Help her to buy it.

 Help her to buy it.

Now that you know what the customer is looking for and why, its just a matter of showing customer the options that you have. Which leads to explaining your customer the features of the product and what it can do or in simple words giving the customer the information about the product. Below is an example

This shoe has an antibacterial insole, hard rubber out sole, shoe string and Velcro, … , … …b Blah Blah Blah and the customer already starts looking at another shoe, or is disconnected and is think how do I get out of this place. (this is not what an salesperson needs)

Demonstration/presentation is a very important step in the sales process, it is the process wherein you as in individual has the power create / increase the value of a product in eyes of a customer and reduce the importance of price, hence maximize sales performance.

Value here is the sum total of benefits a customer can get from a specific product.

When we work on demonstration it's a chance that we have to make the most out of a sale, hence the 2 relevant goals of demonstration is establishing value in the mind of a customer and to create a desire in the mind of customer to own the merchandise.

To begin, a demonstration, you have to engage the customer into the demonstration, as this helps create an emotional commitment to own the merchandise. Remember seeing touching feeling is believing. To engage the customer, you need to prepare him by setting her up for anticipation and excitement. For e.g.: “We have just received the perfect gift for your wife. Comes lets have a look” this sentence with use of words such as your "wife create" a sense of belonging and since the product is not front of the eyes of the customer, the words "perfect and come lets have a look" creates the anticipation and excitement as the customer thinks that yes this could be the gift that I am going to gift her tonight. However it is important the make sure that this is done smartly using only generic information so that you have something to talk about when you are actually showing the merchandise to the customer.

During demonstration as we see the example in the beginning, the sales person only talk about the features without making any sense, as a salesperson you have to define every feature, give its advantage and benefit. E.g.: "shoe is black in color, which is a very neutral color, it matches with all dresses. You would certainly want these when you are not sure which shoes to wear." Now to analyze the example, black color is the feature, neutral color is an advantage and it matching with all dresses is a benefit of the feature and advantage and last part the example reinforces the idea into her mind that she has to have it.

Now you see that you have done a fabulous job demonstrating the shoe to her and you know that she likes it but as a salesperson you have to sell, this is where a concept called trial close comes into picture.

We will talk more in detail about trial close in our next post.

Until then happy selling.

I hope the above post was insightful and of value to you, if it is so then I encourage you to share this. And if you have any comments I will be happy.

Incase you missed out on my previous posts you can read them here.

Photo Credit Berta Devant /Flickr 

The question is “Why the customer wants it in the first place.”

It’s a logical next step after greeting the customer to ask what the customer is looking for, it enables you to show to the customer what’s in your merchandise that matches her requirements. 

However is it not a desired scenario wherein you as a sales person know why the customer wants it in the first place? Would this additional information not empower you to directly address the concerns of the customer, show them the exact right thing and close the sale in a much shorter time and in a more efficient way as you can easily suggested a few add-ons.

Try to imagine the following two scenarios:

First Scenario - the customer walks in, greetings etc. and express that she wants to buy a lens for the camera, you show her many options such as wide lens zoom lens prime lens etc… after around 20 mins the customer is totally confused but you are lucky she really needs to buy so she just randomly chooses a cheaper standard lens and you have a sale.

Second Scenario – The customer walks in, greeting etc. and expresses that she wants to buy a lens for the camera, you reply to her asking a question: What kind or lens are you looking for as in what do you expect out of this lens, she replies that she needs it for usual photos such as selfie, portrait, landscape etc. basically the usual stuff. So probe further by asking do you have any occasion for which you need this, she replies yes my husband and I are going for a vacation to Paris. You reply back “wow so off to Paris it’s a lovely place, come let me show the perfect lens for you will need for this trip and you so her the lens that’s can serve her well and at the same time you recommend to her an add-on of a tripod and guess what she buys a high quality lens and the tripod. Bottom line since the sales person knew why the customer needed the lens, she was able to show her the right product and also sell an add-on in much lesser time and less effort.

Is it not an obvious to be related to the second scenario, wherein you so smart effort and make quick and bigger sales and that go through a lot of effort and have smaller chances of even selling or even completing the demonstration of the product without zoning out the customer.

The important point to note here is that once you apply the second scenario, you build trust in the customer the trust in build because you proved to be the expert that they were looking for, you recommended the right product which served them well, you cared for the customer’s requirement rather than just trying to transact. And it is due to this trust that the customer will prefer to come back to you again and again to shop for whatever she needs. It is because of this trust, she will refer you to her peers.

Remember customer predominantly buys from a place for 2 main reasons:

1. TRUST
2. Value

The customer must trust you and the store and must see value in your merchandise. It is your job as a sales person to build that trust and also it’s you job to make the customer see the value in what you sell.

In my next post, I will write much in detail about demonstration/presentation and will also cover trial close.

I hope you gained value out of the above and will appreciate if you leave your comment and share this post.

Until then happy selling.

Photo credit Vincent / Flickr

Single most important step in optimizing a sale.

Have you ever walked into a store, any store to buy just about anything and you have been entirely ignored by the staff as if they didn’t even see you. Well yes, I know it has happened to you, it has happened to me not once not twice but most of the times. It has happened so much that somehow in a way or another we have accepted it as a norm.  

On an average 7 out of 10 times when a customer walks, she is never greeted. Does this not make greeting a walk-in customer a thing that you need to do just to grab her attention and find out why she is here…?

Isn’t it logical that whenever someone visits you at your home, office, area, and hangout you greet that person? Then the question arises why it is so that when a customer walks into a shop the sales person totally ignores the customer. Well simply there can be a few reasons:

1. Afraid to start a conversation. Lack of confidence: This can be managed by providing ample amount training about how to interact with a customer providing the sales rep with ample amount of training on the products which are being offered, make her prepared.
2.   Generalizing the customer is simply looking around and not going to buy: No one leaves the comforts of their home / hangout just to walk into a store to look around, there is always a single reason to walk into a store and that reason is pretty simple- to buy something. It your job as a sale rep to grab the opportunity of converting a walk-in into a customer
3.   Being busy with other store related works or other customers: Yes it makes sense working in a store is not only about attending customers. But the point is all this merchandising, inventory checks cleaning etc. is all done to make sure that the shop is good enough for the customer to buy. In case you are short on staff and already busy with other customer acknowledge the presence of the new customer walk-in by at least making eye contact and nodding your head.
4. Occupied in group talk or busy looking at mobile phone. Alright its FIFA world cup these days it’s the best and the hottest topic in every group and all your coworkers are being football fan. But the point is you are here to sell and you can only sell when you attend to the customer. Remember we need them more than they need us. 
5.  Being out right lazy. Change your attitude towards retailing or find another place to work where being lazy is accepted.

In simple words you have got to open a sale by greeting a customer with a smile.  Trust me a smile goes a long way. Try to be creative look for cues like weather, FIFA, children, etc… try to build a relation with a customer, don’t make it a sales person and customer, and try to make it person to person. Try to start a conversation and find out the real reason of why the customer is in the store to buy something, probe what she is looking for. We will talk more in detail about probing in our next post.

Until then happy selling.

I hope the above post was insightful and of value to you, if it is so then I encourage you to share this. And if you have any comments I will be happy.

Photo Credit Just Ard /Flickr

Get Prepared to Sell

 

Being a customer imagine a situation that you walk into a store and you need some specific item that you like or want say it’s a nice pair of shoes, you search for a sales person in the store and finally get her attention and ask for it. And the response you get is a blank look “ummm aaaahhh?? Let me check back in the store or ask my supervisor” you really want this shoe it perfectly matches that one dress that you have saved for this special occasion hence you wait for about 10 minutes and then the sales rep comes back and she says “Sorry but that’s out of stock.” As customer you are totally devastated your plan falls apart and now since you waited for so long, it adds to your negativity and you finally black list this store and spread the word to your peers do not go this place its very ……

Now looking at it from the sales person’s perspective a perfect opportunity sell someone a pair of shoes who was ready to buy has been lost. Had she been prepared and had stock count at the back of her mind of what’s in stock and what’s in display, she could have had immediately said “Sorry we do not have that specific one in stock anymore however please have a look at these shoes which are very much on the same lines of the one you want” result the customer would be satisfied that I didn’t get I really wanted but I got some alternative and is happy does the and transaction with the store and spreads a good word.

More similar situations would be like no change in the cash register, the price tag being missing and you wonder what the price, customer asks for a feature and you have no idea what she’s talking about. These are a few of the hundreds of examples which show unpreparedness.

"You are not prepared!"

           -Illidan Stromrage

What is being prepared

Being prepared encompasses 2 things:

1.       Being physically prepared self-groomed.

a.       Wearing a proper attire or uniform.

b.      Looking fresh.

c.       Combed hair.

d.      Clean shoes.

e.      You get the idea…

2.       Being aware of your role in the store:

a.       Spic and Span store: Make sure that the store is shinny clean. No one really like a messy place.

b.      Know your merchandise: As a sales person you need to know what all are you required to sell so that you can sell it.

c.       Know the prices: Being stuck just because the price tag is missing puts you in a vulnerable situation and causes you to lose confidence.

d.      Have product knowledge: you become the professional the customer is looking for, you can manage customer objection more effectively. You will believe in the product and will sell better. Giving you a better chance to sell.

e.      Move around in the store: Makes you aware of the other categories being sold, help you put misplaced items back in place, awareness about new product etc.

The importance of being prepared is extremely essential when it’s about retail sales as it’s about facing the customer who is in hurry and we need them more than they need us.

“To be prepared is half the victory.”

-Miguel de Cervantes

Now that you are prepared, it’s time to greet he customer. More on that in my next post.

Until then happy selling.

"Retail Sales" an overview,

The very word retail pops up another word in mind "Shopping". Shopping is many things for many different people it may be a necessity it may be a therapy Shopping is an integral part of our lives. But for this shopping to happen a set of people need to engage in an act called retail selling.

Retail sales is the act of selling goods or commodities directly to the end user/final customer. Retail sales is exciting, its intense, its demanding its where the action is. Retail is the front line for a specific manufacturer or for a group of manufacturers. Retail is reaching to the final customer.

An entity may get involved in the producing a certain set of goods say for example canned food, being a manufacturer it is understandable that the core business is to manufacture, but the question arises why manufacture the obvious answer is to sell (yes its can be for many more other reasons but the main reason is to market a product) the next question arises where to sell this is where the decision arises whether to sell directly to the final customer or to whole sellers. Now since the example in hand is of canned foods, the logical decision is to go via the whole sellers, and now whole seller need to sell it to the retailer and the retailer will sell it to the final customer. we are here talking about the supply chain from manufacturer to the final customer.

There are many different types of retail outlets, these can be based on the type of products. For example FMCG goods and Food products are generally found in convinience stores, supermarkets or hypermarkets. Similarly there are other types like department store, discount stores, boutique, specialty store etc. We will not go into details of these for now but it is to give an idea about  various forms that retail takes.

When it comes to retail, as it may seem to be simple, it is a complex business, it involves all aspects of business from choosing a location to decoration of the shop to stocking of goods to merchandising, to staffing to managing the operations to managing the customers to finally selling.

As you must have heard that in retailing its all about Location, Location, Location, this is just to put an emphasis that its important to open a retail outlet in an optimal location which mainly has the potential to fulfill customer foot falls, there are other many factors to consider in choosing a location these include availability of infrastructure suiting your requirements, Cultural implications, demographics, parking space etc. and all this must fall into the limited budget that one has, however to get all desired factors accomplished in a limited budget can be very difficult to impossible and hence the goal must be to find an optimal mix of these while choosing a location, its indeed an important decision because it is the main factor that will fuel the foot falls in your retail store who can become customers.

Now once the location is in place, its important to have the shop decorated according the image that one wants to display to the targeted audience, ideally the decoration must be inline with the targeted audience as subconsciously it plays a role in the minds of people and may result in desired behavior from them.

Once the decor is in place, its important to source in the goods that are to be sold in the shop, a decision has to be made on how much quantity must be displayed on shelf and how much to stock in the back room or store room. Such a decision can be made by forecasting and trend analysis, etc.

Once the sourcing is done, merchandising of the good in a manner that makes it easy for the customer to browse the goods and also influence an impulse buy is an important aspect to keep in mind. Another important factor is to check is the flow of customers inside the store, if your store is expecting a lot of traffic/foot falls, it is important to ensure a smooth flow of them in order to avoid congestion way blocks etc.

Finally when the above is taken care of, the job of the floor sales persons starts and that is where the action is, its the salesman who is the face of the company who will interact with a customer and its s/he who will be responsible for a closed sale. In simple words, the sales team on the shop are stars. There job extends from opening the shop to maintaining it to keeping it clean to interacting with the customer to closing a sale to inventory checks , reordering, closing the cash register and depositing the money at the bank at the end of the day. They are the driving engine of the shop. Without their dedicated efforts the shop will not function properly and will never be a success.

With the above said it is important to ensure that the selection of the sales team is done very smartly where in the person has the right attitude. After such a person is selected, its critically important to extensively train him/her as its the sales person who is on the front line interacting with the customer.

"You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there's a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there."
     -Howard Schultz
The entertainment the excitement and electricity all can be brought in by developing dynamic retail sales persons.

Every product is different, even if its of the same category its sold with a different image, customers walk in to the store with an intention to buy may be not today may be tomorrow, its the job of the sales person to ensure that the sale is done every time the customer walks in because the only reason a person really walks in the shop is to buy something.

Retail selling can be broken down into multiple small little steps which I like to call the process of selling below figure is a flow representation of how to sell in retail scenario.

Retail Selling

We will be discussing each step in detail in the next few post but just to brief for now, one should be prepared to do a salesman job, you need to be prepared as in know the product price etc and should be well groomed. Once a customer walks in the least one should do is greet the customer open a conversation, try to find out what the customer is looking for why did the customer come in? Once its know what the customer needs, show him the product, try to close the sale by using various techniques if customer is willing to buy then close the sale directly is not it mean the customer has an objection which needs to be managed manage the objection and close the sale. Assure the customer that the purchase a fine choice and ask them to visit again.


I hope the above post was insightful and of value to you. Please post your comments below.

"Retailing is a major economic responsibility to fulfill demand of tangible needs and wants by making it available as per the buyers convenience for a price"
     - Farhan Sikander



Photo Credit John Fraissinet /Flickr

Obstacles in the way of selling.

As is the cases with all activities in life, there will be obstacles and sales is no different, it comes with its own set of obstacles, and the worst of these obstacles are the ones which are made by us in our minds.

We have all seen it in movies on TV that a salesman is not really the most loved person out there, hes usually a person on whom the potential customer shut closes the door, find ways to escape from, hangs up the phone, responds rudely. Usually seen as  person selling detergent & vacuum cleaners. And lets be honest we all have found ourselves doing the same at a point or another in life.

After all this media influence on our mind and our past actions ("what you sow is what you get" in action) we immediately develop this fear because this time around we are the salesman here. This fear can be so intense that it can send chill down your spine.This fear is called the fear of rejection.

The question arises how to deal with this. Well pretty simply register it into your mind weather you like it or not, now that you are in the sales position you have to deal with you have to do it, you have to either face it and overcome it or you will loose your job, your business will not sell and isn't that even more scarier.

That's easier said than done but really in order to over come it you have to do it, If you just walk down the street/corridor of commercial building and knock the first door and you are trying to sell something, chances of all the above fears becoming a reality are very high and that will be very depressing not a nice feeling and it will put you in a retreat mode and perhaps you will loose out more on your confidence. 

However to deal with this one of the most important thing to do tell your self that "Yes am ready to accept a rejection" and take a deep breath every time you approach the next door. This approach will help you might be able to sell on a once in every 5 doors. But this will burn you quickly you will be putting in a lot of effort and getting very little result, which will be a very demotivating. 

The professional approach

A rather professional and an effective approach will be to look at sales from a process perspective, its about breaking down sales into smaller steps from lead generation to cold calling to qualifying a lead, to meeting, to opportunity, to proposal / quote, to negotiation, to delivery and finally after sales support. There are many ways to generate leads there are immense resources like directories social media, referrals, internet etc for this. Once you have a lead at hand, its about time to do your call to the customer mostly this will be a cold call, here is where you will face your fear and to deal with it practice a few mock calls with your friends/colleagues have a crisp introduction and to the point sales pitch and once done ask for interest or meeting to take it further. Do this a couple of times and you will feel confident about it. Yes don't forget to take a deep breath before every call and wear smile even on the phone (trust me it makes a difference).

The benefit of adopting the professional approach is that you will not only make more successful sales but it will help you identify the source of your fear, this fear may be a combinations of multiple steps of sales or it might be focused on a single step in all cases you will know it and you will be able to tackle it. It also important to keep in mind that you must have in depth knowledge about what you are selling and utmost belief in your product only then will you have the courage to sell it and also have the strength to face any objection raised by the customer.

One thing no matter what people say or how people generalize a sales person, keep in mind that a sales person is one of the most critically important resource of any business because after the initial capital runs out, business run on the money which the sales bring in.

"When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives."
          - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

A bit about my experience on my first sale, it really wasn't a rock star performace but it was back in late 2003 or early 2004 am not very sure about that, I had 2 old miserably used mobile phones which I wanted to sell and addin a little bit more money to it and buy myself a new phone it was purely personal it was not a job but what it taught me helped me trough out my sales career. 

There is a place in Jeddah - Saudi Arabia, called mobile market and all you get to see over there is nothing but shops selling mobile phones and people buying mobile phones. The first shop I walked into, I had such an intense fear of rejection that I mumbled a few words to the shop keeper and some how he figured it out words such as sell mobile (Hopefully) he was  a nice guy he said so you want to sell old mobiles I told him yes he asked me to have a look at it however he didn't find value in them he offered a very low price I rejected and walked out. However I really needed to make money hence I walked into another shop and went into around 4 more and the experience was very bad and embarrassing that am not able to talk I just told myself that i have to do it I have to sell these off no matter what and then I entered the next shop, took a deep breath and spoke the words properly quoted the price am looking for, negotiated and sold the first phone in the second shop and the other phone in the fifth. What I learned was I need to have courage and not be shy while selling, "I am here to sell not to ask for a favor". 

I hope the above text was interesting and of value to you. Please post your tips and experiences in the comments.

In my next post I will be talking about retail sales.

Until then Happy Selling.

"Selling is not about asking for a favor. Selling is offering value in exchange of money"

      - Farhan Sikander

Photo credit: Laura Gillmore /Flickr

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The Sales B2BC blog.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
                                                                       - Lao-tzu

This is my first step towards the journey blogging although am not really sure if this is the first time am posting anything on the internet...

Anyhow through this blog I will try to put forward my thoughts about sales in corporate scenarios, in retail scenarios mostly based on my experience so far and also based on certain sales training programs I have been through, further will also include some good articles that I come across, a bit of marketing stuff and a bit of this and a bit of that. By this I believe it’s clear that as of now this blog is not so structured, I will really appreciate all input from you and comments on my blogs from time to time.

Before we go further and talk about my thoughts on sales, I would like to first introduce myself, by now am sure you all know that am Farhan Sikander, if you didn't know that, you know it now!

You can check my Linkedin profile at sa.linkedin.com/pub/farhan-sikander/25/140/442/

Having bachelors in Marketing and Masters in Systems, I landed on my first Job after college at Sodexo - Mumbai - India as a IT service delivery manager, more than focusing and working on service delivery I was working more on selling and marketing an internally developed ERP system called E-facility which was used to manage customer premises in general. Further I took a change of career and got into retail sales management at Al Nukaly Intenrational Trading Co. Ltd., a company that specializes in selling edible nuts, confectionery and gourmet chocolates basically premium stuff, I was responsible for managing the sales outlets in Jeddah - Saudi Arabia. After that finally I got a job at Integrated Telecom Company (ITC) as a sales account manager, it was a dream come true finally a position where I can enjoy the best of both worlds, Technology and Sales. My job here at ITC is to manage select customers retain them make more business from them bring in new accounts and make more business from them and finally bring even more new customers, well over the period of last 4 years, I have overachieved the assigned targets, got promoted got more responsibility and even bigger targets to reach and in addition certain roles into business development, and also actively training and mentoring the junior sales executives.

So to put it simply I have a total of 6 years of sales experience and I think that if can share some information with whoever lands to my blog and somehow directly or indirectly benefits with what I have to say or somehow get influenced or inspired... I believe the basic purpose of this blogging initiative is achieved.

Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
                                                                                   -Og Mandino

With the above said, the first thing about selling is to fight the obstacles which we create in our minds which tell us that we cant do it, we need to sum up the courage to fight it and say that yes I can do it. And yes to sell is no doubt a victory that can be achieved after many struggles and countless defeats. but yes yes once you get the hang of it, its one of the best things that you will enjoy in your life.

I will post more on my experience of my first sale and overcoming such obstacles in my next post.

Until then Happy selling.