The sales process

1. First contact: an advert, the website, the shop window or a phone call creates interest and sets the customer's first impression of the business.
2. Finding out what the customer needs: staff ask about budget, use and preferences, so they are solving the customer's problem rather than guessing at it.
3. Advising and demonstrating: the product is matched to those needs and shown working, and any doubts the customer still has are answered.
4. Closing the sale: price and terms are agreed, payment is taken, and delivery, credit or fitting is arranged clearly enough that nothing surprises the customer later.
5. After the sale: delivery, installation, training, support and putting problems right decide whether this customer ever buys from the business again.
6. Service runs through every stage and the customer can drop out at any of them, so a poor greeting loses a sale the product itself would have won.

Why good service matters to the business

1. It completes sales that would otherwise be lost. A customer who cannot get an answer, or who waits too long to be served, leaves having bought nothing.
2. It brings customers back. Repeat purchases are the cheapest sales a business can make, because it does not have to advertise to win the same person twice.
3. It cuts the cost of putting things right. Getting the sale right first time means fewer refunds, fewer returned goods and fewer staff hours spent on complaints.
4. It builds a reputation that works before the customer arrives. Recommendations and reviews bring in people who already expect to be looked after, so the selling starts from a position of trust.

Competing on service rather than on price

1. Where rivals sell a near-identical product, service is often the only thing left to compete on. Two banks offer much the same current account and two merchants stock the same timber, so how the customer is treated becomes the reason to pick one.
2. The alternative is cutting the price, which takes money off every single sale and which a rival can copy by the next morning.
3. Service is harder to copy, because it rests on training, staffing levels and the way the business is run rather than on one decision about a price label.
4. Service can even support a higher price, since customers will pay more for expert advice and for knowing a problem will be sorted out.
   1. This matters most on expensive or complicated purchases, such as a kitchen or a hearing aid, where the customer is frightened of choosing wrongly.

Analysing the techniques a business uses

1. Analysing a technique means following it through to an effect on sales, costs or reputation, instead of stopping once you have named it.
2. Product knowledge: trained staff give advice that fits, the customer buys the right item first time, fewer goods come back, and the customer trusts the shop with the next purchase.
3. Customer engagement: a customer who feels listened to stays longer and takes the suggested extra item, so the average amount spent per visit rises.
4. Post-sales service: a fault put right without an argument means the customer buys their next appliance from the same shop rather than a rival, so one repair protects years of sales.