When you imagine a salesperson, you mostly think of a smooth talker who is quick to answer questions. And within minutes, customers are entirely sold out on the product.
However, the best salesperson isn’t always a good communicator. They are effective listeners and don’t ignore the customer’s needs. Their ultimate goal is to solve the customer’s problem by selling parts and accessories that they can use.
But like any other job position, even naturally adept salespeople need to improve their skills through constant sales training.
Here is how you can educate and develop your sales team to earn more revenue.
1. Give Them Product Knowledge
Product knowledge gives salespeople a complete understanding of the products they will be selling. Why is it important?
Because your sales staff needs to understand the benefits and features from the customer’s viewpoint. For instance, a customer comes into your repair shop. They ask for a motherboard replacement for their computer.
Your salesperson begins to show different options to the customer that are compatible with their PC. The customer then asks whether the motherboard has expansion card slots. If your salesperson wants to score a sale, they need to make a quick and informed response.
Hence, give your salesperson a comprehensive understanding of the product to answer confidently in front of the customer. Only then can they solve the customer’s problem quickly.
Make sure you provide every salesperson the following types of product knowledge:
- What is the price and ROI of the product or accessory?
- Can you customize the part or accessory according to the customer’s needs?
- What are the best ways to use the part or accessory?
- What are the technical features of the part or accessory?
2. Build Rapport With The Customer
The ideal time to build a rapport with the customer is when they come into your store for a repair and you are running a pre-repair checklist through your computer repair management software. This is the time to try out some customer befriending techniques.
Ask them how their day was because it will help shape up a positive dialogue. Such an open conversation will not only build a rapport with the customer but will also increase the chance of a sale. And it will also make the customer comfortable.
Making them comfortable is essential because they might be coming to your repair store for the first time. And for that they need to develop a comfort level to purchase products or services. It is especially important in the current timeframe because COVID has made people feel unsafe.
Also, customers purchase from people they trust. Make sure your sales staff takes a genuine interest in the customer so that they start trusting them. And it goes beyond what they are coming in the repair shop for. The customer needs to know that the salesperson is not chasing a sale and genuinely wants to help them. Only then will they listen to the salesperson’s advice and might act on it too.
Train your salesperson to imagine themselves in the customer’s shoes and try to act how they want them to be treated.
3. Incentivize Your Sales Staff
The sales staff is driven by incentives more than any other employee. For that, give a progressive commissions structure on the sale of cell phone and computer parts and accessories.
For example, let’s consider accessory sales. You can give them $2 per sale if they achieve a target of 9 sales in a week. If they get 10 sales, they will get $3 per sale in a week. As soon as they reach 20 sales in a week, they will get $4 per sale.
This strategy will allow sales staff to earn commissions based on their performance. The bigger the incentive, the more willing they will be to go the extra mile.
In addition to this, you can also have a badge system. The badges can have four distinct levels of recognition, starting from bronze to platinum. So, for example, you can award your sales staff badges according to their performance, and the people with the platinum badge will get more commission. Let’s say a salesperson maintains the platinum badge for straight 2 weeks. You can give them a bonus for their exceptional performance.
4. Train to Sell Accessories Before Device Launch
Teach your sales staff to sell accessories of devices that are yet to be launched. New devices get launched every year, and people eventually trade in their devices for newer ones.
For instance, a customer comes into your repair shop to get their iPhone 10’s speaker cleaned. The salesperson suggests tempered glass. But the customer declines the offer because they will be upgrading to iPhone 12. Now, if you already have accessories of iPhone 12 on your cell phone repair shop software inventory, your salesperson can offer that to the customer.
Here teach them to instill the need in the customer to get the accessories beforehand. So that once the device is out, they will already have its accessories in hand. Thus, saving them another trip to the repair store.
5. Have Weekly Huddles
If you want your sales staff marching to the beat of the same drum, have weekly huddles. Make the weekly huddles consistent and packed with information to help your sales staff score more sales.
If you own multiple stores or plan on opening new locations, facilitate cross-center information sharing and collaboration. So, launch learning circles for your sales staff and store managers. These peer-led small mentor rings can either meet weekly or monthly to discuss strategies to increase sales revenue.
Also, include a discussion session in these huddles where sales staff can share their good and bad customer’s experiences with everyone. Then, go over those scenarios together as a team and develop ways to deal with those situations. These discussions will prepare your sales team for similar problems in the future, and they would instantly know how to act on it.
6. Make Your Prices Easier To Understand And Support
Make your sales staff understand your prices while drawing a comparison between the prices offered by competitors. If you don’t adopt this strategy, your sales staff will think that your prices are too much for their good customers.
Tell them why you have set prices this way. The correct answer should be around your repair store’s pricing strategy. And how it is developed to consider your repair store’s objectives, value to customers, product costs, and how it compares to the value given by competitors. To inspire sales staff to support and champion your price strategy, explain your prices.
Remember, your sales staff needs to truly believe in the product in order to sell it proficiently.
7. Train Your Team To Spot New Sales Opportunities
Train your sales staff to be on the lookout for new sales opportunities. It’s called “Lead Spotting.” Teach them the following:
- What signals hint at a good sales opportunity?
- Which situations best solve for a prospect?
- Which clues indicate need, urgency, and budget?
- What are a few simple probing questions that can help score a sale?
Once they know all these strategies, they will be able to convert sales better.
8. Help Sales Staff Identify Negotiation Tactics
Make your sales staff prepared to communicate price and value actively. A good salesperson can articulate the value of the product and stand firm on the price. But there are some cases when the customer is reluctant to give the asked price. What can they do in that situation?
Train your sales staff to give minor value adjustments that can be a crucial tool during customer interaction. If a customer wants a lower price item, remove something of value.
For instance, a salesperson sells tempered glass to a customer, and the customer is not willing to pay that much. Then, your salesperson can show them different qualities of tempered glass instead of only showing the best quality. In this way, the customer can get the one that fits their requirement and budget.
If your salesperson remains firm on high-quality tempered glass, they might lose a sale. So, teach them to be flexible according to the needs and budget of the customer.
Without a process in place, your sales staff may react in ways that may affect revenue, profits, or both. But with good planning, analysis, and tactics, your sales staff can protect both.
The Learning Never Stops!
The sales training never really ends.
There are always new tricks, new objections to overcome, and new issues to address. So, your sales team needs to come up to speed with market trends and changing customer perspectives. For that, you need to have frequent sales training. If in-person sales training is not possible, you can update documents on your cell phone repair shop software that everyone can access.
Hence, it will allow your team to go through reading material to polish their sales techniques.
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