Even though you have an appealing design for your retail store and good merchandise, have you ever wondered why you are unable to attract more customers? Is the number of customers frequenting your store decreasing day by day? Well, then you might have to look for monsters under your bed and by that we mean your sales department!

Below we have mentioned some pointers on how your sales personnel might be ruining your business:

1. Not listening to customers

The number one reason why customers dislike sales personnel is that they just don’t listen. A lot of sales personnel ignore customers when they are expressing their buying requirements. When a customer is talking, is your sales personnel attentive to customers or are they busy putting stuff back in heavy duty plastic storage boxes? Do you remember the last time you were at a store, looking for a solution to your queries and not getting a straight answer from the sales personnel? If the conversation boat between your sales personnel and customer doesn’t sail to the sale island, you will surely end up losing significant business. If a customer doesn’t get a satisfactory solution to their query, they will not waste their time and leave your store.

2. Excessive talking

Many sales personnel believe that they can sell by talking excessively. This happens a lot where they end up bombarding customers with the information they don’t need and lead the conversation to nowhere. An approach they have in mind is “How can I sell my product, if the customer keeps talking?” The answer to this question is to let your customer do all the talking and after they are done, present them with a proper solution.

3. Less information about the product

There should be no reason why your sales personnel should have less information about the products or services you offer. Sales personnel should know the ins and outs of the products and services you offer and should be able to explain the same to your customers in a proficient manner. If a customer finds out that your sales personnel doesn’t have adequate information and knowledge about a certain product or service, they will be very disappointed at this unprofessional behaviour and may decide to not proceed to do business with you.

You can avoid this by giving your sales personnel thorough, intensive and regular training sessions that keeps them up to date no matter what. Repeating training sessions every six months or so will also help to refresh their memory.

4. No efforts to follow up

Just to satisfy a customer for the time being, sales personnel say from time to time that they will follow up with them as soon as possible. This can be anything from updating them about product information to a problem or a query that they raised a week ago. A customer waits for a reply from the said sales personnel as they expect good service and prompt action from your side.

A lot of people tend to use this as a weighing decision whether they should go ahead with you or not. If your sales personnel avoid or forget to follow up with your customers, you might lose out on deals which otherwise you were supposed to get.

5. Telling lies

A lot of sales personnel tend to tell anything to the customers in order to make a sale and get incentives for achieving targets. The hard truth about the retail industry is that many sales personnel lie which is very shocking to customers. Sometimes they provide wrong information, exaggerate the product capabilities or stretch the truth. Nearly everyone has bought a product from sales personnel who were less than truthful in turn making customers believe less in them.

6. Handling rejection

A lot of people from sales know that sometimes you have to be persistent to make a sale. However, sales personnel should know where to draw a line between being persistent and stalking. While making a sale it is necessary that you don’t drop efforts after the first ‘No” itself, but it is also important to know that you won’t make a sale by forcing people. A lot of times a customer says ‘No’ because they don’t find your product or service that valuable or they might not find you suitable. Sales personnel should be able to handle rejection and make a compromise with the situation.

We hope these pointers help you get your whole sales department in order so you can finally make the profits you were wishing for.