Making the best impression on your customers is critical to your ongoing success in retail technology sales. Your sales associates represent the front line in your interactions with customers. The impression made by these staff members can have a lasting effect on visitors to your stores.

Hiring the right sales associates isn’t an easy task at times, but there are some key characteristics and attributes found among the most successful retail associates.

Here are four characteristics exhibited by some of the most successful retail technology sales associates.

Posted: 3/10/17

The rising costs of finding, attracting, and converting new customers, makes customer retention a priority for businesses of all sizes. In fact, research shows that 65% of a company's business comes from existing customers. 

Implementing a strategy for customer retention helps businesses avoid acquisition costs and allows leaders to focus on what they know the best and how to serve their customers better.

Managers and sales associates will have better knowledge regarding what the customer is looking for, what their needs are, and what type of service and experience they expect when shopping.

Posted: 3/2/17

The customer experience has received a great deal of retail industry attention over the past few years particularly as it relates to brick-and-mortar stores competing with online vendors. Creating an environment that is appealing to customers can attract repeat business and added foot traffic for your stores. 

One sometimes overlooked component of the right customer experience is the role of the sales associate.

Making sure that your sales associates are equipped with the training and information they need to succeed in the retail environment can be a solid first step toward providing a superior experience for all your customers. 

Posted: 2/24/17

The right peripherals, connectors, and accessories can make or break a tech setup for your customers. Helping your sales staff to recommend the best choices and add-ons for computer devices, gaming systems, virtual reality (VR) devices, and other high-tech items creates the best buying experiences for customers in your store. 

By providing your sales staff with the tools and technologies they need to make a positive impression on your customers, you can enhance your store’s reputation as a leading source for information on new technologies and a superior choice for computer device and technology purchases.

Here are some of the most effective ways to encourage and enable upselling and cross-selling among your sales associates.

Posted: 2/15/17

Brick-and-mortar retail businesses are re-inventing themselves to compete with online retailers through new digital technologies. These are enabling new techniques for customer engagement such as tracking/analytics and multi-channel customer support.

As physical shops adapt to an increasingly mobile, plugged-in, knowledgeable customer base, they use these technologies to focus on providing a responsive shopping experience exceeding customer expectations.

Posted: 2/6/17

Online shopping is constantly on the rise. In fact, a report from Forrester* predicts a 9.32% average annual increase of online sales until 2020. 

For brick-and-mortar stores, this can mean losing sales because customers are choosing more cost-effective items or shopping around on different Websites. 

Here are seven tips to attract customers from online to in-store. 

Posted: 1/20/17

Millennials are keen on technology, filled with confidence, and require a different employee engagement method than those used with earlier generations. 

Many companies report a tendency for Millennials to job-hop, which could diminish your sales team's productivity and increase recruiting and training expenses. Therefore, it’s critical that sales managers understand how to motivate and retain Millennial staff in order to benefit from this uniquely valuable pool of talent.

Posted: 1/12/17

Developing an in-depth understanding of your customer base can help your store achieve higher sales and increased profitability in the highly competitive world of consumer technologies. 

While it may not be possible to read the minds of your customers, their body language cues can provide you and your sales staff with valuable insights into their likely attitudes and thought processes regarding the products and services you provide. 

Posted: 1/6/17

The Holiday season is at full tilt with shoppers on the hunt for the latest tech devices. Sales associates are at full tilt dealing with multiple customers at once, asking them questions in order to recommend the right devices, and striving to reach the goals you’ve set for them during this period of time.

How about you? How are you faring? If you’re like most retail managers, this time of year in particular finds you being pulled—at full tilt— in a million different directions as you strive to keep your sales team motivated, your customers satisfied, and your corporate headquarters happy. 

Posted: 12/22/16

In recent years, another major shopping day during the Holiday season has emerged. Say hello to Super Saturday which is defined as the Saturday immediately preceding December 25. 

Super Saturday has become a focal point for many retailers as they look to capture more revenue by catering to last-minute shoppers who are in time crunches to find the perfect gifts.

This year presents a unique situation for Super Saturday as it falls on Christmas Eve. Because of this, some retailers are also preparing for Super Saturday shoppers on December 17.

Have you finalized your strategy for Super Saturday? Here are some tactics that can help you grab your fair share of traffic and sales of Super Saturday shoppers.

Posted: 12/12/16