Sales | Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Superior Selling: 8 Tips for Excelling as a Retail Sales Associate

November 3, 2018 by Contributed Post 1 Comment

Selling Retail

If you want to excel at your job as a retail sales associate, you’ll need to take advice form the pros. Here are eight of the best tips to help you stand out.

Are you a new retail sale associate who’s wondering if you’ve got what it takes to make it? Do you need a few tips to help you close on sales and up-sell to your customers?

The United States retail marketplace is worth more than $3.5 trillion, and exceptional salespeople can earn big.

Whether you’re on commission or just starting out at your local mall, this article is for you.

We’ll cover the eight top skills for retail sales and give you some pro tips on how to make a great resume.

1. Friendliness

If you’re a naturally friendly person, you should have no problem excelling in retail. Every list of tips on how to be a good sales associate starts with friendliness.

You might see dozens of customers during the course of your shift. If you can approach every one of them with a welcoming, positive attitude, you’re on the right track.

Building rapport with your customers is good for your store, too. When you’re friendly, you’re creating long-term customers who will spend more money with you.

2. Patience

No matter what kind of retail sales you’re in, not every customer encounter will end in a sale. You have to have the patience of a saint some days to help people who have a hard time making up their minds.

Part of sales is having the patience to help your customers, even if they’re indecisive. You can make recommendations for clothing, for example, and offer to wait while they try them on.

Customers want to be helped by someone who’s giving them their full attention, so take a deep breath and dive back in.

3. Product Knowledge

You’re going to be able to make more sales if you know what you’re selling. If your store changes stock often, ask your manager to make a list of the items you should recommend.

If you’re selling food, try to sample some each week. When a customer comes in with allergies or a need for low-sugar products, you’ll be able to steer them in the right direction.

Even if you’re selling vacations or other luxury items, you should still learn as much as you can about your product. What would your customer have to pay online, or at another store?

4. Creating Value

You’ve attracted your customer with your patience and friendliness. Now it’s time to build value in their minds. They may come in asking for a cheap product. How are you going to help them buy something durable?

You can start a conversation about features to create value. Instead of saying, “this product is more expensive,” just talk about its durability and warranty, if it has one.

Other ways to create value are letting the customer hold the item and try it out, or doing a side-by-side comparison with another product. Don’t pressure your customer, but do talk with them about investing in a long-lasting product.

5. Honesty

Above all else, always be honest with your customers. Never lie about the price or functionality of a product or service. It’ll get you in hot water and it’s not worth it.

If you’re trying to move up to management or wondering how to be a good sales associate, the answer is always honesty. When you’re hired as a manager, you’re going to be looking for solutions for brands.

Specifically, how to merchandise your products and how to reach your customers more efficiently. You need to establish a track record of answering customer questions and pitching in around the shop.

The best advice we’ve heard? Don’t be on time, be early.

6. Up-Selling

While you’re making sales, you should always be thinking of products that you can recommend. If they’re buying a new bed, they’re probably going to need new sheets as well. And what about a new bedroom set to seal the deal?

Some customers may not want to go with your recommendations, but you’ll never know unless you try. New salespeople might feel reluctant to up-sell, but it’s an important part of good retail sales technique.

If you’re nervous about seeming pushy, just keep your tone light and casual. The worst they can do is say no.

7. Attention to Detail

Another essential part of how to sell retail is to maintain close attention to detail. You could gain leverage with a customer by pointing out sale prices or buy-one-get-one deals.

Develop good work habits as early as you can, most companies want to hire from within. If you can focus on the details, you can make more relevant recommendations and close more sales.

You need time and money to start a business, but conscientious and consistent employees are what keeps stores in business!

8. Closing the Sale

You may have heard of the ABCs approach to sales: Always Be Closing. It’s a good idea to ask for the sale, but you don’t want to seem desperate or pushy.

Talk to your customers like you would a friend. Don’t rush them, just ask them if they’re ready to check out. If they’re still looking, they’ll say no.

If a customer is in your store, it means they’re thinking about buying. Working on commission can be nerve-wracking, but a natural and friendly approach will win out over pressure tactics every time.

How to Make a Standout Sale Associate Resume

Even if you’re a beginner sale associate, you can still craft a stellar resume. If you’re an experienced seller who’s feeling stuck in your current position, read on for pro tips about how to sell yourself.

Try to keep track of the contributions you’ve made to your store. Have you increased customer satisfaction through excellent customer service? Are you driving repeat business with your attention to detail and professionalism?

Take the time to create a resume that highlights your talents and skills. You might be new at sales, but you learn quickly and take direction well. Those are both skills that look great on a resume.

We have a wealth of articles on our website that are designed to help you find your dream job. Check them out and drop me a line with any questions or success stories!

Account Based Selling And Sales Incentive

May 20, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Marketing and sales are not one in the same but they operate in complete tandem. Or so you would think so. The general thinking behind the marketing tactics was to get to the customer first, bombard them with as many things they might like as possible, all running on the keywords they searched for. Now fast forward to the modern era in 2018, you now have to make the customer feel like what they really are, an individual. How do you expect to grab their attention when they can easily sense that the advertisement and sales pitch they experience is basically a copy and paste? And here lies the ultimate battle that businesses have to fight non-stop, how can you reach out and make an impact in the quickest and most efficient way possible? Technology has risen to a point where account based selling is now more effective than ever. It’s by no means a new concept, but since more B2B customers are willing to share their information, sales teams can better target individuals that present a higher chance of responding more positively.

Selecting the right leads

Account based selling is all about personalizing the approach to the accounts that you have. For a business to intrigue another business, it’s no good relying on the overall big machine to respond so effectively. Rather than target leads that apparently show no interest in your business, reach out to the staff who run the business and who do offer you their interest. The issue for B2B marketing and sales is that even though you have the right kind of people in your database, they won’t all be interested in you. Selectively targeting leads by using specific linguistic knowledge about their industry and aims of their company, is how you convert them to customers. Picking the right accounts is what account based marketing is all about. Don’t waste time and resources with a broad approach, personalize the experience and target customers on your database that crop up in your analytics the most often.

Sales compensation

The incentive of compensation

Accounts based marketing is always going to require more effort on your part. The rewards are great so it’s worth the effort and plus, you’ll be laying down the foundation for a much stronger B2B relationship. However, give your sales team an incentive such as seller’s compensation. As Jozef Opdeweegh explains, “The success of the sales team should not only be measured in terms of new revenue but should also hinge on the profitability of the sale, the overall customer retention levels, and the Net Promoter Score.” The retention of the customer is almost always pegged to who they speak to and how well their conversation went. Top sales teams need to be given a push to go the extra mile, log more data, speak to more customers for longer and gather as many good leads from the ever-growing database as possible. And what better way to motivate someone than paying them more for going above and beyond their set targets?

Some of the best techniques in the B2B marketing world are ones that treat the person of the account like a human being and not a profile on the database. Target leads through a personalized approach and use the linguistics of their industry to understand their company determinations.

Are Your Leads A Mirage?

September 29, 2016 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

Generating leads, as the precursor to generating sales, is the lifeblood of any business. You don’t get business, you go out of business.

As a small business marketer who is always tight on time and money for marketing campaigns, I’m always evaluating my lead generating marketing and assessing performance.

Like many small businesses this is a part of a part time function. I need to get to the point quickly and move on.

I’ve done Facebook paid ads and Facebook Page posts and boosted those posts.
I’ve tested LinkedIn public posts and posts to industry groups.
I’ve tested Craigslist Ads.
I’ve made opt-in offers at my website.
I’ve done drip marketing campaigns with email and blog posts.

And until you do the analysis, you can’t tell which is doing best. And although Google Analytics helps you find some of those answers, there is often more to the story.

Just because you get more sales from one platform does not mean it necessarily is outperforming the rest. Sometimes paid ads bring in more bottom line dollars (after deducting the costs of those sales) than so called “Free Marketing” channels.

And in the guest post below (they are marketing their services – aka lead generation) there are some very interesting takeaways I think you should know – whether you’re a mid-sized company who will benefit from their services, or a small mom and pop marketer who can still take these ideas to improve their business’ marketing performance.

As I went through the slides, here are some takeaways I found interesting…

How many visits it takes to convert into a sales lead. You’ll be surprised by the number.
Why an inquiry and a lead are not one and the same. There’s more to this than you think.
How overstating your leads will result in poor cost per lead and ROI assessment…which could mislead you into thinking a bad campaign is actually profitable.

Here you go.

When you’re trying to generate quality leads, relying on conversion data in your marketing campaigns will leave you in a vulnerable spot. Based on “The Critical Importance of Lead Validation” study, as much as 50 percent of a company’s conversions are not sales leads. Overstated conversion data causes you to invest in campaigns that are producing much less ROI than you think, and to make campaign changes that make performance even worse.

as much as 50 percent of a company’s conversions are not sales leads Click To Tweet

By validating leads, the process of separating non-sales conversions from sales conversions, you’ll uncover inquiry data that will help you optimize your campaign to its full potential. That data includes how many sales leads you’ve generated versus other conversions, and the online marketing source for each of sales lead. Without this process it is impossible to determine the true effectiveness of your lead generation.

In the presentation below, you will find more eye-opening lead generation data.

The importance of lead validation by organic seo services company, Straight North.

Aaron Wittersheim is an accomplished entrepreneur with more than 20 years of business and technology experience. He is currently Chief Operating Officer at Straight North, a Chicago-based Internet marketing company.

How to Make Yourself “The Most Interesting Man [Woman] in the World”

June 18, 2016 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U18VkI0uDxE[/youtube]

You’ve seen “The Most Interesting Man in the World” Dos Equis beer commercials. The guy who just attracts what he wants and goes through life without a care. He is the ultimate embodiment of pure marketing genius.

Here are some of my favorites…

If he were to visit the dark side of the moon, it wouldn’t be dark
His business card simply says ‘I’ll Call You”
He once won the world series of poker using UNO cards
When he was young he once sent his parents to his room

Check out the rest here: 100 “The Most Interesting Man in the World” Quotes – courtesy of Jay Abraham.

So how can you become The Most Interesting?

To find out let’s look at what makes these ads so magnetic. And how the aura of “The Most Interesting Man” is created.

Great Quotes

The backbone of the ad campaign that draws you in is the great lines.

“He never wears a watch because time is always on his side”

Always using an unexpected play on words, often using a well-known cliches as the backdrop.

They also have a visual basis (like wearing a watch) where you can picture the scene, laugh a little, and admire the moxie and bravado without ever feeling like he’s just a dumb-ass or overly cocky. He just IS the most interesting man in the world.

Pure Alignment

He IS that man. He doesn’t have to pretend. Or practice. Or try. He just does. And everyone just follows his lead without question. It is the power of complete alignment of self. Something we all struggle with – from the everyman to the beautiful, to the rich, to the famous. We all have self-doubts inside us. And seeing someone who appears not to is intoxicatingly attractive to us.

This is also similar to the power of celebrity and why we follow people in the public eye. Think “Housewives” or “Trump” or “Kardashians”.

A Great Story

Great story-telling is a skill we all deep down wish we had. Story-telling is a great sales tool (both for the beer and for the interesting man) because it draws you in. People love stories. They are great to listen to and great to retell.

Along with the great story, the headline/meme is great, “The Most Interesting Man in the World”. It is easily captured and communicated around the water cooler. And all the commercials and quotes support the theme. Building it into an indisputable force. That harnesses the power of repetition without seeming repetitious.

Just check out the video above to see how many different ways they sell the most interesting man concept.

Social Proof

The most interesting man doesn’t tell people that is who he is. Others say it. That is the ultimate way to build a brand or an aura. Demonstrate it and have others observe it so they retell your story. It is like going for that raise or new job. If someone else sings your praises the sale is already made. But it you say it it often comes across as bragging or being conceited.

Video

Although words and audio often sway more than video (just try turning the sound off on your TV vs closing your eyes and listening to the TV. You pick up much more from the audio than you realize. That being said however, video…particularly short video clips no longer than a couple minutes (in today’s soundbite culture) with a scene that catches your attention (as these commercial spots do) is very effective.

You’ll notice these days video is hot. YouTube is the number two search engine behind Google searches.

What makes these interesting man videos so watchable, beyond what I already mentioned, is the star, Johnathan Goldsmith. A distinguished gentleman who young men look up to as a model of what they could be – attractive to women and respected by men. For the women he is someone who appears rich, famous, a little bit the bad boy, and unattainable. And this makes him the ultimate man to them.

Then there is narrator Will Lyman who delivers the lines effortlessly, setting the scene and nailing the punch lines.

Then with the movie-scene quality sets that these commercial are staged in, you’re just drawn in.

What About You?

Now I know we all can’t be like the Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man. But we can all learn a little something from him about how to promote ourselves better without seeming too pushy or conceited.

Get clear on who you are and what sets you apart

We are all different and everyone brings a different set of gifts to the world. The key is not trying to be someone you’re not. The Most Interesting Man is effective in the role because he IS that man. You can do the same once you’ve found your own personal niche.

Not sure what that is? Contact me and I can help you find it out.

Show, don’t tell

If you try too hard and start telling people how great you are, people will be turned off. But if others do the telling for you (because they see how good you are), then you’ll get much farther in life. Yes, there are ways to tell without coming off as too into yourself, but it takes a little bit of skill and underselling. Much better if others sell you to others.

Tell stories that support your message

We all have great stories inside us. And telling stories that demonstrate your gifts and expertise don’t seem like you’re bragging. So work on the key stories that reinforce your personal brand. And get good at telling them.

Be interested

One key to being interesting that I heard from my mentor Jay Abraham was a story (there it goes again) about how he chatted with a man for several hours, listening intently, only asking a probing question or two. When the time was up and Jay had to leave, the man commented about how interesting Jay was – even though Jay said nothing about himself.

Too often people are so busy trying to get the next word in or telling their next thought, that they never truly listen. A good listener is a true gift to someone else. Very few people are truly listened to intently. And by listening fully, they will value you.

We live in a Facebook culture. You know those people on Facebook who post their pics of trips to Europe, Hawaii, beaches, mountain skiing and hiking. It seems like all your friends are having fun all the time. They really aren’t. Yes they look like they’re smiling all the time. But that doesn’t count all the dreary, boring, annoying things they do every day that they don’t post. But if you look at your news feed, you’d think you’re the only one not having fun.

You really aren’t, but there is a small group of people actually posting cool things and taking exciting trips. You don’t have to keep up, but it does help you to be engaged and share something. You can choose – family occasions are often popular. Skip the food posts. Share the funny videos. And if it reinforces your personal meme, share it.

Live Life

Life’s too short to worry about everything. One thing you learn as you get older is to not take things so seriously. Life will be over in an instant. The best you can do is live in the moment, share your gifts, and do those things you would wish you had done. Remember the bucket list? Start doing some of those things. They don’t all have to cost money. And if they do, save up for that instead of buying the next latte.

Enjoy!

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Muhammad Ali vs Donald Trump – Who Is the Greatest?

June 4, 2016 by Mike McRitchie Leave a Comment

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYoh62jUFpk[/youtube]

Mohammad Ali passed away yesterday.

Ali was known for a brash, in-your-face, over-the-top persona. He was probably not just the greatest and most well known boxer of all time. He was definitely the greatest boxer-marketer that we have seen.

With Ali’s passing we’re seeing an almost eerie similarity in the rise of Donald Trump.

They’re both humble.

“It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.” – Ali

” I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.” – Trump

They’re average Americans.

“I’m young; I’m handsome; I’m fast. I can’t possibly be beat.” – Ali

“I’m really rich” – Trump

Kind of laid back slackers. Not too sure of themselves.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see. Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t.” – Ali

“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.” – Trump

They’re scared of the competition.

“If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.” – Ali

“I don’t know if Hillary will be able to run, she is a walking time bomb!” – Trump

They’re boring and struggle with marketing themselves and their causes.

“Braggin’ is when a person says something and can’t do it. I do what I say.” – Ali

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts.” – Trump

Both Ali and Trump had their passionate followers. And they also had very vocal haters. Both made controversial statements on a regular basis. Both were adept at manipulating the media to market themselves and stay in the spotlight.

If Ali had grown up in today’s world I have no doubt that he would have been as much a Twitter beast as Trump is.

So now lets take this to you.

How are you marketing yourself or your business?

Are you differentiating yourself from your competition? If you’re an employee, what are you doing to set yourself apart so when layoffs come, or opportunities for advancement present themselves, will you be able to benefit from that ever-present change?

Or are you just plugging along in your job. Head down. Doing the same thing day in and day out. Not driving to a new breakthrough. Not creating greatness. Not being that go-to person that everyone relies on – not making yourself indispensable.

Or you’re a business owner. And people look at you and your competitors and just think of you both as one and the same. What have you done to break that mold of average? What have you done not just to get 5% or 10% better, but Apple better. Leapfrogging the competition and leaving them in your dust? And have you marketed that? Kept in the limelight enough so that your clients would think of going nowhere else but to you for solving their most pressing problems?