SALES COACHING – Empowered and more efficient sales team

Sales techniques are the strategies used by any business to convert visitors in potential clients, so they buy their products. Of course, in this blog we will talk about sales coaching in retail.

Sales Coaching

What use is there to having a great product, if you don’t know how to sell it? Imagine that a potential client comes into your store. Be it whatever product, would you be able to explain to them why that product satisfies their needs? Why it is of better quality than that of your competitors? In summary, would you be able to explain why they should buy your product? Here’s where sales techniques shine.

By answering those questions, you will see the importance of knowing in depth the situation of your business, the public you are trying to reach, and the characteristics of the product you sell. That’s what retail sales techniques are, in a nutshell.

• Role of the Salesperson

The salesperson first must discover the latent needs of the client, listening and advising them correctly. They have to become their very own Personal Shopper, making them feel completely realized and well-attended, so this translates in an increase in sales. Sales coaching training (which we offer in CapKelenn) focuses on teaching all the steps needed for an excellent sale to sales teams, and sharing the abilities related to retail, like being able to manage stress in times of high volume of clients. Our method focuses on using autoevaluation so that the salesman becomes conscious of how they are doing and what could be improved. We also train store managers so that they can accompany their sales team to their best level in both sales and customer experience, which is another very important factor.

Sales Coaching: The 8Cs

The 8Cs is the model developed by Benoit Mahé in his book Retail Coaching. This model is comprehensive and groups both sales techniques and the ‘homework’ to be done to create a good relationship with the client and ensure the sale. The 8Cs of an excellent sale helps with being prepared in a systematic way for any situation in sales, and to avoid basic errors that will bring down our KPIs

• Consult: it’s the daily job of checking info by which the salesman gets prepared. It consists of getting informed before the open with available products, prices, sales, etcetera. It helps avoid losing sales for lack of information or preparation.
• Connect: it’s the art of relationship building with our clients. In this step, the vendor greets the client, making eye contact and listening, and adapts to the reaction of the client. Sometimes it’s better to make contact in two steps: first greeting the client, showing availability, and a second one to let the client approach you. This way the client will not feel assaulted.
• Comprehend: the interview to discover needs and context. Through powerful questions, reformulations, and rapport building with the client, the salesman obtains the required information to get high tickets, with a higher average price, or higher UPT (Units Per Ticket).
• Convince: in this phase of the 8Cs, we focus on convincing, establishing the value of the product or service thanks to the C.A.B.R. mode (Characteristics, Advantages, Benefits, Reflexion). This is important, because no product is cheap enough when its value is not known.
• Convert: transform objections into arguments. We have to discover and neutralize the causes of insecurity, that could put our sale at risk. This is divided in 5 steps – listening to the whole objection, recognize it before the client, ask for his permission to explain why the product works for him, ask him doubts, and dismantling the objection.
• Close: in the sixth of the 8Cs we attempt to get the client to decide to buy. According to Michael Aguilar’s book, Vendeur d’élite, 63% of salesmen do not close the sale. Whenever the salesman detects a buying signal, they have to stop all argumentation and close with energy.
• Complete: address the whole of latent needs. To consider that just having the client buy the product is enough is a limiting belief. As long as you are not told ‘no’, you should keep offering.
• Confirm: When the sale is completed, the client may feel a form of regret (especially for high value or impulse sales). The elite salesman-advisor-coach has to congratulate the buyer on his purchase, stimulating a sense of personal treatment, in a conversation between equals.

Sales techniques: fundamental in store

Retail sales techniques are a factor many times ignored, or at least a factor to which not enough attention is given. Nonetheless, they are a fundamental piece for the smooth running of our stores. They are not only the difference between closing or not a sale, but they are also the key to correctly satisfy the needs of our clients, and to produce high value for them and our business both.

The 8Cs model is a systematic approach to all these techniques, in a balanced way, and maintaining the humanity that characterizes the world of retail, without making the transactions feel forced or weird. This way we obtain extraordinary results that satisfy all of the stakeholders of retail.

CapKelenn in luxury retail

CapKelenn is the primary certification in Retail Coaching worldwide, certifying managers in Retail to really become coaches for their sales teams, facilitating the transition towards a supreme clienteling savoir-faire. CapKelenn delivers the certification in 12 languages on all the 5 continents. CapKelenn accelerates change, thanks to people, with results that are fast, visible and sustainable, contributing to fertilize a client experience that is memorable and personalized.