If you sell to the 21 – 39 age group then a recent study by the Zandl Group might give you some interesting perspectives on what you need to focus on.

Do It Yourself Culture:

Consumers are increasingly adopting a do-it-yourself mentality to save money. This can be seen in shifts in:

• Cooking v Eating Out
• Bringing their own lunches to work
• Making coffee at home V Starbucks
• Doing their own home repairs V Bringing experts
• Seeking out cheaper, more underground, original entertainment venues

Online Barter:

Consumers are looking to the following sites for financial relief.

• Craigslist to sell/buy/barter
• Ebay to sell/buy/barter
• Paperbackswap.com to exchange books
• Couchsurfing.com for free accommodation – worldwide

Stay in touch  with the trends if you want your business to be a success for 2010 and beyond……… if you don’t know where to start then try http://www.trendhunter.com/

From personal recent experience I would say the Post Office can urgently do with some sales training .

The papers and TV news have been filled recently with the subject of post office closures and how this will kill off many local communities. I can understand this and can only sympathise with people who rely on the post office for essential services.

What I can’t help is my feeling that largely the post office have brought this upon themselves with untrained and quite frankly appalling customer service / sales staff . I know that many of the post office counters operate as mini franchises but they should insist on some element of sales training or sales management training .

I recently went into my local branch to send a parcel to the USA. The man at the counter huffed and puffed his way through my request and looked at me like I had asked him if I could kiss his mother.

After a few minutes of huffing and puffing he came back with the words:

” We can do it but it’s going to be expensive and we will have to fill out a whole stack of paperwork”

Being difficult to put off I said OK.

After about 10 minutes of him reading through a few simple sheets of documentation I gave up and went to DHL Within 3 minutes I had completed the transaction with a nice customer friendly sales person and was on my way.

If I was giving training to the local branch of the Post Office to increase their sale s I would start with:

• Sales Attitude – people are busy and they want to be treated with respect and be made to feel that their business is valuable

• Sales Words – It doesn’t take much retail sales training to change the emphasis of the words the sales representative had used to something like:

“You would like it sent to the USA sir – absolutely. Consider it done. Based on the weight and your delivery requirement of 4 days, I’m delighted to tell you it will be there on time and probably early and it will only be £42.00.

There are a few forms to complete and I know them like the back of my hand so all we need to do is get you to sign here and here and I can fill in the rest for you.

Is there anything else I can help you with?”

If all post office staff received customer service training so that they could think like that then I am certain their sales would not be in decline.