Skills For Sale
Keep your store in the black with proper sales training.
By Matthew Kreitman

Great product isn't enough. Wow customers with properly trained staff like at Project in the Hood in Timberline, Oregon. Photo: Herbener

If you own a snowboard store, chances are you started out with a love of snowboarding, not retailing. For a while the sport and the attitude stood as an alternative to the corporate world. However, it's a shop owner's business savvy, not snowboarding skills, that keeps a retail store open. The primary reason for a snowboard store to exist is to sell gear, not to provide a hangout for local boarders (although it's nice to have locals hanging out at times). And it's going to be up to your staff to sell that gear for you.

Stay In Business Without Selling Your Soul

Nobody wants to run a shop like a used car lot, or train the staff to act like telemarketers. However, too many people think sales training is a soul sacrifice at the alter of capitalism. This isn't true. The better trained and more motivated your staff, the more profits you'll make while still being able to retain the basic integrity and attitude of your business. Effective sales techniques are about learning to listen and respond, not about high-pressure sales tactics.

Provide An Incentive

Barbara Rackes, chairperson of the National Retail Federation Small Business Committee, built up a ten-million-dollar apparel business in twenty years of retailing. Trust her when she says: "If you want your sales staff to change from simple employees into top producers, there's only one way that's ever going to happen. You have to give them a reason to want to. It doesn't matter how good your training methods are without the right motivation. Period."

Names on plaques or employee-of-the-month awards all help with a little bit of peer recognition. However, to obtain best results you may have to develop an effective commission structure. Rackes adds: "Personal financial self interest isn't only tried and tested as the best sales motivator, but money is also the motivator that you, as an employer, want your sales staff to respond most to."

Money Makes The Attitude Right

Top sales producers always see their job as a vehicle to achieve material or personal growth. Mediocre salespeople see retail as a second-class job or something to do while waiting for a better offer. You can hire employees who help the image of the store, but if money doesn't motivate your staff, you may find it difficult to achieve your goals.

Choosing Your Team

The 21-year-old interviewee for your vacant sales position is sitting across the desk from you. How can you tell if they'll cut it on the sales floor?

1) Are they confident? This doesn't mean someone who talks the talk and exudes cool, because that also implies someone who will go through emotional peaks and troughs, gets bored easily, and can't take the endless rejection of any sales job. Worst of all, it means someone who may be too into themselves to be a good salesperson. Much more effective is the steady, low-key, determined type who can approach 100 customers a day with the attitude that each shopper is a new opportunity.

2) How do they respond to questions? Interviewees who answer in a roundabout way or add information you never asked for, probably have a problem listening and putting their own extraneous mental process to one side -- both key requirements of any salesperson. Listen for direct and clear answers -- being articulate is important.

3) Why do they want the job? Thumbs up to anyone who says, "I want to make lots of money so I can buy the best gear and indulge in my personal passion." Thumbs down to anyone who says, "I think it would be cool to work in a snowboard store." Even worse is, "I like working with people."

Training 101

Don't bother struggling to put together a comprehensive training program unless you're the world's greatest producer, have a solid professional background, and were previously a sales trainer.

Even if you've been successfully running a store for years, assuming you know it all is just arrogance. Most sales techniques are not instinctual -- they have to be learned. For instance, what would you say to a customer who asks for your personal preference between two different products? "The correct response is to give a list of comprehensive data about each of the items," says Rackes.

Take advantage of the variety of ready-made training packages. Recommended is a program by The Friedman Group, 1-800-351-8040, called "The Professional Retail Selling Program."

The course consists of eight videos and various workbooks. According to the video packaging, it delivers all the steps for getting past resistance, probing for bigger sales, closing the sale, and developing a steady stream of repeat business. The course is suitable for snowboarding stores with younger staffs because it offers a high-energy approach. By breaking the course down into separate short videos covering specific points, your new staff can watch a video a day and then go out under your supervision and apply each step as they learn it. What's great about a program like this is that everyone in your store will be using the same sales techniques.

Another good source of information is the Internet. Look up training on the Lycos browser for mountains of information. Remember, for any sales training, simple action-oriented methods work best. Complex theory should be avoided.

Being Boss Cuts You Zero Slack

"After the incentive, the most important thing you have to provide is a role model," says Rackes. "The staff will behave in the way they are shown. If you're late in the mornings, cut hours, or stand around chewing gum and talking on the phone, don't expect your employees to have a good attitude." This means your sales skills must be highly accomplished in order for your staff to learn from you. And the standards of presentations, punctuality, customer skills, and anything else you would want in a model salesperson, have to be perfected by you.

Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy, but the rewards of a properly trained and motivated staff is worth the effort. Try it, and you'll see for yourself.