Sales Training Does Not Work!

OK. I admit it. Sales training does not work. Being a sales trainer, this might be the last statement you would expect to hear from me. However, the following statements are absolutely true.

Sales training does not work—if it is an event.

Sales training works incredibly well—when it is a process.

We all know that there is a right way, a marginally right way, and a wrong way to do things. In today’s retail jewelry environment, it is essential that salespeople do their jobs extremely well. The difference between a sales and profit decrease, doing just OK, and having the best year ever may boil down to salespeople doing the right thing with each customer.

There is a correct way to handle a customer who says, “I’m just looking,” “I’ll be back,” or “I need to think about it.” There is a correct way to sell based on the reasons a customer wants to buy. There is a right time and way to close a sale. There is a right way to increase a customer’s perception of value. There is a right way to increase the trust the customer has in your organization. It is more important to sell yourself and the store than it is to sell the merchandise. There is a specific way to accomplish selling yourself and your store. There is a correct methodology to selling additional items and to bumping up a sale. There is a right way to convert a repair customer to a retail customer. There are correct and incorrect questions to ask a customer. There is a correct process to a successful clientele system. There is a correct way to capture a customer’s name, address, phone, e-mail, upcoming special events, future jewelry wants and needs, etc.

All these things and many more could be the difference between making one, two, or 10 additional sales per day. Most salespeople simply don’t know what they don’t know and are not seeking the knowledge to maximize every selling opportunity. This is where sales training makes a major impact—when the information taught is retained and applied on the sales floor. Again, retention and application will be achieved only through a consistent, ongoing sales training process.

Let’s say, for example, that your average sale is $1,000 and you have five salespeople. If each salesperson were to make one additional sale per day, the net result would be $25,000 in additional sales each week. Multiply that number by 52 weeks and you have a sales increase of $1.3 million.

No longer can jewelry store owners or sales managers afford to give sales training their attention once a week, once a month, or once a year. Your sales training must be a consistent, ongoing process that’s reviewed, praised, coached, and repeated on a daily, customer-by-customer basis. I talk to jewelers all the time who have hired a trainer to come in and do their song and dance, and then sales increase—for a week or two. But soon salespeople fall back into old habits, and sales decline to where they were prior to the training event. A sales trainer should be hired to kick off a training process that is ongoing and forever. Through the consistent implementation of sound business practices, your business will not only survive but also thrive. Sales training is one of the business principles that must be consistently implemented.