How?

Prevention is better than cure.  We have to prevent falling into the “not enough customers” trap. We have to prevent losing sales through the cracks through lack of following up on enquiries by phone or the website.

We have to qualify prospects – there are SO many new build homeowners needing significant assistance with planting and planning their new garden. We have to prevent poor customer experiences that lead to lack of repeat sales. We have to provide insights and expertise. Managers need to be coaching frontline retail staff and whoever takes incoming calls. Really basic sales stuff. Not rocket science.

There’s no getting away from preventative maintenance in sales in order to keep our sales results healthy. If we are not consistently (aka on-a-daily-basis) staying ahead of the curve in what is really just professional retail sales basics, we will end up in ICU in the quieter months trying to resuscitate old quotes where potential customers have just gone elsewhere. It’s very easy to ignore customers in peak garden centre season – and those lost sales will bite later in the year.