Selling

I've been working retail for over a year now, at two different stores, and I've proven myself quite terrible at actually selling product. I have a pretty bad memory to begin with, so I'm not always good at even helping customers find what it is they're looking for, but at my current job the store is small enough that I don't have too much trouble with that, as long as they're not looking for a very specific item. Even then, I can usually get them close enough to it that they find it before I do.

However, when people are asking me what kinds of things I would recommend if they are doing x thing or having y problem, I really have nothing to provide them. I don't know very much about different products, and I can only really sympathize. Even things that I have been specifically trained in, I have difficulty explaining to a customer and really convincing them of why they should get one thing over another. Granted, part of that is because people will get an idea set in their head, and I frequently have to tell them otherwise, and they don't want to listen to that. But I also can't really sell something that I wouldn't buy - and I don't really buy anything.

Currently I work at an outdoor retailer, which I love, and I've actually received quite a bit of training for my job. I can pretty easily recognize people's problems and what they need to solve them. But the problem is that I don't know which product to recommend in order to solve those problems. I can explain to them what to look for and what they're trying to accomplish, but I can't actually hand them an item and say "Here, this is what you need." But that's exactly what they're looking to me for - I'm literally in the position of expert as far as they're concerned, and I'm supposed to be the expert, but I am not in the slightest. And because of that, I've literally had customers ask me if there was someone else who actually had some answers for them. And I can't be mad at them for asking that, because they are completely in the right to do so, and I would do the same if I were them.

But I want to learn how to be better about all of that. Both because I enjoy this job, and because some day down the line, I'm going to be in a position where I need to be able to sell my own writing, and I don't feel confident that I could do that right now. I don't feel as though I could convince someone to buy anything, much less something that I created. I want to be able to. I want to be able to hand it to them and say "Buy this because." But I'm just not in that position yet.

Practice makes perfect, I guess. Should probably actually try some of the products at work. But man, that shit's expensive.