Category Archives: Selling

Dispatch from Milan: MIDO 2013

March 4, 2013 By in Selling, Strategy Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Hello from Milan. It is the third and last day of the Mido show and I have had plenty of time to reflect on my thoughts.  Last year I wrote about the importance of trend/boutique/luxe product.  I still stand by this important message and I can report again that the ONLY busy pavilion here at Mido is the trend section.

This year, what I noticed (in addition to the need to have a boutique/luxe strategy) is the incredible CHOICE that is now available to all ECPs.  There must be more than a hundred booths showcasing luxe or boutique product and half of them seem to be new this year.  This fact alone should convince all ECPs of the need to look at this segment of the market and to begin to develop a strategy for this kind of product.  While most pavilions and booths seem to be less exciting and losing energy, the trend pavilion is busy.

languages 2And that’s my second observation. In year’s past I heard English, Italian, French, and German in the trend pavilion.  Now I am hearing Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Portuguese, Hindi, and many other languages.  Every good retailer and distributor around the world is beginning to seek out new product they want to support for 2013 and beyond.

This year I personally met new people from Jordan, Libya, Turkey, Morocco, Peru, India, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile. EVERY market around the world is catching on to this trend of boutique and luxe product.  Everyone is looking to stand out from the crowded market place of popular price brands that can be found everywhere.

I urge any ECP looking to build an optical practice to think about this phenomenon and begin to develop your own point of view and your own boutique/luxe strategy.

Vision Expo East is around the corner - a perfect time to begin your strategy!

 

Education IS a Selling Strategy

August 22, 2012 By in Selling, Strategy Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I have posed some questions and shared some important research and articles. Now it is time to dive in and talk about actual tips to enhance the selling experience and make sure you have the tools to sell luxury eyewear.  Every tool and tip I discuss will have one ultimate goal – to make a connection with your patient and thus give you the ability to sell higher priced, luxury eyewear.

 Tip #1:  Educate, Educate, Educate

Education is a big theme throughout my writings and speeches (and of course with my own internal team).  We all have new things to learn and we should be learning something new almost every day.  Education does not end when we leave school or graduate. It continues forever and if we are not learning or educating at retail, we will be left behind by the stores/practices that focus on this every day.

Education tips to consider when developing your strategy:

  • Work with your staff and patients ONE on ONE as much as possible.  Individual attention is the best form of education.  For what it is worth, I always did better in school in the classes where the teacher paid individual attention and I did not feel like a “number/name” in a large room.
  • Keep on training the staff: Have weekly meetings, lunches, breakfasts.  Make it fun, have some contests. Write up silly quizzes and give out even sillier prizes.  The more the staff knows about ALL the product lines, the more you will sell.  And the more everyone knows about the luxury collections, the more you will increase your average retail selling price.
  • Invite your sales representatives as often as you can:  No matter how much you teach and study, you still have 10+ collections to think about and sell.  No one knows the details on products better than the company selling them.  See point 2 above and invite your sales representative to do as much training as you want.  Trust me – they will happily come in and do it (and if not, stop carrying the collection).
  • Pay attention to the details: Training is one thing.  The details are another.  When selling any luxury product, the consumer wants to know details.  They want to know why a specific product is special, why it costs more than the “popular price” frame on the board.  The devil is in the details!
  • Make learning easy:  Develop small bullet point reminders about collections.  Key in on features and benefits that make a collection or an item special.  If you do not have time or need help, ask your sales representatives to do this for you.  But do something.  And again, make it FUN.
  • Share: Last but not least — make sure to share all of this with your patients.  Remember – they want to be educated – not sold.


Education is the building block.  With the right focus on teaching and training, you will soon find it easier and easier to sell higher priced, luxury products. And you will develop a long-lasting connection with your patients.

Motivating a Sales Team

July 19, 2012 By in Motivation, Selling Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Since I last posted the Knicks allowed Jeremy Lin to go to Houston.  So here is my quick rant before we get back to biz:  to my beloved Knicks – how could you?  So it would have cost $50 million in 3 years – which is utterly ridiculous (what sports salary isn’t?)…  So maybe his brief magic last season was not going to be repeated…  So maybe after knee surgery he was untested… But we were there!  The Garden was ELECTRIC!  We hadn’t seen it like that since Starks dunked over Michael in the playoffs.  Every kid was wearing #17.  He was throwing alley-oops to Chandler.  It was FUN.  Far better writers than I have said it all this week.  Linsanity is over.  We will still watch and the Garden will be full… but it won’t be the same since we will all be watching the scoreboard and emotionally rooting for Houston.   Bring us back Charles Oakley.  That’s the only thing to make it better.

Now back to biz:

In the last post I shared some great HBR articles focused on smarter selling.  Today I wanted to share some related articles from HBR on motivating a sales team.  Again – these articles were written with a B2B focus but I think they ALL apply to traditional retail where you are with consumers.  Enjoy the reading:

Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works – The “ago-old” theory that money is the only motivation for an entire team of different individuals/personalities may not work in the new economy.  Read this article to see why.

Do Bonuses Enhance Sales Productivity? A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Bonus- Based Compensation Plans – This article dives deep into HOW to structure compensation.

A Radical Prescription for Sales -  Are commission based incentive plans still the best way to compensate a sales team?  Read here and you may learn a different perspective.

The Dirty Secret of Effective Sales Coaching – This article tells us to focus on “the middle”.  We may not effectively be able to coach our best and worst performers, so instead we should focus on the middle where we can have the most impact.  Very interesting concept.

Cultural Change that Sticks – I often talk about creating the right environment for your team.  This article focuses on the importance of company culture and culture affects overall sales performance.

Smarter Selling

July 11, 2012 By in Selling, Strategy Tags: , , , Leave a comment

We are back after a great July 4th!  I hope everyone was able to enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

Last week I received the most recent edition of the Harvard Business Review.  The cover article and the theme of the issue was “Smarter Selling”.  How timely for me as I have lately been focused on the strategy of selling.  I thought it would be nice to share my favorite articles and a brief analysis/intro with everyone.

The articles below cover a cross-section of all aspects of selling with a little marketing thrown in. While these articles are mainly focused on B2B, I think ALL the information can be applied to traditional B2C selling and traditional retail environments.

Enjoy the reading:

The End of Solution Sales – I love reading about disruptive ideas.  This article turns sales 101 on its side and focuses on how sales people need to provide VALUE, not selling a solution or service.

Tweet Me, Friend Me, Make Me Buy – I have talked A LOT about referrals being the best form of marketing/advertising.  Social Networking is making this even more of a reality.

Strategies for Answering Your Customers’ Toughest Questions – In closing that sale, it is sometimes how you handle the unexpected questions (as opposed to your prepared answers) that seal the deal.

Make the Most of Your Sales Call – One of my main themes when speaking or writing is “VALUE”.  I usually talk about this in terms of product.  This article focuses on how to add “value” whenever making a sales call.

Four Secrets to Selling More – Another article that turns sales 101 on its side.  Think “out of the box” to increase revenues.

How to Close a Sales Call – Our company has been selling eyewear for 85+ years and in this difficult economic period we know “closing” new business is harder than ever.  Here are some good tips for those on the road that apply to a traditional retail environment.

Let Your Customers Persuade Themselves – I have written recently that the best way to “sell” something is to educate the consumer as opposed to “selling them”.  Consumers do not want to be sold. They want to make educated decisions.  This article reinforces the belief that consumers or any “buyer” needs to sell themselves, not “be sold”.

Using Smell to Sell –  here is a great illustration of the importance of finding your competitive advantage and using it to stand out from the crowd.

Be sure to check out my new updates to the Culture Corner – I’ve added some new music and TV picks!

Selling – part II

June 19, 2012 By in Selling, Strategy Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Have you thought about your selling strategy at all?  Did you answer any of the questions posed in the last post?  In order to tackle the ins and outs of selling and apply the selling tips I will share in the coming posts, I want to share some research done by Agency Sacks and the Affluence Collaborative.  I recommend that everyone check out their sites and their background – they are great companies doing great research on the subject of luxury/affluence.  I use their data throughout my writings and speeches (and of course in our own strategy development) and have learned a ton from what they have been studying.

Three BIG crucial data points I have learned from their research and want to share with everyone selling luxury or looking to upgrade to luxury:

  1. Consumers want to be educated, not sold – they know pricing, they know value, they know brands, but they do NOT know eyewear and people like to buy from people they trust. Education creates trust.
  2. People want value – people will pay for something if they feel it has value. We hear this all the time in our business.  Our partners and their patients will spend money on luxury goods that they feel bring them value – and that value can be product quality, happiness, etc.
  3. MOST importantly: friends tell friends – if you give the right product and service to a consumer – they WILL tell their friends. Case in point:  we have a “referral program” at our company which rewards our partners when they refer us to other potential partners. Our partners tell us all the time: “We refer you because of the product and service you provide, not for any free gifts…. We want our industry colleagues to benefit from working with good partners.”

Once we understand and appreciate these three truths, we need to use them to our advantage when selling, and use them to help achieve our ultimate goal — selling higher priced product and offering a point of difference from our competitors.

Remember the closing question from the last post: When you see a patient, do they leave having had a WOW experience? Or a doctor’s visit? Or a sales pitch?

Selling – an Overview

May 22, 2012 By in Selling, Strategy Tags: , , Leave a comment

As we enter the spring/summer selling season, it is a perfect time to change course and start a new theme.  In the past months our overriding theme was “buying”.  Now that buying season is over, it is time to focus on “selling”.  To get us in the mood to sell and help us develop a comprehensive selling strategy, I want to pose some questions we should all consider and try to answer:

  • How do you display product?
  • Are you proud of how you display product?
  • If you could start from scratch today, how would you display product?
  • Is selling an afterthought to the medical appointment or an integrated, vital part of the patient visit?
  • Is the staff trained to explain and romance the product you own in inventory?
  • Do you motivate the staff – both financially and emotionally? If so, how can you improve upon this?  If not, why not?
  • How do you communicate your product story to the patient (which opens up an entire marketing discussion which I will cover in the coming months)
  • Do you have an online strategy?  (again, this opens up a VERY large topic for the future)
  • Most importantly: When you see a patient, do they leave having had a WOW experience? Or a doctor’s visit? Or a sales pitch?

Think about the questions and in the coming weeks we will dive DEEP and offer suggestions and insights to develop a great “selling” strategy.

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