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sales training north London Archives - Tadpole Training

Jan 10
0
Janet Efere looking frustrated

What first impression are your team giving your customers?

By | sales training | No Comments

Do you love Greggs?

I love Greggs.

Usually Greggs are fabulous, but here is a tale of how just one person getting it wrong can undo a whole load of good stuff.

I was at Liverpool Street Station, London, on my way to deliver some training at Aldgate. I went to Greggs for a bit of brekkie!

To give you context, it was 8.30am and heaving, very noisy and the food counter is not visible to customers queuing on the right hand side, where I was.

I asked the assistant “do you have meat and vegetarian pasties?”

He said “yes”

Janet “OK I’ll have a vegetarian one and a coffee.”

Assistant ….. silence …. went off to get the food. He came back, gave me the little Greggs bag with my food in it and I paid.

Something was wrong. The bag was too heavy. He had given me both a vegetarian and a meat pasty.

Janet “Excuse me, there are two pasties in here”

Assistant “you asked for both”.

Janet “no, I only wanted the vegetarian one”

Assistant “no you didn’t – you asked me for the meat one as well”. Petulant stare from assistant.

Janet “I only want the vegetarian one”

Assistant “you asked for meat. I heard you”

[I literally felt my brain shift gear]

Janet “I clearly stated that I wanted vegetarian. Please take it back and refund me” (I think I may have used my ‘trainer’ voice here – I wasn’t in the mood for a debate)

Assistant visibly rolled eyes and huffed. Mumbled “you asked for meat”. Went to get manager.

Manager was polite and helpful and it was no trouble at all to refund me. I did make it known to him that I appreciated his help. I also relayed the conversation I had just had and suggested the staff member could do with some training.

So there are loads of levels to this, of course but here are a few:

🟣 However good your company or product is, the customer-facing staff you employ must fundamentally like dealing with people. Not once did I get a smile or even a suggestion of friendliness

🟣 Even if I was wrong (we do all make mistakes) the assistant should have cheerfully changed my order. A good assistant might even have apologised for the misunderstanding. Note that is different from saying ‘I’m sorry’ which implies they got it wrong. Apologising for the ‘misunderstanding’ is neutral and it does not suggest blame on either party.

🟣 Body language matters – rolling eyes will never a happy customer make!

🟣 Don’t argue with customers! End of!

🟣 A little bit of training would have gone a long way here. This was such a simple little exchange.

🟣 How many customers would one assistant see in a day? Hundreds probably. How would it affect your brand if, every day, one person was upsetting customer after customer?

Getting it right matters massively.

For a conversation about how I can help your customer facing team delight your customers instead of wind them up, send me a direct message.

And if you know anyone at Greggs ……!

Happy selling!

Does your customer facing team need a bit of a boost? For information on how we can create some bespoke training for you, let’s have a chat. Here is the link to my diary https://calendly.com/jefere/half-an-hour-with-janet

Jan 25
0
love getting objections

Why I love Sales Objections and you should too!

By | entrepreneurs, sales tips, sales training, Training | No Comments

Why I love Sales Objections and you should too.

As a sales trainer, one of the things that I get asked about probably more than any other (with the possible exception of how to close better) is overcoming objections.

There is something about an objection that can strike genuine fear into the hearts of salespeople – particularly if they are less experienced – but it really shouldn’t be like that.

 

Now, I do accept that part of the mindset of being in sales is that thrill you get from moving a prospect on towards becoming an actual paying customer (yes, you’ve guessed it, when I was in direct sales, I was a ‘hunter’!), but what if sales isn’t your natural world and you find elements of it a real struggle? If that is you, then here are some practical things you should consider, which will hopefully change your perspective a little bit – or maybe even a lot.

 

  1. You can prepare for objections in advance. It is likely that most customers will broadly be worried about similar things, so do your homework, make a list of possible objections and work out what you can say to overcome them.

  2. Make sure you have lots of reviews, testimonials and case studies from happy customers. If a potential customer objects to something specific, it can be very powerful to say “Well my customer AAA had a similar concern, so we did BBB and the results were CCC.”

  3. Don’t rush to answer objections with tons of facts. It can be a lot more powerful to ask probing questions instead, such as “why is that important to you?” or “tell me a bit more about your concerns”. By encouraging potential customers to explain in more depth, you may find that the objection they stated was actually secondary to something else, which is fantastic, because now you can address the genuine objection.

  4. It might sound strange, but when a customer gives an objection, it can often mean that they are very close to buying. An objection means that they are considering using your product or service and are just checking that everything fits properly. If they have a genuine concern, then it makes sense to air it and make sure that it is not a deal-breaker.

  5. Some customers can just throw in an objection to put you off – so getting an objection can sometimes have absolutely no bearing on whether or not they are going to buy from you. Just as in life, customers come in a whole range of personalities!

  6. Once you have dealt with an objection, it is useful to ask a follow up question (known as a confirmation question), such as “has that answered your concerns?” or “is there anything else you would like to know?” By doing this, you find out whether you have dealt with their objection to their satisfaction and it allows you to move onto the next stage of the sale. After all, if you don’t deal with their objection properly, then there probably won’t be a next stage of the sale!

I hope these simple strategies will help you worry less about getting objections. Instead, acknowledge that objections are simply part of the sales process and can be a great way of cementing that sale.

 

Happy selling!

 

Janet is based in Enfield, north London and trains small businesses and entrepreneurs how to sell more. She has recently reached the final of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management’s national awards (BESMA 2016) in the category of Sales Trainer of the Year and, in November 2015 won ‘Start up Business of the Year’ at the Enterprise Enfield Business Awards.

 

 

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