Sales and Service Training

Product Knowledge and Selling Skills: Baby Shop - Retail

As part of its expansion strategy, our client was introducing Baby Shops into its larger stores.

We were asked to equip our client’s store colleagues with the knowledge, skills and confidence to help customers to buy this exciting new range of merchandise.  Specific attention was requested on child car seats, pushchairs, travel cots and feeding.

Due to the complex nature of some of the products, an illustrated approach was selected as the best option.  Working with some of the industry’s leading names, including Avent, Britax, Graco and Maclaren, Ian developed and designed a workbook that contains around 300 different illustrations.

The workbook provides store colleagues with step-by-step guidance on how to operate and demonstrate these products, along with questions and exercises to check their understanding.

“We were all very impressed with the workbook.  It’s well set out and easy to understand. 
It will have a significant impact on our store teams.”
Retail Capability Manager

More About Service - Entertainment Retail

Faced with increased pressure from internet downloads and from CD copying, our client, an entertainment retailer, wanted to ensure that all its team members offer excellent service, which focuses on increasing sales.

As part of this objective, Ian was asked to produce a Manager’s Coaching Pack to support the client’s training DVD More About Service. 

The brief was to produce a training session which acknowledged the organisation’s culture.  It needed to be instructional without being dull and ‘funky’ without being patronising.  It also needed to build on the work already carried out in an earlier DVD and encourage greater ‘stretch’ within stores.

Ian worked closely with both the DVD production company and the client’s HR department to produce an interactive training session that encouraged store teams to discuss such things as:

• Delivering overall service standards

• Improving sales

• Recognising buying signals

• Approaching customers

• Identifying customer needs

• Coping with barriers.

Team members were encouraged to role-play how they would approach different customers and to draw up team objectives of how they would now work differently.  The sessions were supported by leaflets for team members and by blank posters to capture the objectives.

“Our store colleagues were very enthusiastic about the workbook.  It was particularly useful for new colleagues and for those who found our new way of working to be a real challenge.  The teams particularly liked the opportunity to role-play and to develop their own objectives for positive change.”
Personnel & Training Manager

Putting Customers First - Retail

Our client, a specialist greeting card retailer with over 300 stores, asked Ian to help achieve its vision, “We’re passionate about delivering all our customers’ needs, whatever they’re celebrating,”

Our client wanted to:

• Get its store teams to speak with every customer who entered the store by getting out from behind the cash desk and talking to people.
   

• Make customers more aware of the products that are available and so encourage them to buy.
   

• Increase the Company’s Conversion Rate and Average Transaction Value (ATV).

Ian developed Putting Customers FIRST, a modular training programme that could be used by individual team members on the salesfloor at the quieter times of day.

The four modules covered:

• Understanding Customers

• Talking to Customers

• Providing the Best Solutions

• Concluding on a Positive Note

To help bring about this change, store teams were encouraged to develop store sales targets and action plans at the end of each module.  These were then reviewed and discussed with Area Managers.

Six posters were used to support the programme.  These were placed behind the scenes and stimulated further discussions about how store teams were progressing.  A separate booklet for Area Managers also explained their role in delivering the programme.

 “The programme has helped our store teams to focus on delivering high standards of
customer service and driving sales throughout the business.”
Chief Executive Officer

Account Management for Commercial Managers – Business Services

Our client, the world’s largest provider of outsourced offices, wanted to increase its meeting room revenue.  To achieve this, it decided to broaden the role of its existing Commercial Managers so that they would become Account Managers for the meeting room business.

Working closely with two key Directors and with the Sales and Marketing Team, Ian helped develop some of the key documents and then quickly produced and delivered a comprehensive training session and supporting toolkit that:

• Explained the reason for the new approach

• Engaged Commercial Managers in the overall process and helped them to refine their existing skills

• Showed them how to use the new materials

• Prepared them for the way ahead

This was the first time that the company had produced such a holistic approach.  

“Ian’s excellent toolkit and briefing sessions have successfully focused our Commercial Managers
on what they must do to grow our meeting room business.”
Business Development Director

Sales Academy – National Sales Force

Our client had just combined its separate sales teams to form a National Salesforce.  To support this new team’s training and development, Ian developed a Sales Academy.

Entry into the Academy, for either Salespeople or Sales Managers, is through the successful completion of a Foundation Workshop, which includes both pre and post course exercises and objectives.  The Salesperson’s Foundation Workshop covers:

• The role of the salesforce - standards and approach

• Presenting the Company to customers

• Working with the Support Centre

• Structuring Sales Visits.

The Sales Manager’s Foundation Workshop covers the same subjects along with: 

• Managing the sales team effectively

• Recruitment

• Induction / Training

• Objective Setting

• Employment Law

• Health and Safety

Having put the basics in place, the Academy builds on the salesforce’s professional selling skills through two phases: 

Phase 1: Sales Certificate

• Competitor analysis

• Building effective relationships

• Body language

• Negotiation

• Closing techniques

Phase 2: Sales Diploma

• Managing people from a distance

• Distance management techniques

• Powerful sales meetings

• Actions and behaviours

• Coaching

• Managing performance

The award of both the Certificate and the Diploma is dependent on transferring learning into the workplace to deliver some real business results.

Copyright © 2011 
Ian Woodward 
DLD Solutions Ltd
All rights reserved