Q&A on 'The Sales Minute: Tips for Retail Salespeople'

MISSION:SALES: Congratulations on your new book. How is this one different than your previous books?

Peter Smith: Thanks. I wanted to write a book that could be used as a quick reference tool, a companion piece of sorts, for retail salespeople. A book that could be opened randomly to read a tip and then to put that tip into practice that day. Hiring Squirrels and Sell Something were quite different in that they were more your standard story-telling format built respectively around the challenges of hiring salespeople, and the still untapped and rich subject of sales psychology.

M:S: Are you saying you wrote a book for salespeople who don’t read books?

PS: The book doesn’t have to be read from cover to cover for effect. You can do so and, to be honest, it shouldn’t take more than an hour. The premise, however, was to write something that salespeople could keep at work to reference on an ongoing basis. Something they would go back to time and again.

M:S: What would you say are the biggest challenges for bricks and mortar retail salespeople in 2021?

PS: The challenge has always been for one human to connect with another and that hasn’t changed and won’t change. That bricks and mortar and online are becoming more intertwined should not surprise anyone. We crave the immediacy and efficiency of online research and shopping and anyone fighting that reality is operating on borrowed time. That said, even amidst a global pandemic, physical stores accounted for 86% of all retail in the US last year. The biggest lesson for salespeople in physical stores is to be efficient. Get the customer in and out on their timeframe so that they enjoy the process of shopping in person, but quickly get back to whatever it is they would prefer to do.

M:S: Based on your years of study, how would you advise salespeople to assist in the online process for their stores?

PS: That questions used to be more complicated, but it shouldn’t be today. Customers start their journey online and end up buying in-store about 85% of the time, so salespeople should not fear using their own digital assets to assist the customer. There will also be situations where a customer will begin their journey in the store and end up purchasing online. If the salesperson is doing their job and capturing customer information (and why would you not!) there ought to be a way to ensure they get some credit for an online purchase. If the salesperson did not capture the customer information, they shouldn’t get credit for an online purchase.

M:S: Since this is a book of short tips and, from what I understand, a physically smaller book than your previous books, what was your intent there?