education
Script + System = Sales Success By Jim Ackerman
lation over the phone, what do you say? If it’s a random salesperson, staff member or anyone else answer- ing the phone, what does he or she say? Are all the messages the same? If not, you’re losing sales. Failure to prepare with proven
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answers to predictable situations, questions, concerns and objections is one disturbing similarity I have found not only among the mobile electronics retailers I’ve been work- ing with, but in virtually every single business I’ve worked with — includ- ing, sadly, my own. It
doesn’t matter what brands
you’re selling, what your price points are, how big your showroom is, your location or anything else. I’ve have found that every store blows revenue opportunity after revenue opportunity because they fail to prepare. Creating a script and system for your marketing efforts will help improve your sales rates. If all your people are dealing with customer-related situations in their own way, you’re always going to be at the mercy of hoping the right person is in front of the right prospect at the right time. The luck of the draw. When everybody is using the same script and system, you can tinker with wording and procedure and “genetically engi- neer” your sales processes for ever-increasing success.
IF MCDONALD’S CAN DO IT… For the most part, just about everybody who ever works in this industry within the first few months experience every pos- sible sales or customer service scenario. When you pool the collective experience of all the people who work at your store, most likely you will find that your staff has covered 99 percent or more of any customer scenario that might arise. So why not prepare for those eventualities and train your people with the most effective scripts to handle whatever comes up? Think that’s too tough? I don’t know — seems like McDon-
ald’s can take young teenagers, many who have dropped out of school, and train them to consistently deliver the goods for customers. This in the face of teen after teen who quits two
60 Mobile Electronics June | July 2012
weeks — or two days — into the job and has to be replaced by Thursday. I understand the mobile electronics business isn’t McDon-
ald’s, and it’s more complex than that. Yet, when you really boil it down, is it really? The fact is, McDonald’s has a way to take an order and it has a way to deal with the order if the customer, for example, doesn’t want pickles on his burger. You may have more complex scripts to deal with compared to McDonald’s, but the approach is the same. The questions, concerns and objections related to car stereos, keyless entry and security systems, back-up cameras and the like, can be categorized, quantified, analyzed, predicted and prepared for. So, whenever something comes up, you and your team have an answer.
When a prospect calls you and asks for a price over the
phone, you know that person thinks your business is a com- modity; that your products, brands and installation service is just like your competitors, so he’s going to make his decision based on price. Of course, you’re not the lowest-priced shop in your market, so you’re bound to lose the sale. Since this hap- pens all the time, why not be prepared and have a script and system for dealing with it?
When someone comes in asking for a set of speakers and
just wants the least-expensive model, what’s your script and system for up-selling to a higher-end model in the customer’s
hen someone calls and asks you to quote a price for a basic unit and instal-
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