how is coaching on the floor an essential function of store management and driving up sales?
The numbers don’t lie. However, viewing the metrics by the salesperson does not replace coaching by the manager. Just tracking and posting metrics will have a short term effect on performance, but improvement will level off without coaching from the manager.
If you are a Trakwell customer, you know the value of the data. Our quarterly benchmark report can tell you things like conversion rates, foot traffic counts, average transaction and more.
Coach Behaviors
To improve, you need to analyze the metrics and coach the behaviors you notice.
Behaviors drive a salesperson’s metrics, and metrics drive their sales.Every sales metric is the direct result of a selling behavior. We can coach that behavior!
Behaviors that can be coached to affect sales results positively include:
- Lack of product knowledge
- Too little time with customers
- Discounting as a closing sales technique
- Not paying attention to customers’ body language
- Not asking enough open ending questions
- Asking for add-ons at the wrong time
- Not offering additional services such as warranties
- Low number of customers
- Not comfortable asking for the sale
- Fear of rejection
- Taking too long to complete the paperwork
“Effective coaching is an ongoing process of praising, correcting and reinforcing behaviors, so every salesperson remains on track and performing at the highest possible level”
Your sales staff need you to remind them of their strengths, and demonstrate that you’re investing in them, so they can become the best ‘post-covid’ salespeople possible.
Understanding How to Coach Behaviors
- Think beyond the obvious. Oversimplifying solutions like “show add-ons to improve your Units Per Transaction”, every time, will not build trust, knowledge, or confidence.
- Take the time to consider where the salesperson is in their selling career. Sales associates just starting out in their career, will have different areas to improve than your employee that has been there for 10 years. (22:00)
- Constant positive feedback can be a great way to reinforce the relationship between you and your sales team. It is ALWAYS more effective to give positive feedback by catching them doing something right! “Hey that was a great opening line with your last client, she seemed to really respond to that” (27:06)
- Don’t work on everything at the same time! Progress NOT Perfection!
Post covid consideration
In this post-Covid world, customer behavior will be different- we have to expect to see different stats. Before Covid, you had target statistics like conversion rate, average sale, and sales per hour.. Post-Covid stats are going to be different. When analyzing stats, Karen suggests that you treat this time like a new store opening. She also suggests that you consider a temporary KPI Update to reflect the changes. Doing this will boost sales employees’ confidence.
What if I coach the wrong behavior?
So WHAT!….A lot of time it isn’t what you say, or even how you say it. It’s simply about being there! If they know that you are there to support them, and you’re all aiming for the same goal, they’re much more likely to put in the work and improve.
So grabbing sales by the roots is really about finding the root cause of deficient sales through metrics analysis and on-the-floor observation, then addressing those deficiencies through proactive and targeted coaching to drive up metrics.
