The following is an excerpt from The 7 Keys to Marketing Genius by Michael Daehn

Poor personal selling tends to be a weak link for many companies. You can do all the advertising and promotion in the world, but it will not matter if your potential customers and customers are not treated well by the salespeople. This is called providing good customer service. The term is a misnomer for many businesses; in fact a consumer advocate has labeled these the “customer no-service departments” of companies. Often the promotions can create expectations that the sales staff are not prepared to meet.

When I worked for the nutrition store GNC, they did extensive advertising. They ran numerous television ads and had several beautiful full-color ads in all the exercise magazines. They had to be spending several million dollars per year on these ads. At the store level, we were paid minimum wage with no commission, but we did receive occasional SPIFs (see definition above). I knew nothing about vitamins and health products when I started, and was looking forward to learning about them on the job. GNC did have a training program, but in my case I received no training from my manager. I like to learn new things on my own so I was motivated to learn about all of the health products. I studied the books in the store and read all the labels on the packaging. I would ask customers questions such as “What are you using this product for? Is it working well for you? Have you tried the GNC brand?” I was able to get into the minds of my customers. I learned a great deal of good information by surveying people on what worked and what did not. I also tried all the popular products to see what worked for me. I was then able to make recommendations to customers based on personal experience.

I did a good job at GNC and the customers liked me. I was praised for selling the most “gold cards” (a frequent customer discount card) on a regular basis. I was very knowledgeable about the product because I was personally motivated to learn. On the other hand, I had a coworker that had been there before I started but knew very little about the product, did not like health foods, did not interact with customers, and sold items that would get him a SPIF even if it was not a good match for the customer. If you owned this store, which employee would you rather have wait on your customers? As a customer, which of us would you prefer to wait on you? While I enjoyed working at GNC, I had to leave to get a better paying job.

Continue Reading for Free