At our last Bridal Stylist Accelerator, I got on stage and asked a room full of stylists and owners a question I ask constantly in coaching calls: who in your shop answers the phone?

Almost every hand in the room went up for someone other than the owner. A front desk coordinator. A junior stylist between appointments. Whoever happens to be closest to the ringing phone. And that's exactly the problem, because the way most shops train that person is to answer questions, not to sell.

Here's what I mean. 

A bride calls and asks something simple. 

• What's your price range? 
• Do you carry a certain designer? 
• Are you open Sundays? 

On the surface, that's just information. But there's almost always something underneath a first question like that. Maybe she doesn't have an appointment with you yet and this call is deciding whether she books one. Maybe she's comparing your shop against two others open in the same tab on her phone right now. That question is rarely just the question. It's an objection wearing a disguise.

When whoever answers the phone treats it like a simple information request and gives a simple information answer, the conversation turns into something completely different than it needed to. It stays transactional instead of becoming personal. And the owner who spent real marketing dollars to get that phone to ring loses the lead without ever finding out it happened, because nothing about that call looked like a loss from the outside. The bride was polite. She said thank you. She just never called back.

This is the piece most shops miss when they think about sales training. You can have the best stylist on the floor leading appointments beautifully, and still be losing leads at the front door because whoever picks up the phone doesn't know they're already selling.

Every part of your business is sales, not just the parts that happen in front of a mirror with a dress on.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does take intention. It means training everyone who might answer that phone, not just your top closer, to hear what's underneath that first question and respond like they're starting a relationship instead of closing a ticket. It means treating the phone script with the same seriousness you treat the appointment timeline.

Training your team on phones to function like a sales person is 1 step in a tight knit pre-sale process. Your pre-sale process can truly make or break 50% of your sale. The customer’s journey starts before they even arrive in your store. My goal whenever someone is shopping at Something New is to NOT to depend TOO MUCH on just what happens IN the store. What you do BEFORE the bride comes in your doors is 50% of what makes the sale! There are so many elements that take place prior to the bride trying on dresses that impact her decision to buy - one of them being the relationship they form with your team on the phones.

But this isn’t all that’s required for a strong pre-sale process. There are three steps at Something New for a sure fire way of pre-selling your customers before they come into the door. Remember, the goal is to leave the bride thinking WHICH dress is hers- not IF she will buy a dress from your shop or not. 

To make it easy for you, I compiled a guide on all three steps for you to download and implement into your store.

DOWNLOAD MINDI'S PRE-SALE GUIDE HERE

Grab some coffee, pull out your pen, and get ready to up your pre-sale game (starting with how your girls nurture leads on the phones!)