Where to get intrinsic motivation for sales in a period of decline in consumer activity

If you build relationships with sellers only on money, then sooner or later there will come a moment when their performance either decreases sharply or is on the decline. This is especially evident during periods of seasonal decline in sales. In this article, our regular author, an expert in the fashion retail market, Evgeny Danchev, offers to talk about the internal motivation of the staff, the attitudes of sellers of shoes and accessories and their leaders, the factors that influence them, and sources of inspiration for ordinary and senior employees of the retail store.

Evgeny Danchev -

business coach, consultant, expert in increasing sales of the fashion market. Author of the book "A Practical Guide to Increasing Sales of Shoes and Accessories". Author of sales scripts "60 responses to customer objections in a retail shoe store" and "Standards for retail shoe sales." Creator of an online school for fashion market leaders.

@evgenydanchev, https://onlineschool.wconsulting.su/

There is as much success in business as there is successful psychology in it. And it is not just words. After all, the psyche is “controlled” by a person, and despite the fact that everyone has a different structure, there are things that are characteristic of most people working in your business. What unites them strongly is certain expectations regarding working situations based on previous experience.

For example, take the Black Friday promotion, which is gaining weight, every year. The digitalization of the economy, the development of marketplaces, the replacement of previous generations of consumers with millenials - all this contributed to the rapid growth of demand specifically in these few days at the end of November, united by the name Black Friday, and now a significant part of buyers are really looking forward to it. Moreover: information was published in open sources that on November 11, 2019 - in just one day of sales - more than $ 38 billion worth of goods were sold on Aliexpress worldwide! The figure is just fantastic. For example, Amazon receives such a turnover in three months.

But what usually happens with sales right after the end of any large-scale promotion? A quite expected decline is observed, the depth of which depends not so much on buyers as on sellers' expectations. Yes, of course, customer traffic after promotions or holiday sales is falling, but still it is possible and necessary to work and earn on it.   

Sellers expect low sales after the end of the peak phase of the season, or after promotions, because customers become more calculating, they carefully analyze prices in the market and, if they do not find benefits for themselves, they can postpone the decision to buy, since there is an urgent need for it. no. But it is precisely during this period that the real sales of shoes and accessories begin, because at the peak of the sales season, or when there are good promotions, customers more often buy themselves than they really sell. How many times have I seen 10-15 customers in the sales area, choosing shoes, for which there were only 3 sellers. It is clear that there is no need to talk about any sales technique in such a situation. Here you just need to have time to take out the pairs from the warehouse and punch checks at the checkout. And at such moments, the sellers get an inner feeling that if you come home and fall on the sofa with the words “There is no more strength, it means that you have worked well,” this becomes a criterion for effective work. In addition, "star fever" is beginning to visit some sellers, since success makes them feel like they are on the "top of Olympus". And once having been there, I really do not want to go down to the usual level. And so sellers begin to blame external factors for their low sales during a downturn in buying activity, protecting themselves from executive criticism. Continuing to work with rare clients during a sales downturn using a strategy that was effective for a large flow of buyers, it is very difficult to show good financial results.

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When buyers in the trading floor become much smaller, sellers must restructure their behavior. We need to work according to standards, squeeze the result out as much as possible in each communication with the client, and pay special attention to the managers on the sales funnel conversion and complexity indicators. However, in practice this does not happen often. What can be done to change the internal attitudes of sellers and make them believe in the possibility of achieving much better sales performance?

One of my corporate clients conducted an experiment and sent a commercial director, store director, and office manager who had previous sales skills to the shop to work as sellers for three hours (store sellers did not work during these hours). Three hours later, the team compared their plans for work with actual performance. A photo of the results of the work of the new team was sent to the general Skype chat, which is visible to all the managers of other stores of the company: in three hours they exceeded their sales team plan by 190%!

Of course, for all employees of the company and, first of all, for sellers, these results were a shock. How can one show a result that surpasses the results of even sellers-stars? It turns out that there are internal resources that are usually not involved in working with the client.

What are these resources, due to which the team of top managers showed such an impressive result? First of all, it is intrinsic motivation and attitude to see a potential buyer in every client who is in the store. Secondly, top managers in the role of sellers adhered to the principle that if you do not divide customers into convenient and not convenient, if you approach everyone and ask the right questions and work according to standards, then, of course, the results will be completely different.

After a client makes a decision to buy shoes or bags, he must definitely offer him another product (cosmetics, accessories, etc.) - this is a simple rule they also applied in their work. As a result, the team of top managers overfulfilled their plan precisely due to the high average check, as the customer traffic was not large. Almost all sales made by top managers had 2,3 and even 4 products in one check, which indicates the correct use of CROSS-SELL technology.

How do retail company executives achieve the same sales figures from sellers of shoes and accessories? Probably, you already guessed that this is possible with the joint work of the seller and a more experienced colleague. Only in this way, by personal example, or by working in tandem, you can change the internal settings of sellers and make everyone believe in the possibility of additional sales, even in falling demand in the market. When there are fewer customers in a retail store, more emphasis needs to be placed on increasing the size of an average check and working on retail sales standards that imply that each customer is a potential customer. All conversations of sellers about the impossibility of selling additional goods without shares to the client, as a rule, end when managers begin to control whether the sellers actually offer this additional, related product. The promotion itself - yes, it can increase sales or weaken, but the sale of the second, third goods in one check primarily depends on the seller’s work. If the second product is not offered, then its sale, as a rule, will not be. And this will affect the final result of the store.

Therefore, I strongly recommend that managers and owners exercise close control over the performance of your sales staff in the low sales season, since this is the only way to increase the internal motivation of sellers, which will be under your control, and not under the control of external factors.