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Loading ...This is a follow-up to my post yesterday about not using the placeholder, “How are you today?” as those words are the quickest way to kill a sale. That’s because they force someone to be in-genuine.
I know I’m dealing with this phenomenon when potential clients tell me all they need are “better ways to close the sale.” The trouble is, by the time the close happens, they don’t realize their part in stopping the sale.
That’s why I created a two-DVD product called Sales RX: The Five Parts to a Successful Sale. It shows the proper way to greet a customer, build a relationship, get them to tell you all you need to match their wants to your goods and suggest additional items.
So will this retail sales training DVD system help your company? Yes and as a bit of a tease, I’m covering a bit about the Greeting in this post. Ideally, you’d spend the money to have me train your crew in either a 90 minute, all day or multiple day event. Barring that, hopefully you’ll click the link or image at the bottom to learn more as it is essentially, “Bob in a Box.”
Commercial over…
The Greeting: Before You Open Your Mouth
Before you say anything, realize this person is the most important person you will meet today. Why?
Because they control your purse strings. Your hopes and dreams for your family. Your very survival.
Unless that is a conscious decision, you easily will follow the herd and treat those customers as an intrusion…
…than the gift that they are.
Zig Ziglar said it probably 40 years ago, “You’ll get enough in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.”
Tell me…
How would you greet a trusted friend when you first spotted them as you came downstairs for breakfast at their house?
And…
How (after making the biggest sale of your life) would you talk about the time of day?
Answer those and that will lead you to…
The Right Words
“Good morning,” ”Good afternoon,” ”Good evening.” One could call it:
- Manners.
- Ettiquette.
- Breeding.
Whatever.
The point is you want to be nice to people before they are nice to you.
Not in a robotic way but to connect to another human being on the planet.
Notice no:
- “Looking for anything in particular today?”
- “Can I help you find something?”
None of that.
If there’s time you can add the name of your business but that can become a bit too long to say.
The reason no one hears “good morning, afternoon or evening” is that no one is trained how to sell. Most people’s part time job morphed into a career in retail. Because of that, no thought or energy has been paid to creating a selling relationship.
Because many at the top never had to actually sell the merch, you see most retail operations more focused on returns, Facebook fans and discounts than sales training. It was Julia Roberts who famously said it this movie: 
Notice her reason, “You couldn’t wait on me.” Again, that starts with the greeting…
Let them lite.
When a fly comes into your house, do you run after it with a flyswatter trying to kill it? Of course not, you have to let it lite on something. Otherwise it is wasted effort.
Same in sales. You have to let the customer lite before you try to qualify their potential purchases from your business.
A more advanced version of the greeting would be, “Good morning, feel free to look around and I’ll be right back.” That requires a bit more training to instill that you, the employee are taking ownership for this customers’ experience which is why you say, “I’ll be right back.”
In Summary
We actively want to greet the customer with an open heart, thinking how they would feel after meeting us. Not “we’ll be with you in a moment,” or “let me know if you need anything.”
Not how tired you are, how put upon you are by your vendors or managers.
Or worse… how bored you are.
When you don’t look at each customer as unqiue…
as a new chance to interact with someone…
to make them smile…
to yes, make them like you…
Then you are so numb to the world you might as well work in some 18th century factory churning out the same piecework day after day.
You make your job as boring as you want.
You want respect?
You want people to put down their cellphones and give you their attention?
You want to have your day fly by?
Get over yourself and greet the customer better than you might greet others on the street.
Can this retail sales training DVD help you? I’d say so…
“…well, I have to say that results have been astonishing to me: in this period our average sale is on the best stores around 56.35; one store last year had an avg of 51.47 and after two weeks of completion of the program we have an avg of 57.98, which means a 12.65% increase!”
- From the owner of 15 shops using Sales RX
