Back by popular demand this holiday!  For your enjoyment during this wonderful time of the year, we want to give you some additional smiles. Is there anything sweeter than the innocence of a child's view on how the world runs? Their perspective and beliefs on subjects like customer service is so straightforward and simple. Children's thoughts are pure and non-complicated, and this is where the lesson comes in for the adults. 

As the holiday season approaches, it's so important to put a strong focus on sales techniques. Effectively communicating the holiday expectation with your team gets everyone on the same page. The National Retail Federation has reported there will be a continual and steady rise in consumer spending again this year. The best way for your business to take advantage of this increased spending is to be prepared. Here are three tips to improve your sales methods and make this holiday season the best ever. 

I was raised to care deeply about the lessons my parents instilled in me in regards to manners. They were completely inflexible about my saying "please" and "thank you."  It was expected that I would address adults with terms such as "Yes, sir," "Yes, ma'am," and "Mr." and "Mrs."  My mother also taught me how to write a proper thank you note, and to this day, I will still write three paragraphs, just like she taught me. So why do I mention all of this? Where have manners gone?  In the hospitality industry, one would think manners matter and would get the focus it deserves with people serving people. Yet, still, we are unpleasantly surprised with the poor manners displayed around us in the service industry. 

Qualifying is the blueprint of the sale and the foundation of the sales process, and yet what we find when sales people qualify is a hurried, non focused attempt. 

The act of qualifying the customer means you will ask questions to determine information about the customer's needs and expectations. 

Before one learns to walk, they have already witnessed many forms of negotiation. And, as we grow up we develop our own level of this skill called negotiating. What do you think of when you think of the word? Something like this? 

I personally don't think that the Customer Experience can be explored enough. One of the main reasons that ProSolutions re-branded in 2001 was because I could see that we were leaving important needs on the table. Companies saw us as one dimensional. In order for us to re-communicate our message of what we could do for our customers, we built new operational models that showed how we could influence all aspects of the Total Customer Experience. So often we would hear from our customers that they need us to "fix" their broken service and delivery. Ten out of ten times, based on our analysis, we would quickly determine that the broken service and delivery (customer experience) was a byproduct of the whole organization being fragmented. Meaning, in many organizations, the "whole" runs as individual department silos.