Kitchen, bathroom and bedroom retailers are lagging behind other big-ticket consumer markets in their sales systems and processes, says retail analyst Nick Drake-Knight...  

Compared with high-street operators and the automotive industry, many KBB retail employees follow poor sales processes and suffer from inadequate staff development.

Sales professionalism in the sector is patchy. Procedures are often clumsy and difficult for sales staff to follow. Customer-facing employees are on a hiding to nothing, especially when training and coaching is ineffective.

In the past nine years, I've watched thousands of video mystery shopping clips. There's definitely a spectrum of sales capability in the KBB sector from woeful through to highly professional. The highly professional examples have been rare.

I would propose a complete rethink of sales process management and a look outside the industry to identify selling patterns that connect. I would suggest that the automotive sector and high-street retail offer useful examples.

Mobile phone retailers are fabulous at introducing and sustaining sales processes. The best retailer segments are always reviewing the effectiveness of their selling methods - and keeping them alive with local coaching. The car market in particular has taken a serious look at itself over the past 12 months resulting in an honest appraisal of its selling competencies.

Car dealer groups have found that although their sales processes have been pretty well structured, behavioural compliance and sustainability coaching has been inconsistent. In other words, the processes were good; it's just that sales execs did not always follow them.

Car makers have a strong influence on dealership sales processes, which includes emphasis on a structured sales model and the need for data retention and follow-up.

Follow-up was shockingly bad. The automotive world has woken up and is working hard to gather contact data and then use it. When a potentially valuable prospect leaves the showroom, it is impossible to follow up unless you obtain decent contact data.

Shifting consumer behaviour is a driver for change, as well as market conditions. With fewer customers providing lower footfall across the retail market-place, each store visitor becomes more precious.   

The good news is that big-ticket consumers are conducting much of their preliminary buying research online. When a prospective customer enters the showroom, they are much closer to the buying decision than in the past. In fact, many of the businesses I work with report that prospects often know more about product features than their sales staff.

Some big-ticket retailers are already instigating change, revisiting stale sales processes and thinking through how a revitalised professional approach can help consumers and, as a result, their willingness to buy.

What about training?
Of course, training is important. But it's equally important to support employees by revisiting their learning through regular on-the-job coaching. It's about sustainability - maintaining the momentum of sales training every day on the sales floor.

Most sales training is like wet mud on the wall - most of it slides off before the trainee has even left the training room. Sustainability through coaching is vital.

For any big-ticket retailer the starting point, logically, is the creation of an explicit set of standards that people can relate to, that they believe could be achievable, and can incorporate into their daily working lives. Make standards simple, meaningful and relevant and then train your sales colleagues to deliver them.

Of course, they'll need the tools to do the job, and that might mean resource investment. Combine this with a local coaching capability and you have the building blocks for a selling model that will improve sales performance across your organisation - consistently and with sustainability.

By creating an internal coaching capability, class-leading consumer-oriented organisations ensure sales excellence is sustained. My guidance is to follow in the footsteps of acknowledged class-leaders and apply them to your operation:

• Decide on your sales standards and make them explicit
• Create coaching capabilities within your organisation, and a culture that promotes coaching
• Train your people in the skills they need to succeed as sales professionals
• Maintain post-training performance outputs through regular coaching by local managers
• Sit back and enjoy the benefits of consistent and sustained sales excellence.

I truly believe better times are ahead. Kitchen, bedroom and bathroom retailers have a bright future, even in a reduced market, if they clear out their old sales processes and have a proper think about what's really necessary, and how sales staff can be supported after their training. Sustainability of performance is the secret and that can lead to sustainability of turnover.

Nick Drake-Knight is the founder of sales consultancy NDK Group

Case study: B&Q

How DIY chain B&Q realised it was failing to engage with customers and set about putting that right...

Mike Hawes, director of organisational development at B&Q, believes a fresh look at sales professionalism adds real value.

"At B&Q, we recognised that our sales performance was being seriously compromised by our failure to engage with the customer and match up their KBB requirements with our products and services in a really professional way.

It was clear we left far too much of this to chance because we weren't clear with our consultants on the absolute, explicit, non-negotiable selling standards that we and, most importantly, our customers expected.
We went about training with our new simple, five-step selling model. We'd under-invested in training our managers in the past and fell into the classic trap of not building up the consistency and sustainability of our approach.

With our newly-adopted model, the standard of sales coaching is of primary importance. It's great to have better-performing sales consultants, but we've become more demanding and expect now - and are seeing - really excellent sales management, which is crucial to growing B&Q's KBB business.

The key thing is to have an effective and simple-to-follow selling model, supported by in-store coaching to keep training alive.

Sales processes in kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms vary from non-existent to overly detailed and complex. People have limited capacity to recall 'selling steps' when faced with a prospective customer. So keep it short and logical. You can always add extra skills once the basics have become habit."