editorial
Chris Cook President
answer, let’s take a few minutes today and develop a simple plan for just one area of your business. Nothing happens until you make a sale, so with that in mind, we will start with the sales floor. Our goal is to develop an exciting sales experience
Making it Count I
know, you “sort of” wrote a business plan when you started your business. Have you looked at it recently? Does it represent your current business model? Regardless of the
for every customer who walks through your doors. This will take a bit of experimentation as all cus- tomers are not created equal, although everyone’s money spends just the same. For this exercise, we will assume your showroom is complete and fully functional and represents all the categories you have available. Your points of order will be greet, qualify, wow, refine and close the sale. The greeting — This must be inviting every time.
You are setting the tone for the entire sales experi- ence and providing the customer with an insight as to who you are. Think about your good and bad experiences when you have entered other retailers. How do you feel when someone doesn’t greet you? Make every customer feel important by greeting them with a smile and welcome. If you are busy with another customer, they will understand as that is how you greeted them as well. If you are with an- other associate, drop what you are doing as there is nothing more important on the sales floor than a customer. Make sure all of your associates are comfortable greeting customers. Qualify with confidence — By the time you finish your greeting, you should know what they drive and the music they like. You should also have an idea why they came to your store today. Next you want to get a feel for the direction you what to take them. Notice I said “direction you will take them.” Keep in mind that most — if not all — customers have no idea what you are capable of and it is your mission to make sure they don’t leave without knowing. Now it’s time to wow — Yes, wow. You are the
expert and telling your customer how great you are and what you are proud of is something that will come natural to you. To make this a more re- peatable process, put together your top 10 best
solutions including the cars that these solutions represent. Add pictures in a book or PowerPoint with bulletpoint descriptions. Role playing with other associates is a great way to get your pre- sentation down pat. Describe how you felt when you heard the system you are presenting. Make every effort to convey the excitement your cus- tomer should experience should they follow your direction.
Now refine it — By now you should have a pretty
good feel as to what your customer is willing to spend today, so bring it back around to make sure you get some of their hard-earned cash today and not chase them away with the big picture you just painted. That may well be for another day. Make sure you remember all your add-on items such as accessories, warranty, etc. The time to add on is now, not after the sale, so make sure you don’t fall victim to a premature close. If you really want to make it repeatable, develop
a T.A.R.G.E.T program. In this case it is an acronym for targeted accessory recommendations given every time. If you want more information on this program, send an e-mail to
chrisc@merausa.org and I will send you the details. Time to close — This is an area where many good intentioned retailers lose the sale, and for one very simple reason: they don’t ask for the sale. It may be hard to believe that anyone would put so much effort into presenting all they can do without asking for the sale, but it happens more than you think. So let’s look at a good way to make this pro- cess a repeatable one. Circle the wagons. Make a quick summary of what you presented and what you and your customer appear to be agreeing on. Now wrap it all up and deliver your best value and set up the installation day and time! Remember, no doesn’t always mean no. Sometimes it just means you need to restate it and deliver it a different way. Regardless of the outcome, if you put simple and repeatable sales solutions in place and use them every time, you will be on your way to growing your business and increase your bottom line. So get started on your plan. Model it, refine it and use it like your business depended on it! n
58 Mobile Electronics November 2012
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