Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 856, Training Salespeople.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, episode 856.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
This episode is, like all of our episodes, one that has a learning guide.
You can find that guide at ESLPOD.com.
Today we're going to talk about training salespeople, people who, well, sell things.
Let's get started.
Our company brought in a consultant to do sales training for our store.
My job in this training is to help your store improve its customer satisfaction so that it can attract and retain more customers.
When you interact with customers, you represent the store.
It is very important that, from the get-go, customers are greeted in a friendly and positive way.
Sometimes people are really rude.
They don't even say hello back.
That may be true, but it's still your job to make them feel welcomed.
Each customer should feel that a salesperson is attentive and trying to meet their needs.
Some of them don't even know what they want.
They wander around and waste our time.
Part of your job is to help them define their needs, offer them options and lead them to a decision.
I know that you're not working on commission, but this is a very important part of your job.
You mean I have to hold their hand the whole time they're in the store?
Who am I?
Their mother?
I can see that we have a lot of work to do.
Let's get started.
Our story begins with an employee of a certain company telling us that his company brought in a consultant to do sales training for our store.
A consultant C-O-N-S-U-L-T-A-N-T is a person that a or often to provide help to employees, permanent employees of a company.
The consultant only works typically for a short amount of time.
Maybe a company needs someone to help them with accounting, or maybe they need someone to help them, as in the case of our story, with selling and helping their salespeople sell better.
That's what this consultant did.
She came in to do sales training to help the salespeople, the salesmen and saleswomen sell better.
For some reason, we've been getting some complaints from customers.
Complaints, C-O-M-P-L-A-I-N-T-S. are when people say they don't like what you are doing.
Often they are saying that things are not as good as they should be.
This shirt is too small.
It's too cold in here.
This food tastes horrible.
Those would all be complaints in different areas to different kinds of companies.
To complain is the verb.
Well, this company, this store has been getting complaints from customers, people who buy things.
The consultant begins by saying my job, or my task is to help your store improve its customer satisfaction.
Satisfaction is a measure of how well you like something.
So customer satisfaction would be how much the people who buy from your store like what they're getting, like the experience of buying in your store, and so forth.
The consultant is doing this so that the store can attract and retain more customers.
To attract means to get more.
To retain, R-E-T-A-I-N, means to keep them.
So in any sort of business where you sell something first you have to get people to buy something from you once.
And the idea is you want to keep them coming back and buying from you again and again.
That's to retain a customer.
The consultant says, when you interact with customers, you represent this store.
To interact I-N-T-E-R-A-C-T is to have some sort of communication with another person or some other sort of exchange of information.
Talking to someone would be an interaction, to use the noun.
I am interacting with the customer.
We use this term as an adjective interactive, to mean something that you can do on a computer or on an electrical device like a tablet or a phone, a smartphone.
That allows you not just to get information but to give information back to whoever designed that particular program.
So interact has a couple of different meanings including, as I said, one that is now related to an adjective interactive in dealing with software, computer software.
Moving on here, the consultant says that when you interact with customers, you represent this store.
People see you as someone who is speaking for and acting on behalf of that organization.
So when you walk into a store and the person, the salesperson, isn't very nice to you, you get a bad idea, a bad impression about that store.
The salesperson represents the store.
The store is represented by you. its salespeople.
The consultant continues it is very important that from the get-go, customers are greeted in a friendly and positive way.
The expression from the get-go means from the very beginning, from the very first moment.
I knew that It's a somewhat informal expression, perhaps not quite as common as it was a few years ago.
In any case, the consultant says that it is very important that from the get-go, customers are greeted in a friendly and positive way.
To be greeted means to have someone say hello to you.
To greet is to say hello to make another person feel welcome.
Many times when you walk into a store in the United States, there'll be someone working for the store standing in the doorway or towards the front of the store to welcome you into the store.
Hello, thank you for coming.
Can I help you with anything?
That would be someone greeting you.
To greet can also just mean to say hello.
I greeted my friend when I saw her, So the employee is already sort of doubting the consultant's advice.
He says sometimes people are really rude.
To be rude, R-U-D-E, means not nice, not kind, to be mean, to be impolite.
They don't even say hello back, meaning you say hello to them, but they don't say hello to you.
That's what the word back means here, in return, in response to you.
The consultant says that may be true.
Maybe you're right.
But it's still your job to make them feel welcomed.
That is, make them feel like you're happy they are there.
Each customer should feel that a salesperson...
To be attentive, A-T-T-E-N-T-I-V-E, means to give your full attention or full focus to something, to be paying attention.
A waiter in a restaurant who is attentive, is always checking back to make sure if you need anything, is always making sure you have enough water or enough soda or enough whatever it is that you're drinking beer wine, whiskey.
You get the idea.
The consultant says that a salesperson is attentive and tries to meet the customer's needs.
To meet someone's needs is to do what that person needs or expects.
The employee says some of them, meaning some of the customers, don't even know what they want.
They wander around and waste our time.
To wander W-A-N-D-E-R around means to walk around slowly through an area without any clear purpose, without any goal.
You're not quite sure what you're doing.
You're just kind of walking.
You're wandering or wandering around.
The employee is complaining that some people come into the store and they wander around and they don't really know what they want.
The consultant says part of your job is to help them define their needs.
To define, D-E-F-I-N-E, can mean to give the meaning of a word.
Here however, it means to identify, to describe something to, we might say clarify, to make clear what that person might want or, in this case, what they might need.
So the consultant says that part of your job is to help them define their needs, offer them options, choices and lead them to a decision.
To be working on commission means that you get a percentage of everything you sell.
In some stores, especially those that sell expensive things, the salesperson will get a small percentage of every sale.
This, of course, gives them a motivation, a good reason for wanting to do a good job.
In other stores.
The salesperson doesn't get any commission and often, when that happens, the salesperson doesn't do a very good job.
The employee, who's obviously not a very good salesperson, says, you mean...
Do you mean I have to hold their hand the whole time they're in the store?
To hold someone's hand here means to help them and to guide them every step of the way giving them advice, giving them encouragement, telling them how good something looks on them, to be paying attention to them the whole time.
The employee says, you mean I have to hold their hand the whole time they're in the store?
Who am I, their mother?
The employee is making a joke saying, well, I'm not their mother.
I don't have to pay attention to them and hold their hand walking around the store.
When we say to hold their hand, we don't mean you actually hold their hand with your hand.
We mean to pay attention, to pay close attention to them.
The consultant says, I can see that we have a lot of work to do.
This expression means that there are a lot of problems here, as demonstrated by the responses of this employee, this salesperson.
So they have a lot of work to do, a lot of changes to make.
Let's get started.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Our company brought in a consultant to do sales training for our store.
For some reason, we've been getting some complaints from customers.
My job in this training is to help your store improve its customer satisfaction so that it can attract and retain more customers.
When you interact with customers, you represent the store.
It is very important that from the get-go, customers are greeted in a friendly and positive way.
That may be true, but it's still your job to make them feel welcomed.
Each customer should feel that a salesperson is attentive and trying to meet their needs.
Some of them don't even know what they want.
They wander around and waste our time.
Part of your job is to help them define their needs, offer them options and lead them to a decision.
I know that you're not working on commission, but this is a very important part of your job.
You mean I have to hold their hand the whole time they're in the store?
Who am I, their mother?
I can see we have a lot of work to do.
Let's get started.
She's always trying to meet your needs as a learner of English.
I speak, of course, of our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
ESL Podcast English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
