Foreword

Few professionals today have to respond as quickly to changes in consumer demand as does the retail sales professional. What sold like hotcakes yesterday may be dead stock tomorrow. Similarly, salesperson-to-customer retail sales techniques in our fast-paced society now may lead to disastrous results, especially with sophisticated, streetwise consumers who have heard it all and seen it all.

If you're using outmoded techniques, or if you fail to understand the psychology of why people buy, your earning power, your career, and your well-being are in jeopardy. If you lack the proper tools and techniques, the marketplace can quickly become a jungle that will chew you up and spit you out. In fact, personnel turnover in retail selling is among the highest of all industries or professions.

Enter Harry J. Friedman. Harry is president of the Los Angeles–based retail sales and management-training firm The Friedman Group. By his mid-30s, Harry had already built his firm into one of the most successful training firms in the industry.

In his video programs and live presentations, which are in demand throughout the world, and now in this book, Harry strips away conventional wisdom about what it takes to be successful in retail selling. In its place, he lays down a foundation rooted in proven and effective methods that he has personally devised over decades of research, study, and firsthand experience.

This book will save you time and endless hours of frustration. Harry is a master of retail selling and retail sales training, but more important, he is one of those gifted individuals who possess a unique ability to convey his knowledge in an entertaining, yet highly supportive manner. He enjoys helping sales professionals, and they enjoy listening to him. Now, they will enjoy reading what he has to say.

Starting with what to do even before customers walk into the store, progressing through all the critical elements that lead up to the sale and offering coaching through post sales issues, Harry decisively spells out what you need to know to increase your sales results every day, regardless of what you're selling.

Harry wants you to succeed. In this book, he pulls out all the stops, offering both insightful instruction and compelling reading. He opens up his treasure chest of profitable procedures for interacting with prospects. Harry introduces key phrases, appropriate gestures, and effective behaviors for getting the prospect on your side in a hurry. Furthermore, he reveals what the customer is thinking, wants to see, and needs to have confirmed.

His understanding and explanation of customer psychology is, in a word, outstanding. Through dialogues culled from actual sales encounters, from the minuscule to the magnificent, Harry provides the essence of effective retail selling in today's world.

If you read this book, your sales career will take a turn for the better. I predict that you'll pore over the pages time and time again, to squeeze out every golden nugget of Harry's knowledge. If you're in retail selling, or any other profession where favorably influencing others is important, you'll find that this book is more than an instructive guide—it's a chance to change your standard of living forever.

—Richard Erhart
Former Executive Vice President
InterTAN (Radio Shack International)