october - retail sales academy | sales training for retail · managing and coaching your… holiday...

Copyright WhizBang! Training MMXVI 1

Managing and Coaching Your…

Holiday Selling Superstars! As a special bonus for owners and managers using the Retail Sales Academy, we built this 10-week plan for managing and coaching your holiday selling superstars! For each week we’ve…

• Recommended a video lesson in the Holiday Selling series to have your employees watch (it’s the one that will be showing up in their inbox that week),

• Offered an idea to use in a quick team meeting, and • Suggested a focus for your coaching that week.

For a simple, successful holiday selling season just follow the plan! If, however, any of the ideas won’t work for you, just replace them with an idea of your own that does.

OCTOBER October 16-22 Video Lesson: Fired Up and Festive On or after October 20th, have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the NEW Fired Up and Festive video lesson inside the NEW course called Holiday Selling. The new course looks like this:

Sales Meeting Idea: Let your team help plan the holiday attack.


We love this quote: “Let them plan the fight and they won’t fight the plan.” Ask your team members what worked best last year during the holidays, and what didn’t work. Come up with a plan together to make sure everything is as smooth as possible and your customers get a great experience, even when it’s busy. For example, if they say one problem last year was that there weren’t enough stocking stuffer sized items, get the whole team to brainstorm ideas for stocking stuffers and sources for those items. If they suggest merchandise, find vendors, and make selections. Your team will be far more likely to add on those stocking stuffers! Coaching Focus: The Ten Penny Pocket Now is the time to start (or re-start) the “ten pennies in your pocket” technique. In the morning, put ten pennies in your right pocket. As you go through the day and see your team exhibiting great selling behaviors, give them a “one sentence wonder” compliment and move one penny from the right pocket to the left. Try to catch your team doing something right and praise them TEN times every day from now until Christmas. This is a simple yet POWERFUL coaching technique. October 23-29 Video Lesson: Your Christmas Customer Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called Your Christmas Customer. This lesson reminds your team that during the holidays your customers are more likely to be gift-givers and not the normal end-user of the merchandise. Sales Meeting Idea: Great Questions to Ask a Gift Giver In your sales meeting this week review the video lesson and have the group brainstorm some questions which are important to ask a gift giver. These might be different from the questions you ask your regular customers. Be sure to use the 6 Powerful Words from Step 2 - Questioning and Listening. Coaching Focus: Listen for Yes-No Questions If you hear an employee asking yes-no questions, connect with them after the sale is finished and ask them to change the question into an open ended question using the 6 Powerful Words. For example, if they ask, “Does your Uncle Tom like blue?” they could switch it around to, “What are some of your Uncle Tom’s favorite colors?”


If they are doing a great job of asking open-ended questions, be sure to praise with a “one sentence wonder” and move a penny from the right pocket to the left!

NOVEMBER October 30 – November 5 Video Lesson: Great Holiday Greetings Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called The Holiday Greeting. This lesson gives your employees some ideas for different types of greetings they can use during the holiday season. Sales Meeting Idea: Share a Greeting Have each team member come prepared to share their favorite greeting (whether it’s a Christmas focused greeting or not) and say why it works. This always provokes lots of interesting discussion! Coaching Focus: Use a Picture Prompt If you notice that an employee is having a hard time with the greeting (and it is often the most uncomfortable step for people) practice with them by using a picture prompt. For example, you might show them this picture and ask them to come up with three possible greetings. Don’t forget to start with Warm Words of Welcome!

You can search Google images or other photo libraries for images of different kinds of customers to use as picture prompts.


When you catch your employees doing a great job of properly greeting customers, be sure to praise with a “one sentence wonder” and move a penny from the right pocket to the left! November 6-12 Video Lesson: The Perfect Christmas Key Question Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called The Christmas Key Question. This lesson explores how your key question might change during the holiday season. Sales Meeting Idea: Tweak the Key Question With the entire team, brainstorm 2 assumptive key questions for the holidays and 2 choice key questions for the holidays. Challenge your employees to use these new key questions during the Christmas selling season. Coaching Focus: Play Sales Games Now is a great time to start playing sales games with your team. Our favorite simple sales game is “Pass the Buck.” Here are the rules: Give the first person to make a sale a $20 dollar bill to hold (or a $10 bill, or a $50 bill depending on your store and how hard you want your staff to play.) When someone makes a bigger sale than the first sale they get “passed the buck.” The next time an even larger sale is made the “buck” gets passed again. The person who has the highest sale that day is left holding the buck and gets to take home the cash! Of course, when you hear your employees using a Christmas key question, be sure to praise them with a “one sentence wonder” and move a penny from the right pocket to the left! November 13-19 Video Lesson: Awesome Christmas Add-Ons Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called Awesome Christmas Add-Ons. Adding on is probably the #1 thing your team can do to increase sales and improve the customer experience during the holidays. If you really want to focus on this area, have your staff go back to the original Retail Sales Academy training and also watch the lessons called Adding On During the Sale and Adding On at the Counter.


Sales Meeting Idea: Have an “Add-On” Contest Bring some of your best selling items to your sales meeting – some items that might be easy to add-on to, some which might be trickier. Break your group up into teams of 2 or 3 and have the teams come up with as many add-ons as they can for each bestseller. Consider regular add-ons plus stocking stuffer add-ons. Each team reads their lists to the entire group. The team with the most “manager approved” add-ons (ie actually good add-ons) wins a small prize, like an extra half hour for lunch, or a gift card for coffee. Coaching Focus: Watch for “At the Counter” Add-Ons Watch to be sure each sales person is doing an add-on demo at the counter with EVERY SINGLE transaction before they give the customer the total of their purchase. Make this a non-negotiable standard. This standard could lead to tens, even hundreds of thousands more dollars in the bank. When you see your employees adding on at the counter, be sure to praise them with a “one sentence wonder” and move a penny from the right pocket to the left! November 20-26 Video Lesson: Talking Price At Christmas Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called Talking Price At Christmas. Price objections and constraints are much different at Christmas than at other times of the year – sometimes more rigid, and sometime waaaaay more flexible. This lesson gives your team some insight. Sales Meeting Idea: Set Sales Goals for December This is it… Thanksgiving week. You’re heading into the busiest 5 weeks of the year. In your sales meeting this week post and review your sales goals for the next 5 weeks. For each week (and for the total month) you should have a goal for:

• Total Sales Volume • Average Sale • Items per Sale

And if you have more detailed capabilities, make goals for

• Sales Volume per Hour • Conversion %


If your team knows what they are shooting for the more likely they are to meet and exceed their target! Coaching Focus: Write a Personal “Thank You” to Employees During this week of giving thanks, write each team member a handwritten thank you note with some personal comment about why they are valuable to you and what they do to help your business. I know it’s super busy and you may think you don’t have time to write these notes, but this small gesture will result in a team that is FIRED UP and ready to give you 5 weeks of amazing effort. The payback will be huge!

DECEMBER

November 27 – December 3 Video Lesson: Selling to Multiple Customers Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called Selling to Multiple Customers. This lesson teaches pro tricks for dealing with a store slammed full of customers. Sales Meeting Idea: Review The 6 Steps to a Perfect Purchase In your sales meeting this week review the entire selling process. Split the team up into 6 groups and have each group discuss one of the 6 steps and then re-teach it to the group. Ask them to consider: What are all of the things that step includes? Why is this step important for the Perfect Purchase? Coaching Focus: Saying Thank You Do you want your team to add anything to the “thank you” at the end of the sale during the season? “Thank you and I hope you have a Merry Christmas!” or “Happy holidays and thanks so much for shopping with us!” Be specific. Make sure that they DON’T DROP the “thank you” when they add the “Merry Christmas.” December 4-10 Video Lesson: NONE THIS WEEK – too busy selling. J


Even though your team won’t be watching a video lesson this week, it’s very important that you still do your weekly sales meeting and coaching to keep their focus on selling. Sales Meeting Idea: Employee Check In In your sales meeting this week do a simple 3-part check in with each employee:

• What’s the best sale you made so far this holiday season? • How is your morale and personal energy level? • What’s one suggestion you have to make things better through Christmas?

This is super valuable for you to reinforce the good things that have happened so far, check to see if anyone is getting burned out, and get some feedback on what needs to change to hit your goals. Coaching Focus: Double Down on the Ten Penny Pocket If you’ve let this slip, now’s the time to refocus on giving positive praise when you see your team engaging in great selling behaviors. Since you have so many more transactions, you could shoot for TWENTY positive comments and TWENTY pennies moving from pocket to pocket starting this week. December 11-17 Video Lesson: NONE THIS WEEK – too busy selling. J Even though your team won’t be watching a video lesson this week, it’s very important that you still do your weekly sales meeting and coaching to keep their focus on selling. Sales Meeting Idea: Goals Check-In You’re almost there! Just a week more to go. Review where you are on your goals with your team. Celebrate if you are on track. Involve them in ways to improve, pivot, or rev up your efforts if you’re behind your plan. The mere fact that you are talking about the goals will re-focus them on their selling efforts. Coaching Focus: Be a Great Role Model They watch your feet, not your lips. Since you’re probably one of the best salespeople in your store be sure you personally are modeling great selling technique. Don’t be shy about pointing out what you do that makes you a great salesperson. They will learn from watching you! December 18-24


Video Lesson: Handling Holiday Returns & Exchanges Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called Handling Holiday Returns & Exchanges. Yes, this is the busiest week of the year, but you want them prepped and ready when those returns start to roll in on the 26th. Every time you can turn a return into an exchange, your bank account wins. Remind your team exactly what your return policy is and how you want them to handle each customer with care and respect – even if they are making a return. Sales Meeting Idea: NONE! JUST SELL!! Coaching Focus: ALL OF THE ABOVE! Use any or all of the coaching techniques from previous weeks to make this last, huge, amazing, fun-filled, tiring week the best it can be. Go get ‘em! December 25-31 Video Lesson: The Holiday Selling Reset Have your team login to the Retail Sales Academy, go to the Training Center, and watch the video lesson called The Holiday Reset. This lesson transitions your team from frantic, sometimes short-cut selling during the holidays back to the good ol’ 6 Steps to the Perfect Purchase. Sales Meeting Idea: Holiday Recap Hold a de-brief meeting with your team to review and recap the entire holiday season. Ask them:

• What was your most Perfect Purchase? • What worked? • What didn’t? • How can we improve? • How are you feeling?

Remember, “Let them plan the fight and they won’t fight the plan.” If you can get them to help plan for next year, they will be invested and take ownership of the process. Coaching Focus: Embracing Returns


Make sure your team is taking returns with a smile and good attitude. Every transaction is an opportunity to convert an unhappy gift recipient into a happy one. Use the “one sentence wonder” and the Ten Penny Pocket to reward a great attitude towards returns.

Congratulations! You made it through another wonderful holiday season.

october - retail sales academy | sales training for retail · managing and coaching your… holiday...

Documents