Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from The Retail Doctor's Blog.
The death of creativity and imagination are at the heart of low sales in retail shops around the world. Some think technology is the answer — not me. We have to find a way to creatively open our heart to another person to combat our fear of not being liked, or not being taken seriously, or not making the sale.
Here are three ways to help employees overcome fear during a sale:
Provide retail sales training. Give associates a process to hang their sales presentation on rather than "winging it." Nothing knocks down fear better than knowing where objections might surface and how to handle them. And sales training is a skill set you constantly develop over time, not like training how to make a rose out of a radish.
Hold a daily contest. Create a daily sales contest for your employees. Choose an affordable item and show them all you can about it. Ask them to find other creative uses for the same item and to highlight those uses with their customers. This process develops creative pathways in the heads of your employees as they show the item and how it is used. It puts learning and creativity top of mind.
Play. Rejection is expected in selling. Learn to welcome it. Role-play a sale with an individual on your crew. Have them role-play a stellar selling job, but when they try to close the sale say, "No." Let them figure out what their next moves are without telling them. The goal when coaching them is for those salespeople to keep the conversation going and then unpack what went right and what could have been done better. This way you will train their brains to look for alternatives and not shut down for fear their customer will walk.