we reply this way to avoid retail sales staff to not bully us into buying something we are still thinking about - most of the times we are unwilling to be open about our purpose. The truth is also that we don't like being confronted, being put under any form of pressure and we especially don't like being "sold to". The quickest way to avoid this is to respond with a "no" and quickly.

Some people may see retail sales staff as commission based vultures. Sure some may be, and it is likely that some retail sales staff see customers as time wasters or an extra bit of money. People working in retail sales' success is dependent on the opening question. A closed question such as "can I help?" invited a "yes/no" answer, which is pretty difficult to move on from. If you work in retail sales, focus on using open questions, which will invite conversation. For example, try "what kind of television are you looking for?" rather than just bombarding the potential customer with sales questions. This approach tells the customer that you know they are looking to buy and you are then inviting them to have a discussion about their preferences with you.

These changes might seem rather simple, but this slight change in your approach is likely to have a huge impact in the number of retail sales that you generate on the shop floor. Make sure you care about your customers, ask open-ended questions, actively listen to their answers then combine that knowledge with your unsurpassed product knowledge to solve their problems and at the same time improve your retail sales. It is very important that you teach these skills to your retail sales staff. It is your responsibility to assist your customers in saving time and they'll save time when you help them to buy add-ons. When you choose to assist them in saving time, they will show their appreciation by becoming loyal repeat customers.