Part 11— by Scott Morris
Mentoring life skills training for retail salespeople
Life changing success skills advice that store owners and managers should
pass on to every new hire to give them a fighting chance to thrive.
When we were born, we didn’t get sent home with written instructions about
how to live a healthy and prosperous life. Those of us who were extremely
lucky were born to parents who were perfect role models, with the additional
gift of being wise enough to teach us how to live life properly. However,
it’s my experience, that in the real world, this is rarely likely to happen.
Most of us are usually left to our own devices to acquire that elusive but
critical understanding. You most probably agree, but you may be wondering at
this point, “Why should a furniture sales training guy even be bringing up
this topic?”
The reason is simple. Every aspect of a salesperson’s life affects their
performance day in and day out. For instance, if they are not goal-oriented
by nature, lack proper follow-up skills, tend to be negative, lack focus or
don’t know how to make the best use of their time, it will definitely impede
their sales effectiveness.
It would seem imperative, therefore, that training salespeople to do well
must also include some basic success skills training. Just think back over
past new hires that you felt had the talent to do very well but quit or had
to be let go due to poor performance. What personal habits prevented them
from achieving their potential? Their failure was probably not due to your
store’s sales training, but most likely due to their lack of mastery of some
basic life skills!
My own experience might help to drive the point home. I would not be writing
this article unless a great personal mentor taught me how to overcome my
deficient life skills. That was the real turning point in my furniture sales
career. I mentioned my mentor, Sol, in a previous article as being the best
sales closer I’ve ever seen. He taught me a lot about closing sales, but
more importantly, he taught me how to achieve in life. I will now share some
of those life-changing insights with you!
“Every aspect of a salesperson’s life affects their performance day in and
day out.”
I pestered Sol to teach me the art of selling. He was the best salesman in
the 23-store furniture retailing chain we worked for. Sol finally relented,
and we decided to go out for lunch. Once we sat down, he stated “Here are
the rules.” I soon found out that he was not referring to rules about
selling, but to the rules for our lunch! I remember thinking “What rules can
two salespeople possibly have for a simple meal? After all, are we not all
equals in this great bastion of democracy, the United States of America?”
I was equally unprepared for his next statement as well. “I don’t ever want
to hear anything negative out of you, ever, do you understand?” Although
truly shocked, I managed to reply, “Sol I’m not negative!” About a
millisecond later I heard the sharp response. “I know you. You are negative.
I don’t ever want to hear how slow it is or about a delivery problem or all
the time you spent with someone who just canceled, or even about how bad the
weather is. Do you understand?”
I remember thinking that within these brief 10 seconds, I just had my
citizenship revoked, and was being forced to defend both my state of mind
and even my personal integrity. So, I mustered all the strength that was
stored up in my champion’s ferocious heart and shot back, “OK.”
He then went on to say “Now I will tell you why I was so hard on you.
Winners only justify winning in their thinking. Underachievers only justify
why they didn’t or can’t succeed. Here’s what I mean. I am going to write
$5,000 today, do you know why? Because I got to work early, studied the
advertising, and checked stock on the advertised items. I then decided on
the natural step-ups for the major advertised items. So, when the first
customer came in, I was mentally prepared and ready to go! So how much are
you going to sell today, and why?”
I stumbled through the answer, “I am going to write $3,000 today because
when I get back to the store, I will study the advertising and practice my
pitch on the main items and even on their add-ons.”
“That’s it,” he replied. “Now you’ve got it!”
“Winners are 100 percent focused on thinking about winning. Underachievers
justify their failures. They get stuck on the reasons why they didn’t or
can’t succeed.” “When other salespeople distract you from your selling time
and mental focus, they appear to be friends, but they are actually your
enemies.”
Your Enemies are Your Friends
The next week it was time to go to lunch again. Once the waitress had taken
our order, he wasted no time stating “Your enemies are your friends, and
your friends are your enemies.” I felt like my brain was going through an
earthquake, but managed to get out “Sol what in the world could you possibly
be talking about?” Here is more of his “wisdom for the ages” that every
retail salesperson should know.
“When you are a commissioned salesperson it’s all about keeping your mind
focused on selling. That’s why you came to work, to sell a lot, right? So,
when other salespeople want to occupy both your time and mental focus, they
appear to be friends, at least conversationally. In reality, they are your
enemies because they prevent you from doing what you came to work for in the
first place. However, if other salespeople don’t like you well enough to
talk with you very much, they don’t interfere with your main objective, and
so they really are friends indeed!”
How to Live With Yourself!
It was only after the first two lunches that Sol would even begin to teach
me about the art of selling. I now understand why. It would have been a
complete waste of time to impart that further understanding unless I first
knew how to make proper use of my time, had the right mental focus and
learned how to be properly prepared for the start of each and every day.
The sales training he then imparted was no less impactful than the personal
success perspectives he taught me. After several months, he began our lunch
by telling me, “I’ve taught you how to go to the bank, now I have to teach
you how to live with yourself!”
My usual reply had now been committed to memory. I said, “Sol what could you
possibly be talking about?” He replied with additional wisdom. “Now that you
aren’t spending so much time socializing on the floor,” he explained, “and
are also making a lot more in commission, other salespeople will begin to
cause you problems. Many will now view you as being greedy and mistakenly
assume you are doing something a little shady. They will start complaining
to management that you are doing something wrong when you are not. You’ll
see.”
It was perhaps two weeks later that the entire sales team marched into the
manager’s office insisting that Sol and I, plus one more trusted salesperson
who had now joined our lunches, were tying up the floor by passing customers
to each other for sales splits. The accusation was totally false, but the
store manager, who brought all three of us into the office together,
asserted that “they can’t all be wrong.”
I came up with the only plausible defense I could think of. I asked the
manager to pull all our combined sales for the previous month as well as the
total dollar amount of split sales. He said that would take too much time. I
countered that his office staff had plenty of downtime, and besides I would
gladly pay for the time it took them to do it. He simply got up, walked out
of the room, and didn’t return.
The three of us decided to interview collectively with our direct competitor
just a few miles away. Word of it must have gotten back to our store
manager, and he then reluctantly conducted the audit. It revealed that our
combined total sales volume was less than two percent in splits between us.
We finally got a begrudging admission of error and decided to stay.
When I became a store manager a few years later, my sales manager and his
entire sales staff stormed into my office demanding that a new salesperson,
who was doing better than everyone else, be fired for shady practices. I had
hired the accused salesperson, knew his character well and had warned him
early on that such a thing might happen. One year later the sales manager
apologized. He told me that the salesperson he almost fired was the only
honest salesperson on the floor and that we came very close to losing our
best salesperson due to the pettiness of the rest of the team.
That incident proved to be a strong confirmation of the advice Sol had given
me years before. What kept echoing through my mind at that time were his
words—an awesome shadow cast by a great mentor— “Now I have to teach you to
live with yourself!”
A Parting Insight
It is my hope that you will share this article with your management team as
well as with your salespeople. Often the paradigms employed in developing
sales training programs overlook valuable and important real-life
instruction. We often learn best from real-world experiences that provide
valuable perspective in addition to just knowledge.
The importance of life success skills training to the salespeople you employ
should not be overlooked. However, the few persuasive examples presented in
this article are just the tip of the iceberg! It pays you well to remember:
the bigger the shadow that you cast, the less you will need to be walking
clueless and dejected salespeople out your door! Wishing you Happy Selling!