Seal the deal: learn from these experts to magnify optic sales!

Shooting Industry, July, 2005 by Mark Kayser

Optic sales usually go two ways. In the first way, they are a simple sale. Your customers march into your store knowing the brand and the magnification power they want and they have the cash to make the purchase. They've looked through a friend's scope, surfed the Internet or received a recommendation from a hunting guide or buddy and they know exactly what they want. Ring up the sale.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Then, there's the more-likely sale. Your customers come in knowing they want an optic, but that's the extent of their knowledge. In addition, these customers often face sticker shock. Optics, whether they're binoculars, spotting or riflescopes, can be expensive, especially if you want top-quality equipment. Sales people in gun shops and sporting goods stores often watch customers mulling over an expensive optic purchase. They just can't reach the buying point.

How do you seal the deal with your pondering optic customer or up-sell to the next higher product? Experienced dealers have accumulated, through hard-earned experience, a valuable list of blunders to avoid. Translating these blunders into success techniques is key to profitable optic sales.

Hire Hunters To Sell Optics

The most difficult obstacle to overcome is hiring sales people who use the products and are qualified to speak about them. Jim and Joe Rauscher manage a third-generation sporting goods store started by their grandfather. Located in St. Paul, Minn., Joe's Sporting Goods caters to a wide variety of optic needs, and the Rauscher's rely on hunters to make sales.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We definitely try to hire hunters for our gun counter, where we sell our optics," explains Jim Rauscher. "Whether the employee is active in big- or small-game hunting is not important; it's having the expertise of using the product that helps make the sale."

Rauscher knows customers are seeking credibility when they ask a sales person a question. They don't want to hear a standard response based on product literature, they want firsthand knowledge of how the product performs in the field. Rauscher doesn't ignore product-training literature, but believes it needs to be backed up with actual experiences.

"Last year, I was hunting on Kodiak Island and used the new Swarovski EL 10X42mm binocular. When a serious hunter comes to me looking for a serious binocular, I can tell them how the binoculars performed for me. By sharing my hunt, it's almost like they are sitting on that mountainside beside me as I explain how the binocular helped me differentiate between brush and an animal or pick out an antler in low light. That's real credibility and if you can't offer that, you are making a big mistake," Rauscher said.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Train Your Staff

Thirty minutes south of downtown Dallas, nestled in an industrial park, is one of the nation's largest optical dealers, SWFA. Walk-in customers are welcome at the store, but the Internet and mail-order business has definitely been a boon to the growing company.

SWFA is one of Swarovski's and Kahles' top five dealers. Chris Ferris, an owner in the family-run business, knows the mistakes that can be made in training a staff and has gone to great lengths to smooth over the training process. Since he can't always rely on hiring hunters, he makes sure he can take optic greenhorns and transform them into experts.

"It's not always possible to hire a staff that are experts on optics so we train them before (they start selling) and throughout their careers with our company," Ferris said.

During a beginner's course, Ferris and his training staff take new employees to a creek side area behind the company's warehouse. There they have set up deer targets in the brush and point out birds in the trees for the new employees to spot. While doing this, they discuss the various features of the different optics they sell. New employees get firsthand experiences with the products, plus they get a feel for how they operate in the field.

Ferris also takes the creek side experience one step further by organizing hunts for his employees. Non-hunters are included in the group and act as spotters or spend time discussing various optical products while watching for wildlife.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We are borrowing a technique I picked up from Kahles and Swarovski. We take our employees to hunt on the YO Ranch in Texas. We take two groups for a long weekend and allow the employees to hunt with a variety of binoculars and scopes," Ferris said.

Ferris believes the hunting trips help his employees, especially when customers ask them if they are an actual hunter or if they've used a particular optic in the field. It allows SWFA's employees to answer the question authoritatively.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Answer The Tough Questions

Okay, you understand it's important to train your staff to understand the basics of optics. However, having a sales staff available to deal with specialized technical aspects of optics may not seem like a high priority. Ferris believes otherwise. Since SWFA's entire business is based on optic sales, Ferris takes his training a step beyond the basics. Helping a customer choose a binocular is simple compared to matching a rifle-scope to a rifle and mating it with scope rings and mounts.