• Make sure you approach every customer
• Build rapport – be open and friendly, ask questions like - ‘how are you feeling today’ or ‘what is the weather like outside’.
• Ask open questions (these are, who, what, why, where, when and how - these types of questions give you more information than a yes or no answer) to identify the customer’s needs.
• Once you identified the customer’s needs, match them to the product using both a feature and a benefit, e.g. – ‘keeping the children’s uniforms clean must be a problem for you, with this model, it as a daily wash cycle, you can put the children’s uniform in when they get home from school and they will be washed within a half hour, this will save you both time and money’
•  Know what your available stock is – use lost leaders (these are products that are low priced and well advertised products that bring the customer through the door) as a sell up tool, this gives the customer a superior product and it means more money in the till for your store.
• Ask for the sale – don’t be afraid to close the sale, ask the customer ‘when would you like this delivered’ (this option also gives you an add on sale too) – if they come up with an objection, e.g. ‘I want to take it with me’ – you say ‘great, no problem, we have one in stock, you can take it away today’.
• Customers may say ‘I want to have a look around’ – you  can reply with, ‘To save you the time having to look around, we check our prices every week to make sure we are competitive and if you do happen to see it cheaper elsewhere, we will beat the price’ If the customer still chooses to ‘look round’ you may still get the sale, the customer will more than likely come back to you to buy the product, if you have built a good rapport with them.

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We’ve put together a video running through some tips on how to differentiate your brand in retail stores. Here’s Christine with her top tips:

To ensure this is accessible to all, we’ve also written up the show notes below.

If I had to sum it up in 5 tips, the important things to make sure your brand can be differentiated are as follows:

• Make sure your product is on the shop floor. You can’t sell an empty space. Ensure you have plenty of stock in the warehouse to put on the shelves when they’re empty.

• Make sure your product is positioned well. It’s possible to purchase good store space in a retail outlet, so have a word with the buyers to find out where the best spots are.

• Make sure the product is well merchandised when it’s in position. There’s nothing worse than a scruffy dirty point of sale (POS). So make sure the point of sale is clean, relevant, eye catching and up-to-date.

• Once your product is on display, make sure staff know about it. It’s not always the case that staff are trained on all products. It’s important that staff can speak to customers about your product with confidence - that will differentiate your product from a different brand.

• What a lot of companies will do to achieve this is employ a trainer merchandising team where people will go in to a store representing that brand making sure all the above are followed through.

We would love your feedback, any positive or negative comments, or anything you would like to add.

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For successful brand promotion, you need passionate staff who will promote the brand consistently and achieve sales and loyalty for the client.

Building a strong relationship with retail stores and sorting issues out will also help achieve confidence in selling the brand.

It’s important to put the right people in the right job, and to have good communication processes in place.

It’s also vital to have comprehensive training about the brand and product line. Your product line may not be suggested by a customer advisor because they don’t know enough about it.

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• Awareness - The most important part of the Product Training role is to make sure staff are aware of any new and existing product. If they don’t know the product is there - they can’t possibly sell it.

• Confidence - If sales staff have had training on a product they will feel more confident in selling it to the customer. By letting staff try, touch and feel the product it also gives them more confidence to sell.

• Knowledge - Training staff on features and benefits help them to understand the products and helps them to find the best possible product for the customer. Customers will be much more satisfied if they received informed advice from an advisor, and this is particularly important in retail for technical purchases such as computers, mobile phones, washing machines and vacuum cleaners where the average customer knows what they need it for but not what specification.

• Up-Selling - Training staff on the differences between product can also achieve best possible sales for the client and store and sell top of the range products instead of entry range products. This helps the sales person to sell up the range.

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Being able to collect information and send to the client instantly allows the client to get a feel for what is going on in the field without having to go out themselves.

Information on new products or offers from competitors can be fed back to the client with product features, benefits and prices.

This helps the client compare their products with the competition and makes them aware of potential threats. If a threat is established, the client can evaluate and make an informed decision of how best to maintain a competitive advantage, achieving the best possible results without affecting profit margins.

It’s important that competitor information is accurate and is kept up to date, so our preferred method is to send competitor feedback reports from in store using mobile technology.

This speeds up the process for the client, but it also helps staff because they don’t need to go back to the office and type up notes and figures from a store visit.

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Training staff on new and current products is a must to maximise sales. But to enable the trainer and customer advisor to demonstrate products in store, stock must be checked before hand.

If the product is not on display we check the system in store and request that it is placed out asap. We also make a note of this and input this information onto our pda so that the client has a record of missing stock within store.

Stores miss sales opportunities when stock is not on display, so along with allowing product trainers to get on with their work, checking stock levels when first in store also helps avoid missing sales.

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Merchandising acts as a silent sales man.  So if there are no sales staff around, the merchandise explains about the features and benefits of the product.

Retail merchandising staff make sure that the products looks clean, it is in the right place and the correct sales tickets are on the correct products.

They may also put out promotional material such as leaflets, stands and shelf wobblers to draw attention.

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Christmas is a key time of year for sales for retailers but it also brings with it the added problem of bringing in temporary staff to cover this very busy time of year. The problem that many retailers experience is that the temporary staff do not get exposed to the same level of training as the full time staff and therefore sales can be adversely affected.

One retailer decided to overcome this problem by introducing an induction programme for the ‘peak’ sales staff who were employed to cover the busy Christmas period. The course formed part of a ‘pilot’ to identify the benefits and returns generated by induction training.

Beyond The Box was brought in to deliver this induction training with the goal being increased awareness of solution selling techniques and an upturn in sales. NAME from Comet said, “We wanted to offer our ‘peak’ staff the same advantages in selling solutions that our full time staff had. It was an absolute priority that these people understood how to increase the average selling price, sell our warranty products and also feel that they were valued by the organisation.”

The results of the induction training speak for themselves. The number of sales per hour increased by 4% with the average transaction value increasing by 19%. Warranty sales improved by 0.6% and the average selling price rose by 10%. The course also had an affect on the overall happiness of staff with those who attended the course saying that they were proud to work at Comet and were also less likely to leave in the early days of employment.

Commenting on the results of the induction training, Christine Knott, Managing Director of Beyond the Box said, “The people who attended our training course were more at ease with solution based selling techniques and felt confident with customers. The sales figures achieved by those staff who attended the training course were very pleasing for the trainers. This demonstrates that induction training is a very effective way of helping new employees understand the retail environment and how customers purchase.”

As a result of these results Beyond The Box was asked to return and design an induction course for all Comet staff.

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