If you’re in the business of building shoes, things might be a little tough for you. As world markets expand, the amount of product available to everyone makes actually selling your product over everyone else’s a challenge. Where a cobbler used to make shoes one at a time with fine leather and a heart full of love, the process of building doesn’t look like it used to. People like the idea of a high quality shoe, but they don’t like paying the price that comes with it.
This has lead to an influx of businesses using cheap materials and labor to crank out product that may or may not be worth it’s weight in dollar bills. A person used to be able to own the same pair of shoes for their entire life, and today, they’re lucky if they last a couple of years.
In any case, business is business, and you as either a distributer or a maker of shoes are in it for the business of it. You simply give the customer what they want. In the end, all that matters is that you make shoes, you sell them, and you turn a profit. If you’re in the business of selling shoes, here are the secrets you need to know to sell more:
Offer Complementary Sizing
It’s likely that when a woman comes strutting into your establishment looking for shoes, she’s going to know her foot size. She’s going to know every nuance of her feet, because she’s a woman. She notices these things. She knows if one foot is bigger or wider than the other. Men, on the other hand think in much simpler terms. If you want to increase your sales of shoes, you need to be offering complimentary sizing on all of your customers.
When you make this standard within your company or across all of your stores, you create a precedent and you’re more likely to give somebody a product that they won’t return. Many people have an idea of their size, but all shoes fit differently and when you approach sales with the idea that not one size fits all, you’ll sell more because your product will actually fit people.
Appeal to the Senses
Everybody has different taste, so it’s important that you capitalize on that. One person might be all about the look, another might be all about the comfort. Whether you’re making shoes and selling them to retailers, or you’re managing a shoe store, teach your sales team to appeal to the senses when they’re talking shoes with customers.
What’s the customers favorite color? What’s their favorite brand? How do they want to feel when they’re wearing their shoes? When you capitalize on the emotions of individuals, they’re more likely to buy. That’s sales training 101.