THEY ARE NOT READY TO SELL
... Anna Marie
by Alan J. Zell, Ambassador of Selling

Q. I have trouble with my new sales associates at our clothing store. They are not ready to sell when they come to work. They show up, not always promptly or at all, which is, for me as the store manager, very frustrating.

Anna Marie

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A. Anna Marie, your plight is not a new one. It has been around for many years . . . and will be here, unfortunately, for many more years. I, as President Clinton and thousands of retailers would say, "feel you pain." In my more than 25 years in retailing I hired many young salespeople. First off, we did not hire sales associates. We hired salespeople, or better yet, those we hoped would become salespeople. So, call them what they are, salespeople. Let's not hide behind the title, "sales associate."

It may be that some of your new employees look upon selling as a four letter word spelled with seven letters. The image shown in movies and on tv, written about in papers and magazines is anything but favorable. Have you ever read what high school and many college texts say about selling . . . "selling is getting people to buy what they don't want or need for more than they want to pay. " Yes, that's what some of the books say. Many people, not just young people, believe that in order to be good at selling they will be required to do something that borders on being unethical. That attitude doesn't make for good work habits or selling.

It is unfair to a store, to its merchandise and to its customers and to rookies to put rookie salespeople on the floor. Putting a rookie salesperson on the floor is tantamount to trying to start 6-year old kindergartners in the seventh grade, they are being put in a situation they cannot possibly perform well. If you want good salespeople, let them start out in the back room, in the office, sweeping floors and dusting shelves, unpacking and packing, etc., all the things that go into learning more than just selling and what clothing is.

When I was in the position of having to put a rookie on the floor, the first thing I told them was that for the first eight weeks, I did not expect them to make a sale. I expected them to watch, listen, ask questions and be of help to my staff. If they did find themselves having to write up a sale, before the customer left or hung up the phone the Apprentice Salespeople had get one of my Junior or Senior Salespeople to check it over very carefully. For the next eight weeks, they were to make sales where and when they could, but my other salespeople were given the responsibility to look in on the sale. If someone could last out those 16 weeks, I knew we would have a long- time employee.

We did not have a job description for them. We had a check-list with points of what customers, the office, the backroom/warehouse, and other departments expected. For each week of the 16 weeks, they were to check off those points they had met. I, or one of my senior salespeople, tried to go over the check-list on a weekly basis.

We looked upon our salespeople as inventory and we knew that it would take some time to get them to the place where we would be making a profit on their time. When businesses begin to treat salespeople as assets and their salaries as investments instead of expenses, then maybe things will change.

Selling is a profession just as being an accountant or an educator or musician is. With other professions, people have been exposed to what is good in their chosen field of work even before they chose it. Unfortunately, in selling this is not so. And, if people have not been exposed to good selling, how can we expect them to know what good selling is?

So, Anna Marie, help your new salespeople learn their trade. Let them advance through the "grades" to where they can help other new rookies and it will ease your job considerably. I believe that if you and I and many, many others work at it, maybe we'll be able to change that common picture from that you and many others are facing.

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