CIN Podcast: Sales trainer Colin Rees talks customer interaction, store layout & getting recruitment right
This week’s guest on the CI.N Podcast is cycling industry sales trainer Colin Rees, who has helped bike shops adapt how they interact with their customers, improve their store layout and hire the right people to move their store forward.
Starting out in marketing and selling, Rees moved on to training around 30 years ago, becoming associated with the ACT as a management consultant, “During which time we identified that sales training was not in the cycling industry at all,” Rees says. “So I wrote a course and went back and showed them what we’d done, and we decided to give it a try. It really grew from there.”
Having visited some 600 bike shops up and down the UK, Rees shares with us some of the skills he has brought to businesses in the bike trade over the years. How staff listen and interact with customers to provide the right product and a positive experience is one of the challenges he works with bike shops to overcome.
“I think it really stems from making people stop and think; why are they doing what they’re doing, in the way they’re doing it?” Rees offers. “People go from day to day going to work, doing their job, then going home again. Do you actually have time during that period to think really carefully about the way you’ve talked to people? Would you sell more bikes if you talked to them in a different way? Would you have a different kind of customer if your shop was laid out in a different way? Are you appealing to the actual market in your area?”
According to Rees, hiring the right people in-store also plays a crucial role in a bike shop’s success. “It seems to be in many cases; I’ve got a slot and I need to fill it, as opposed to really doing some research in terms of what are the tasks you want this person to achieve and therefore what skills do they need?”
Rees has also written a series of articles for CI.N on the role of the workshop in bolstering business, fresh ideas to boost bike shop profits and how to capitalise on internet purchasing.
Listen in to this episode of the CI.N Podcast to hear more from Rees on how sales training could maximise your business’ performance via these channels:
To tune in to prior episodes of the CyclingIndustry.News Podcast, where guests include Chris Boardman, SRAM’s Alex Rafferty and Giant boss Bonnie Tu, click here.
