In my career I have managed Retail Shops, large Contact Centres, a direct B2C sales force, web sales teams, B2B sales reps and Sales Managers. My teams have sold insurance, security, travel, automotive products, merchandise, fundraising, solutions, services, furniture, gaming product and many other types of products. To have such as diverse multi-skilled sales force you really need a system to drive the performance of the team and to hold managers accountable - face-to-face, telephony, digital & B2B. To enable the teams to be effective in every business I've been involved in since 2001 I have introduced a version of the Friedman Gold Stars sales system.
The system is very simple, it is a process to engage with the customer, in essence to become their friend, so that you can match your products and services to their needs to save them time and money. Then to measure the effectiveness a simple red dots for under budget achievement, green dots for getting budget and gold stars for over budget performance helps keep the staff motivated towards success. For managers it is about understanding that you need to keep your people free and clear to sell with little distractions and to coach this behaviour, similar to Greenleaf’s servant leadership.
For sales people the 8 steps to sales success are:
1. Precheck – making sure that you are ready to sell & that the store/yourself/your presentation is ready and presentable
2. Opening the Sale:
Acknowledge every customer
80 degree Walk Pass – this is acknowledging the customer, but walking past them rather than approaching asking ‘can I help you’ which always gets a ‘no, just browsing’
Non-business related opening – breaking the ice to build rapport, as simple as saying ‘that’s a nice watch you have, where did you buy it?’
Moving into business – saying ‘so, what brings you into the store today?’
3. Probing – finding out about the customer & their needs to match a product
4. Demonstration – selling the value that the customer wants
5. Trial Close – getting the sale by adding on another product
6. Handling Objections – investigating what is the issue, working through any price objection and using the objection to close the sale
7. Closing – identifying buying signals, asking for the sale and closing techniques
8. Confirmations & Invitations – confirms the sales and helps the customer get over buyers remorse and inviting back for another visit
I was introduced to the Friedman system in 2001 and have used it ever since as an effective tool to drive sales behaviour and success. What has been your experience with sales systems in your career?
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