Strategies_Spring2024

Unlike environments where only select team members are responsible for revenue generation, a culture of selling engages all employees in understanding how their roles contribute to overall sales and business success. Ultimately, a culture of selling creates a unified, customer centric and collaborative environment where everyone plays a part in driving sales, fostering customer loyalty and contributing to the overall growth and success of the retail business.

Traditional approaches might focus more on transactional sales—completing a sale and moving on—while a culture of selling prioritizes building relationships with customers to foster repeat business and loyalty. In some organizations, different departments might work in silos, leading to fragmented strategies. However, a culture of selling integrates various departments to ensure a holistic approach to customer engagement and sales growth.

Steps to Develop a Culture of Selling

5 Confidence through training. Invest in comprehensive training programs to build employee confidence. Identify areas that need improvement and tailor training modules accordingly. 6 Clarify impact. Ensure everyone understands how their role contributes to the business. Highlight the impact of individual efforts on overall sales performance. 7 Improve average ticket. Implement actionable strategies to enhance the average ticket size, such as upselling techniques, bundling offers or loyalty programs.

1 Establish clear goals. Define specific targets such as net sales, average ticket, customer count and conversion rate. These metrics will serve as benchmarks to measure progress. 2 Define key metrics. Identify the current metrics being tracked and establish a tracking system. Determine who within the organization has access to these numbers and who needs additional training to comprehend and utilize them effectively. 3 Establish roles. Clearly define roles in cultivating the culture of selling. Owners, managers and frontline employees each play unique roles in fostering this culture. 4 Lead and train. Implement leadership lessons that emphasize the value of sales and create an environment that supports this culture. Leverage the company’s culture and core values to further this objective.

Attend Kim’s presentation at the Spring Buying Market on Friday at 10 a.m.

Kim Peffley began her career 30 years ago, working at her family’s home improvement business before serving as general manager for a seven-store chain. As the director of organizational development and consulting for NHPA, Peffley leads retailers through comprehensive organizational change to improve internal communications and processes, create stronger teams and drive success.

Hardlines Strategies • Spring 2024 3