Did you watch this year’s Super Bowl? The team that won was not the team with the single best player. It was the team that had the best players playing together with one goal: to win.
In jewelry retail, some teams suffer because certain salespeople are not really part of the team. They think it is better if they are the only ones waiting on a client. They think it is better to let clients walk empty-handed than to team-sell and close the sale. In their mind, all of nothing is better than half of something. They are not treating the store like they own it.
This kind of salesperson costs companies a lot of money. They believe in entitlement and client ownership. Their motto is, “If I can’t close a sale, nobody can.”
Salespeople who create this every-person-for-himself atmosphere should be written up and either change their ways or be terminated.
The best way to create client loyalty is to close the sale. When you team-sell, the closing ratio goes up over 50 percent. I don’t care whose name is on the ticket, but I care that there is one. You want the client to leave with a bag thinking, “Man, that team is awesome!”
All of you have clients you can close and others that someone else would be better working with. I’ve been all over the world and never seen anyone with a 100 percent closing ratio; they don’t exist. Sometimes you need an assist, sometimes you need someone to go get something for you, but most of the time, it’s a closing issue. All of us have clients that others can close better than you can.
When you team-sell, everyone wins. Number one, the client wins because they bought the item. Number two, the sales team wins; there’s a commission to split. (What if you split 100 sales in a year? Add it up. That’s a lot of dollars.) Number three, future clients win. What do I mean by that? Referrals will come in based on what your happy customer says about you. And that means more people get to experience the awesome teamwork that your staff provides.