nickshanagher

 A very good friend of mine told me a great story over the Easter weekend. She had been invited to a house sale, where a family were leaving the UK and wanted to flog off the contents of their home. The wife, an American, turned out to be a formidable saleswoman. The expected bargains were not on display and my friend felt obligated to buy a few things, quickly using her smartphone to check prices. The classic moment came when the saleswoman asked my friend how much money she had left in her purse. Two fifty pence coins was the reply. I’ll have those said the American. Everything she did not sell was put on a van and sent to a charity shop. My friend told me that only an American could possibly have achieved this house sale: having an inflated view of the value of her own possessions and the confidence to sell it to friends of friends. Which had me thinking about the value of scripted behaviour and the confidence that makes selling successful. Is this something on disp...

Phil Smith, the former head of Musgrave Budgens Londis, used to advise his retail members that there was no profit for his wholesale arm in shipping stock to stores. The profit came from its buying skills. Getting the correct products at the correct prices that will sell through the shops of their members. I have reviewed a number of books this year from people who spend their lives watching shoppers and conclude that no selling takes place in store. But surely the independent retailer has to be a good salesperson, you may object. The answer is yes. Life’s a pitch: What the world’s best sales people can teach us all by Philip Delves Broughton (£8.99 from Amazon) is a book that will reaffirm that yes and that will inspire you to grow your business. Broughton is a journalist and he skilfully weaves together a tale incorporating most of the sales canon, including mention of Earl Nightingale and his secret that you become what you think about. As a journalist, Broughton has co...

Most of the time, we felt quite happy with our negotiations with shopkeepers in the souks of Marrakech but we did feel caught out by Tariq, the herbalist. His cousin Ali had accosted us while we were negotiating a back alley looking for a tourist attraction and after taking us there asked us if we wanted to see the spice market. We agreed and half way down the street we were suddenly introduced to Tariq. Tariq had excellent English and pointing at the brightly coloured displays outside his shop, he identified them to my wife and myself. It was quite educational and he explained how various compounds were used. Then we were invited into his shop and offered tea and given an explanation of the contents of lots of jars on the shelves. This is probably what life was like before goods were packaged and organised within categories. We were bedazzled. Then moving to the sell part of the transaction, Tariq presented my wife with a small gift and then asked what we would like to buy. At ...

Earlier this year I attended a seminar that explained the success secrets behind Primi, a South African restaurant that is famous for generating the highest profit per square foot in shopping malls. The outcome for me is that I now look at restaurants to spot all the things that people do right and wrong. Last night, my mother took a big family party out to a mid-market chain pizza restaurant and in our 45 minute wait after sitting down before our drinks were served we could see how a lack of basic organisation meant that the five waiters and three kitchen staff kept on hitting log jams. One of Primi rules is that all the waiting staff walk the whole restaurant all the time and look to serve people straight away - especially those on tables that other waiters have served. Last night, we could see three waiters pretending to be busy while two waiters were hopelessly overworked. This was presumably a result of a random allocation of tables as diners arrived. The manager at the end, apolo...

"Far too many people are held back by their fear that they are not a born salesperson," says Deborah Meaden, the businessperson currently promoting her book on how to run a business. The fear of selling is the fear of being told No. It is the fear of having to push something unwonted on people. It is the fear that a No is a rejection of you. Meaden's solution is to say that if people are as passionate about what they do as they should be "it follows that they can't help but sell their dream to other people". What she recognises is that it is good to look at the "sale" from a different perspective so that what is important is not whether the person liked you or the product but whether they enjoyed the experience of the sale. People like to be asked for their custom because it gives them power, the power to say yes or no. Selling face-to-face requires you to have good knowledge of what you are selling, a belief in your product (or services) and the a...

"Rather than just telling people we have a store full of products, we are selling the idea that hobbies are an enjoyable low-cost way of occupying leisure time", says Chris Crombie, chief executive of HobbyCraft, which supplies knitting and model-making supplies. Newspaper retailers have a sense that they need to do this, as do their suppliers. One of the newspaper industry's problems is too many potential readers focus on what they can get elsewhere for free and too few focus on the value that papers deliver. Shoppers need to be educated and when they are, mostly they like it. Waitrose and John Lewis put educating shoppers at the heart of how they differentiate their offer and it works for them. If they can, newspaper retailers can.