Setting sail for sales

 

While so many retailers are in a continual frenzy trying to improve sales with better advertising, lower price points and squeezing suppliers for higher margins, how many of them are putting the same effort into training their sales people?

My observation is, not very many. Whenever I go into a retail store my mind uncontrollably splits into three. Part A is enquiring about the product, part B shudders at the towering cost of fit-out, and part C begins running an assessment of the sales presentation.

I can’t help it. I invariably come away more interested in the sales technique than what I’m carrying in my shopping bag. Sad to say, I think the average selling skill level in Australia is lousy.

My friend, Ralph Dahan, who now lives in Perth, agrees. Ralph is a sage and one of the oldest men in Australia selling menswear in a retail store. He only works about 20 hours a week yet pulls in staggering annual sales.

Simply put, he loves selling – always has. As one of Flinders Lane’s legendary fashion agents in the years when the lane was the hotbed of Australian fashion, his life was one long sell and he was a master of the art. When he moved from Melbourne to Perth, and from womenswear to menswear, and from wholesale to retail, he simply took his skill and love of selling with him.

If there is a ‘secret’ it probably is that Ralph engages his customer. Everybody has a job, a family, a hobby or a problem they want to talk about. Ralph develops a genuine interest in them. And, of course, when he suggests a suit to go with the handkerchief the customer came in to buy, he’s likely to get agreement from his new friend.

The point about this technique is that it’s not just a technique. It’s not simply mouthing off key words that you can learn from a book or a selling course which tells you how to go for the close. It is the art, or the challenge if you like, of being able to create a link of friendship between you and the customer. Once you have that, you don’t have to ‘sell’. They buy.

I’ll bet those retailers that run sales training concentrate on the obvious: know the product, know the store’s policy, turn objections around, go for the close. But how many are going to make the centre-piece of their training ‘how to make the customer your friend’?

We all know retailers that are not the cheapest or don’t have the best products or are not in the middle of a shoppers’ ant-track, yet still have highly successful, profitable businesses. That’s because they have established customer friendship and the loyalty that goes with it.

If I was in charge of sales training in a retail establishment, I’d try to fly Ralph from Perth to talk to my sales people. If he said yes, it could change the whole selling environment.
Mark well what I do say

While Mark McInnes sits out his jobless year in the naughty corner, who might be contemplating employing him in a leading retail position? Mark has much to offer. He’s been one of the best ever CEOs of David Jones and one of our own to boot, rather than a failed American or an unfathomable South African or a fraffly proper Brit.

The word on the street is that Mark’s had a couple of chats with Solly Lew and kids. There is plenty of room in that stable for a good performer who has learned, through a hard landing, how not to tangle with the tendrils of harassment.

The Hoffman press

Anybody who has had anything to do with clothing factories will know of the essential, eternal Hoffman steam press. It was invented in New York in 1904 when a tailor with an injured arm had to find a way around lifting his heavy steam iron.

But there is another Hoffman press. This Hoffman is Ronnie, an Australian, and the press belongs to the printer of his four remarkable, relatively simple ‘how-to’ books on the sewing trades. They go by the titles Tried and Tested (quality control), Hanging by a Thread (stitches and threads), A Cut Above The Rest (cutting and marker-making) and Fancy Stitching (machine embroidery).

A Cut Above the Rest was taken up by the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and it remains there as required reading. It is also used by technical colleges in Australia. What makes it even more remarkable is that it has just gone into its fifteenth edition. Demonstrating that at least something endures in the clothing industry, there have been no changes necessary since the first edition.