Customer resistance
Featured in the Selling through Customer Service training manual
By Tony Gillen
Category: Sales Skills
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
This training activity is very much a workshop. It is informal, fast-paced and utilises participant experience and ideas to find ways that they can apply to change their own work environment and their own attitudes. By doing these things the workplace will have a different ‘feel’ about it. Stores, branches and offices that change for the better do more business. Customers’ resistance to buying – and being sold to – reduces. They become more receptive to ideas, advice and suggestions from salespeople. This training activity deals with how participants can address four issues – location, building design, housekeeping and their own attitudes – in order to improve customer receptiveness and so lower customer resistance.
The workshop begins with a syndicate to examine what it is that reduces customer receptiveness and increases resistance. This clarification acts as a platform for the rest of the activities. This is followed by a brainstorming session to look at ways of minimising the issues raised under location and building design – the two topics over which staff have least control. The session has two objectives: to show that there are ways to address such problems; and to provide participants with practice in brainstorming. A second brainstorming session follows to address the other two issues: housekeeping (tidiness, merchandising, and so on); and personal attitude. Participants then divide into syndicate groups to consider three housekeeping issues and to create a simple action plan to deal with them. The whole group considers the solutions and action plans. This is particularly valuable for team momentum if participants are also co-workers. This session is then followed by an individual look at their own attitudes. They answer the ‘five questions of performance’ and commit themselves to a personal action plan to improve the particular aspect of attitude they chose. The training activity ends with a brief review of the problems, solutions and personal actions to which the participants have committed.
Who is it for: This training activity is intended for use by trainers to enable participants to recognise that the wrong selling environment – unattractive displays, poor cleanliness, unwelcoming attitude, and so on – builds resistance in customers. Every salesperson is
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 6 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:00:00 |
| No of Pages: | 17 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training activity is intended for use by trainers with all customer-facing staff. It can act as a simple review for experienced and successful participants or it can focus inexperienced or unsuccessful participants on what they can do to encourage customer responsiveness, as well as to enjoy their own jobs more. It is a good activity for participants who all work in the same branch/unit since they can all become responsible for implementing their decisions.
Download the training activity, Customer resistance as featured in the Fenman training manual; Selling through Customer Service