Training Programs

An Overview

The Blue Leaf Success Plan is a complete selling strategy that focuses attention on three key areas:

1. The Customer Experience
2. Sales Consultant Skill Level
3. Sales Coaching and Leadership

1. The Customer Experience

The Blue Leaf Success Plan is designed to provide a high and consistent level of service to customers. This experience encourages customers to return to your store over and over again. The program positions customers as assets and the single most important reason the store exists. The customer shopping experience is the key to differentiating your store from other retailers. The steps in the selling process outline a total plan to assist customers at the highest level.

2. Sales Consultant Skill Level

The training programs give your team the skills they need to offer the best possible service and establish critical on-going relationships with your customers. The skills recommended during the training programs form a “road map” for your sales success and a template to provide greater consistency between sales consultants. A traditional selling program focuses attention on the selling steps but less attention on how the customer buys. Blue Leaf training programs help your team understand the psychology of how customers shop and give them the skills to adapt. Training programs are customized to your business sector.

3. Leadership Through Sales Coaching

The Blue Leaf Success Plan focuses on leadership and accountability through sales coaching. Without program leadership and without a strong sales coaching strategy in place, it is impossible to get the results you deserve from the program. The Success Plan includes a comprehensive training program for sales coaches that gives them the skills they need to develop, lead, and motivate a high performance sales team. Some business owners may choose to assume the role of sales coach personally.

Your Benefit

Implementing the program allows you the opportunity to monitor team “checkpoints” without daily involvement so you can focus on big picture priorities, planning, and personal goals. You will learn how to partner with your sales coach to resolve key issues and maximize sales results. The Success Plan helps you to create a work environment that allows you to attract and retain the best people to serve your customers. Over time, you create an exciting and fun work environment where team members hold each other accountable to higher standards.  Your referral business grows as customers see and feel a difference in your store and tell others about your business.

Training Programs

Blue Leaf Consulting tailors its curriculum to your company's needs. The training programs form a template of how to offer customer services and how to coach your team for success as well as hold them accountable for results. We recommend a progressive certification program as part of your training plan. We also believe that training works best when it is part of a Total Success Plan embedded in principle-focused philosophies. The following training programs represent an illustration of typical programs for retail home furnishings and design stores. Similar programs can be designed for other retail concerns and real estate firms.

Program 1: Sales Management Psychology and Leadership

This newly developed program is an absolute "must" for any new sales coach and any experienced manager who seeks to improve their effectiveness with people. Learn how to build a great sales team and how to understand the true definition of success. You will learn how to communicate effectively with different personality styles and how to build relationships that allow you to coach, mentor, and lead positive change within your organization. You will develop skills to facillitate teamwork, solve problems, and create a more positive work environment. You will learn why creating the right cultural foundation is so important to your company's success. This session will help you understand the true difference between managing and leading your team. The principles of this session will help you understand how to implement a Sales Success Plan within your organization. (2 day workshop)

Program 2: Psychology of In-Store Selling

Identify the qualities of top sales professionals and learn what high achievers do that average and below average performers do not. Learn the basics of how to greet and connect with different customer shopping styles and what one thing you can do to improve your greeting results. Participants learn how to handle customers who say "I'm just looking" and how to take control of those who state a need. Learn how to accelerate trust with customers, how to better understand customer needs, and how to use effective language to present products with greater confidence. Understand when and how to overcome customer concerns and when and how to ask for the sale.  Determine the best approaches for building new business including time management tools to help you work smarter. The skills presented in this session become the standard for how to offer service to customers in the showroom.  (2 day workshop)

Program 3: Intuitive Home Decorating

Give your team a competitive edge with this interactive, visual workshop. Participants learn how to interpret customer style preferences and how to translate preferences into room design plans. This "hand's on" workshop teaches room design basics and the guidelines of combining color, pattern, and texture successfully. Your team will gain a new confidence to "step out on the ledge" with customers to explore a home's full potential rather than settling for the sale of individual pieces. Each participant will learn how to package and prepare their room ideas in a dramatic and visual format and how to better use technology for this purpose. This course increases job satisfaction for your staff and consumer confidence in your store's design services. (1 day workshop)

Program 4: How To Sell and Present Total Plans

Your team members learn when and how to sell the benefits of a total plan as well as when and how to sell their own professional services to customers. Participants identify and overcome obstacles to working with customers through the design process including how to make successful in-home visits and how to present a total plan. They learn how to avoid the most common mistakes made during this process and how to avoid getting off track. They learn how to close a total plan successfully and how to increase their potential earnings through this process. (2 day workshop)

Getting Started

We believe that developing a Sales Success Plan can dramatically improve your business results. We invite you to give us a call to discuss your situation and talk about the best way to begin. Typically, we recommend an on-site visit to walk you through the elements of the program to ensure it is the right fit for you and your team. From experience, we have found there are some critical decisions that need to be made, and it is in your best interest for us to outline all of the program philosophies and concepts. This day is spent with the business owners who will ultimately champion the Sales Success Plan within their business. If you believe the program and it's concepts make sense, then we can outline a training plan tailored to your situation. Also, if you decide to implement the Sales Success Plan, we will gather some information to benchmark certain key measurements before we start so we can review your progress together.

This planning session takes a full day including a working lunch. The investment for this one day session is $1,500 plus expenses from your Program Coach's home location. At the end of the day, you will have enough information to make the decision whether you would like to move forward with the program.

The next step is a one day session with your management team to review the elements of the program and get them excited about the possibilities. During this session, your Program Coach will outline the program basics and address any questions or concerns from the entire management team. As we end this session, we will work together to plan dates for the management training and first sales training event and discuss how to prepare for these events.

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