Surviving A Bad Sales Day

You know the sort of trading day that gives us nightmares. Your first customer brings an item back for a refund. Your second customer spends 20 minutes of your time discussing the ins and outs of your product range and then tells you he’s about to go overseas for 3 years but he’ll look you up when he gets back. The list of bad stories is almost endless.
How do we handle those days? Well, believe it or not somebody has written a procedure.
     1. Keep relaxed – anger, stress and frustration do nothing to help your day. In fact, bad events feed off them. Keep calm, ask your customers plenty of questions and listen to what they have to say. Patience does pay off.
     2. Think positive – taking direct action is more likely to give you a positive result than sitting back and feeling sorry for yourself. 
     3. Trust your skills – being confident about yourself is important. You’ve been here before. You know how to get out of tough spots.
     4. Learn from all situations – negative sales situations happen to all traders. If something goes wrong, find out why. The next time you will be much wiser.
     5. Accept responsibility – no matter what caused your negative sales situation, you are in control. Take responsibility and move forward.

That is all good advice. If I can just remember it the next time a customer asks me if I will be in the same place in 3 years time....patience.....patience......patience.