Retail Sales – Avoid The Traps That Will Ruin Your Business!

Why is it that some retail staff delight us with their quality of service and some frustrate us to the point of anger? The work done by Prosell over 25 years have highlighted some of the reasons for the dreadful experiences we sometimes have. As we highlighted in a previous blog, the impact of poor service goes further quicker and can close down businesses almost overnight.

Below are the most common mistakes that retailers make in allowing their customer to have poor experience. They are in priority order and have been assessed in terms of their contribution to ‘consistently poor service’, as determined by mystery shopping.

1. No Consequence – letting staff get away with poor attitude, skill and behaviour. Of course, if you have not set clear standards of behaviour, then you will not have the will or process to reinforce it. Be aware, just telling people what is expected has little impact and has no relation at all to really setting and reinforcing standards. It is also important to be aware of what happens to all staff once they become aware that there is no consequence for doing the job well or badly. They stop trying.

2. Hopelessly inadequate induction – much induction in retail looks at the ‘must do’ things, such as processing card payments and stock control. It is possible (and critical) to do an on-site, cost effective induction that sets standards, trains people in key skills and inspires them to delight the customer.

3. Being happy with ‘satisfied’ customers – unless you have no competition, there is little or no relationship between ‘satisfied’ customers and customer loyalty or customer spend. It is only when customers are ‘delighted’ that they come back and also recommend to others. Some companies spend large amounts of money asking customers if they are satisfied, or very satisfied and wonder why the ratings make no difference to their revenues

4. Trying to buy loyalty rather than earn it – loyalty schemes have to be reinforced with very clear practices that earn the customers respect. Otherwise they are very expensive ways of giving discounts to people who have no desire to return and take away margin for no benefit. There are far too many schemes in every retailer for them to stand out on their own – surveys show customers don’t even know which schemes they have signed up to.

If you recognize these things in your world, but lack the resources to fix them; there are government schemes that will contribute $4000 per employee for skill and service development. Let us know if this is something you would want to discuss.

How to improve sales results in the retail industry!

I’d like to continue to develop the theme of sales results in retail and invite comment on some conclusions on how to be better than the rest.

To add some value to our readers I want to share both research and evidence as to how to improve revenues in retail.

The reality of retail environments is that there is not the time or money to spend days on training and development to develop advanced selling skills. This article looks at four simple and ‘free’ things that have been proven to improve results.

1. Recognise you are the expert - people want advice and guidance, not just friendly faces. Experts are more engaged, ask more questions and make enthusiastic recommendations. Give your people the knowledge to be experts in what they are selling. Encourage them to look at competition. Discuss with them the differences between your offering and theirs.


2. Be interested – make sure everyone understands the attitude, facial expression and words that need to be used to show genuine interest in the customer. Did you know that the customer makes up their mind about the salesperson in the first 6 – 9 seconds? Quite often this is before they speak. One company in our group that tried new practices had store staff rate each other on their level of engagement, using a simple form. In two weeks revenues were up by 16%.


3. Really simple skills go a long way – as stated, in retail the initial engagement is key. Far too often we see untalented and boring approaches being used. How often have you heard a salesperson say to you, ‘you OK?’ or, ‘can I help?’ These have to be the most poorly phrased and disengaged statements that we hear, but we hear them all the time. With another retailer, we asked their staff to change one simple thing, the initial phrase they used. We asked them to walk up to the customer smile. Say hello and ask, ‘what brings you into our store today?’ This got the customer talking and engaged, and as a result sales were up over the pilot period by 28%.


4. Test properly at interview – if we accept that store staff are not going to attend lengthy induction and training, then we must make sure the raw material has an aptitude for the job. Not only should you get the person to show you how they would deal with a customer, but there are a range of other tests available that will let you know if the person is right for the job. We use, as an example, a software tool that evaluates whether people enjoy talking to others. Simple and cheap, but essential if you want people who have an aptitude for the job.

The Connection between Customer Service & Sales Revenues in the Retail Market

We have all heard the anecdotal clichés about customer service – ‘have a good experience and you tell three people, have a poor experience and you tell twenty’ etc. what is now happening in retail is even more significant.

Feedback from mystery shopping groups and from work completed by Prosell tells us that three things have changed that show an even higher relationship between customer service and sales revenues:

1. Customer expectations have changed and they no longer tolerate poor service. Customers are more impatient and will wait less time to be served. They expect higher levels of product knowledge and want expertise, not just smiley faces (and some don’t even get that.

2. Far greater choice means they will not come back because they don’t have to. This is a major change over the last 10 years. If you are a retailer you will know the competitive landscape has changed beyond recognition in this time.

3. This is the big one. The internet allows feedback to be immediate and all encompassing. We know a restaurant chain that went from profit to loss in just three weeks because the customer service rating on www.eatability.com.au was so poor. This type of customer feedback is also extending beyond restaurants (http://www.shopping.yahoo.com.au/). So it is no longer 20 people knowing about a bad experience over a period of months. It is many thousands and it is overnight.

If you are interested in the change of the Customer Buying Cycle, please click on the link here.