"I'm just browsing today"
"I was looking for the cookbooks (a specific category)"
"I was looking for (a specific book)”
In the case of the customer who states that they are just browsing, we want to reinforce their decision to browse.  Something along the line of “great, we love having people browse our store! When they do, they see what great values we carry!”  This is where the "Benefit" part of the equation comes in.  Most of you discount books at various percentages off  publisher’s suggested retail.  Now is the time to explain that benefit to the customer.  At National Book Warehouse, we would have said something like, "we have thousands of books at 50 to 90% off Publisher's Retail".  Then we would ask the sales associate to give the customer their name and tell them that they were available to help if the customer had any questions.

In the situation where the customer mentioned a specific category, such as cookbooks, we would have the associate take the customer back to that category, point out several particularly good values and then once again communicate the $avings benefit, "thousands of books at 50-90% off Publisher’s Retail", ask if they had questions, then give their name and tell the customer that they are available to help if they need anything.  I can't tell you the number of times that I recall a customer calling one of our associates by name and asking him/her several other questions about our products.  They knew that they had someone personally interested in them and willing to help!  And they knew the $avings benefit!

In the case of a customer requesting a specific book, even if we did not have that title in stock, we would take them back to the category where the book would reside if we did have it, explaining the $avings benefit/concept of the store as we walked back to the category.  Then if we did not have that specific title we would tell the customer so, but mention the hundreds of other titles in that category at 50-90% off Publisher’s Retail.  Again, if we did not have the latest title, we did have the tremendous $avings/Benefit.  And as in each case before, we trained our associates to give them their name and let them know they are ready and willing to help.

Up to this point, we've discussed how to "treat customers in a friendly way".  We have talked about approaching customers, using how and what questions to reduce the number of negative replies and we've talked about communicating the major thrust of our retail operation, the benefit of $avings.  By this time you will have a number of customers who will be coming up to your check-out counters with multiple books in their arms.  This is the point in the sale when you are ready to close the sale.

To close the sale on the merchandise that the customer has brought to the counter, the associate should ask if they would like to pay with cash, check or credit card.  Once they answer that question, it more or less closes the first part of the transaction i.e. the items they brought to the counter.  Now is the time to think back on the conversation that you had with the customer when they came into the store.  What did they mention?  Were they buying this for a gift?  For whom?  Did they mention a favorite author of their own, or their wife’s?  Did they mention that they lived in town or were they traveling through?  In each one of these instances we have a great product at a great price that we could suggest to them.  “Earlier you mentioned you were traveling home to _________.  Did you notice we had all of our audio tapes on sale for X% off retail?” Or, “Earlier you mentioned that you liked books by John Grisham.  Did you notice we had "The Summons" on sale in hardback for $7.99?”  Once you've checked on all of the needs that they had mentioned earlier and or items that you have at super special prices, you should close the sale by sincerely thanking the customer for stopping in.  Ask them to come back at their earliest convenience and congratulate them on their superb purchase.  They just saved a lot of money!
Training of any kind quickly leaves our team members if it is not followed up with consistent coaching.  The National Retail Federation estimates that without coaching follow up, 85% of a skill will be lost in the first week!   In the next column, we will discuss coaching our staff using the sales training that we went over today.  Coaching is a skill that can be used in working with our people in every phase of our business dealings.
God bless-Mark
Markzobrosky@aol.com

-Mark Zobrosky has held several Senior Retail positions.  He served as Vice President of Operations at Family Christian Stores, Vice President of Operations and Real Estate at National Book Warehouse, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Gibson Greetings Retail Division as well as Vice President of Electronic Commerce for OnePlace, Ltd.