Your customers expect great service. Most come into your store or call your number with a question that needs answering right away. How your employees respond will affect what your customer does, whether they stay or go. Your staff doesn’t just need to be there to answer questions, but they have to be ready for them. To have employees who are on the ball, who can engage, overcome, and think on the fly requires experience. The question is: what do you want that experience to cost you?
Learning on the Fly
Many employers give their new staff a brief overview of their new job and then let them “learn on the fly”, letting them gain the experience they need by interacting with real customers and seeing to their needs. While this will produce a seasoned employee given enough time, there’s a steep cost: your customers.
When a customer’s questions and concerns are answered by blank looks, stammered apologies, or simply clueless shrugs, your best case scenario is that the inexperienced salesperson hands the now-annoyed customer off to a more experienced staff member or manager. Instead the customer might just leave, denying you a sale, or worst case, even give you a negative review to friends, family, or even on social media sites such as Google Reviews or Yelp, which could stain your reputation and further damage your bottom line.
Roleplaying
The answer to this “learning on the fly” predicament is to provide your employees with a client who not only doesn’t cost sales, but also call tell them what they did wrong. This client is yourself. You, or seasoned managers and staff, can guide your employees through the kinds of interactions that they will have with customers: from everyday questions to how to solve difficult cases. Unlike reading manuals or watching training videos, these roleplaying sessions not only provide the employee with interaction and feedback, but also tells you valuable information about your staff.
Doing Role Playing Right
The number one reason roleplaying won’t work is if people don’t take it seriously. Don’t joke or make funny characters: give them honest, normal customers for them to interact with, with questions about products you normally sell. Have both staff members try each role: letting the new staff member know how a veteran would have answered that question allows them to see how the pros do it. Roleplaying doesn’t just need to be done in the office, when you and your staff have time, you should also have impromptu one-on-ones on the sales floor. Role playing can also be a great tool to see if a staff member is ready for promotion: try giving them questions outside the scope of their current position.
If you’ve never role played before, the task can seem daunting or even silly. If you need help understanding how to properly do role playing, or what be looking for in such an exchange, contact us. We are a licensed Sandler Training Center that can provide training for those who want to improve their sales and management techniques through role playing, training, and coaching, and we’ll gladly answer any questions that you have.
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