In Training: Show Me, Show Me

November 30, 2008  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on December 2008 A couple of years ago my son went mountain biking on the Slickrock Trail in Moab, Utah, with his scout troop. He was so excited to return and tell us about his new favorite sport. Furthermore, he was adamant that I buy a mountain bike and take up the sport with him. Over the course of the next several weeks he told me about the technique he used to keep himself upright and in control while descending the treacherously steep hills of Slickrock. “You have to keep your behind way over the rear tire,” he told me. I tried riding down our front steps. It was harder than it sounded, and I crashed on several attempts. After I had received enough scrapes and bruises, I did something exceptionally smart. I asked my son to show me exactly how he did it. Hey, it worked! I was finally able to ride the bike down our hard steps and, eventually, the steep trails of Slickrock.

We all want to be shown how to do new things. Whether we want to learn to mountain bike, divide fractions or sell furniture, we need someone to demonstrate the new skill to us. Demonstration is an important part of successful teaching, and it is especially important when teaching a complex skill like selling. Lecturing alone is just not enough.

Here are four simple and effective ways you can use demonstration to make sure that your sales associates learn the important skills they need to sell more furniture.

1. Role play: When you incorporate role-playing activities in your training, be sure that as the resident sales expert, you are the first to do the demonstrating. Sometimes, in an effort to involve all their students, teachers only have the students participate in role playing. Be sure that you don’t fall into that trap. Your associates need the chance to watch the expert.

2. Give lots of examples: Make sue that you give lots of examples of the skills you are trying to teach. Enact the same scenario multiple times, and vary your responses. For example, if you were teaching effective greetings to your associates, in your first example you might say, “That is a beautiful sweater you’re wearing.” The next time you might say, “Hello, my name is Mike Petersen; I am a sales associate here at Petersen’s Furniture Store. And you are ...?” Your third and final example might be, “Hello, My name is Mike Petersen. I am a sales associate here at Petersen’s Furniture Store. What brings you in on such a beautiful day?”

3. Write it down: Sometimes you don’t have enough time to show all the examples you would like. Go ahead and write a few of your most successful approaches and pass them on to your associates. Ask them to keep the paper in their pocket to review the examples between ups.

4. Video the best: Once you are confident that you have some excellent skills that your associates should see, make a video recording for them to refer to. Encourage your associates to watch it whenever they need to review an expert in action.

Most of the skills we acquire come as we watch what successful people do. We need excellent examples from which we can pattern our own behaviors. Make sure your sales associates have the opportunity to see the behaviors that you expect of them multiple times. As they are shown appropriate examples, their own sales skills will improve, and they will increase their sales. HFB

Mike Petersen is vice president of The Furniture Training Co. He can be reached at mikep@furnituretrainingcompany.com