50 Ideas to Train Your Sales Staff in 15 Minutes a Day: For Retail Music Businesses

Copyright © 2013 by Bob Popyk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2013 by Hal Leonard Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Popyk, Bob.

50 ideas to train your sales staff in 15 minutes a day : for retail music businesses / Bob Popyk.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Selling. 2. Sales management. 3. Marketing. 4. Music stores--Management. I. Title. II. Title: Fifty ideas to train your sales staff in 15 minutes a day.

HF5438.25.P665 2012

658.3’1245--dc23

2012039990

ISBNs 9781480337794 (epub) | 9781480337800 (mobi)

www.halleonardbooks.com

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Getting Started

2. Greet Everyone Who Comes In

3. Conversation 101: The Basics

4. Conversation 102: After You Greet Your Customer

5. Avoiding Nerve Words

6. Selling Creatively Using Common Sense

7. Handling Objections 101: Get Your Customer to Talk a Little More

8. Handling Objections 102: Don’t Confuse Your Customer

9. Handling Objections 103: You Don’t Know Jack

10. How to Handle Customers You Just Can’t Stand

11. Dealing with Customers You Really Can’t Stand

12. How About Customers Who Just Can’t Stand You?

13. Six Misconceptions When Handling Nasty Customers

14. Maintaining Control of Your Customer

15. Never Embarrass Your Customers

16. Going Head to Head with Your Online Competitors

17. Qualifying Means Developing Listening Skills

18. Product Knowledge Versus Sales Knowledge

19. Closing 101: Asking for the Sale

20. Closing 102: Handling Rejection

21. The Little-Harder Sell

22. What to Do If Your Customer Walks

23. Selling for Margin

24. Finding Your Own Customers

25. Thank-You Notes

26. A Personal Approach to Direct Mail

27. Incoming Calls: Your Greatest Source of New Business

28. 10 Telephone Tips

29. Getting the Word Out

30. Let’s Keep the Pros on Our Side

31. Selling Up, Selling Down, and Add-Ons

32. Following Up After the Sale

33. Tapping the Adult Market

34. Selling to Senior Citizens

35. How Important Are Your Business Cards?

36. Referral Selling

37. Selling Lesson Programs

38. Selling Through Your Lesson Studios

39. Keep Individual Customer Lists

40. Learning About Your Customers

41. What Problems Are We Facing?

42. Handling Complaints and Dissatisfied Customers

43. Getting Your Salespeople Involved in Niche Markets

44. Keep It Clean

45. Separating Yourself from the Pack

46. Try to Look Happy (Even If You Are Not)

47. Attitude

48. Believe in Your Store

49. Believe in the Benefits of Music

50. Believe in Yourself

Preface

This book is intended for independent music retailers with both a full-time and part-time sales staff. Its sole purpose is to help dealers train their sales staff to create more customers and more business with ideas that can be used quickly and easily.

It seems as though sales training is limited or almost nonexistent today in many independent music stores. A number of stores do not have regular sales meetings, if any at all. Salespeople come and go. A little training, even for just a few minutes a day, can work wonders.

While not every idea described in this book is for everyone, there are many things that could easily work for you. This book lists 50 ideas to incorporate into 10- to 15-minute daily meetings. There are ideas that you can give your sales staff to use as soon as your doors open. Remember: play to your strengths, pick and choose what is right for you, and put your mind to it if you want to see some positive results. Start by taking the ideas you like best and giving them a try. You will be amazed how much business can be gained with just a little knowledge passed along on a daily basis. You never know what works until you give it a try.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all of the readers of my column in The Music Trades magazine, and to the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who have helped keep me in touch with the indie music dealers all over the country.

Also, a sincere thank-you goes to the staff of Bentley-Hall Inc., who have worked with me over so many years. They made my job much easier, and now I feel as though I never had to work a day in my life.

After all of the years as an owner of several music stores, and then as a writer on sales and marketing strategies, I really believe that the retail music business is a fun business. And the more money you make, the more fun you’re going to have.

I hope this book helps maximize the fun of being a music dealer.

Bob Popyk

[email protected]

1

Getting Started

Sales training is not an easy subject for music retailers. First of all, who has the time? Secondly, what if you train your staff and then they quit? As a matter of fact, what if you don’t train them and they stick around? Well, here’s another take on it: if you don’t train your staff to sell, you are going to see money walking out the door.

While marketing is one way to drive sales and lure new customers into your store, advertising and promotion are expensive, particularly using major media. It takes a big checkbook (not to mention an even bigger crystal ball) to know where to spend your money. Getting salespeople personally involved in finding their own customers, and selling to them once they come into the store, will be the answer in the years to come. Just the basics of selling, regularly put to use, will generate more sales week after week, month after month. It’s not that hard, but you have to really want it. It becomes much easier if you have the right game plan, the right attitude, and the willingness to give new ideas a try.

Having an untrained sales staff is like having a vending machine on your sales floor. When you have clerks who simply take money and give back product (like the machines), your sales will suffer. Sharing some sales smarts with your staff in order to maximize every customer interaction can add tremendously to your bottom line, and to do it, you don’t need to spend hours at a time in training. You don’t need to have volumes of material with charts and graphs. You can easily do it before you open at a time when everyone is around, in about 10 to 15 minutes each day. If you spend those 10 to 15 minutes a day on just one subject, that could add up to over an hour a week on six different subjects! It’s hardly a humungous chunk of time taken from your day, and these few short sessions could add more sales instantly.

You may be asking yourself, Why should I? It’s not my employees and their sales methods that are not working; it’s the economy and the spending nature of the public. Whether or not this statement is true is a whole different subject, but it all comes down to this: whether business is slow and you are heading for disaster or whether your business is just fine and always has been, change will never occur without action. If things are not going to your liking, then you have to do something about it or just give up. The next time you think business is slow, forget moaning and complaining. That is just negative energy. Think instead about what you might be able to do to get business where you want it.

Increasing sales is something you can start right now. All you need is a plan and an open mind. Keep these facts in mind as you read through these ideas to ramp up your team’s sales skills.

Have a Plan

Your sales staff relies on you to keep work flow grounded and structured. If you are going to have a daily meeting, be prepared for what you are going to discuss, and get right to business. Here is an idea: Take an afternoon to yourself without a computer, cell phone, iPad, or any other distraction. Or enjoy an evening with just you plus a legal pad and pen. Jot down some sales goals, and then write down as many ideas as you can on how you will find more people to talk to and make more sales once customers come into the store. Then come up with a structure on how to get your employees to help you reach them. While sales training can be enjoyable, it is still business. Your employees will take things more seriously if you do.

Get Everyone on Board

It only takes one employee rolling his or her eyes or yawning during a training session to get everyone else antsy and starting to question your purpose. Be persistent and encouraging. Remind your employees that training is beneficial to increasing sales and in turn increasing their own personal paychecks. Be mindful of who is bringing down the morale of your group, and find a way to decrease this negativity.

Be Open-Minded

You have a plan, you have a goal, and you have carefully calculated steps to achieving the revenue of your dreams. While this structure and discipline are important to achieving the outcomes you hope for, do