Your Sales Staff, Your Retail Marketing Link To The Customer

You can do everything right when it comes to retail marketing and still have it fall apart at the store level. That is, if your sales staff either isn't fully on board or doesn't understand the offers you've put out there. That's why it's so important to make sure everyone down to the sales level understands what each marketing campaign is about. This is especially true if you are a retailer that has different sales offers on a weekly or even monthly basis.

For one thing, if the offer has complicated details or there are a lot of different offers – some that could be combined and some that can't, it's important that the sales staff knows how to navigate the various offers. It's a pretty sure bet that most of your customers have not read the fine print or they may have just walked in, not knowing the deals. If the sales staff understands all the nuances of the offers, no only can they help the customers understand them, they can use them better as closing tools.

If you have different offers through different media, it's also important that the sales staff know about them. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to take advantage of a deal and not being able to find a salesperson who even knows about it. Several years ago, I was Christmas shopping at a Barnes & Nobel. They had several deals for people who checked into their store on the social media site Foursquare. I had to go through 3 different employees before I found one that even knew about the offer and could point me to the specially priced CDs my coupon entitled me to. if your sales staff don't know about an offer a customer comes in for, you could end up alienating and losing a customer your promotion brought into the store.

I know some retailers have the concern that if there is a special offer out there online or in a mailer and the sales staff knows about it, they'll give it to everyone. Our answers have always been two-fold. One, if you don't want them doing it, work with your store management and create a strict policy that the salespeople understand. And two, so what? If the sales staff uses an offer you were making anyway to help them close a sale, aren't you better off than if they didn't close the sale?

Making sure your sales staff understands and is familiar with all your retail marketing initiatives seems like common sense, but you'd be surprised how often retailers neglect that part of the equation. You spend a lot of time, effort and money creating retail marketing campaigns that drive traffic into your store. Spend a little more time and effort to make sure your retail marketing plans are executed well at the store level.