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then I need to hire that guy; something is
very wrong if our people need to rely on a
vendor to sell. Instead, what we typically
hear from vendors is praise for how our
staff helped and made their event amaz-
ing. I want to hear that vendor reps helped
our people succeed in ringing up the reg-
isters, not that they sold for them.”
What this equates to is “looking at
your cigar salespeople as apprentices and
mentoring them, whether they stay or
whether they move on,” says Abe Dabab-
neh, owner of Smoke Inn Cigars in West
Palm Beach, Florida.
But chances are, they’ll stay if you
educate and “take care of them” with
health benefits, bonus structures and
401ks, says Garofalo. “As I grew, I let
them grow with me,” he maintains, rec-
ognizing that he has many “legacy” em-
ployees that have been working for him
for 10, 15, 20 years and more. Some have
even brought on sons and daughters that
have become long-time employees, too.
“It’s so much work to reeducate new em-
ployees; it’s so much easier to take care
of the good ones that you’ve got,” he ad-
vises, adding that he subscribed to this
method of retention “long before it was a
fashionable thing.”
Once cigar staff has been trained, it’s
important to “give them the power to
make decisions,” asserts John Anderson,
owner of W. Curtis Draper Tobacconist,
with two stores and one cigar lounge in
the Washington, D.C. area. He tells his
people to think about making decisions
in terms of “ ‘what would John do?’ And
if it’s the wrong decision, we will figure
it out,” he says. “It’s a learning curve, but
empowering people is a big part of our
business.”
THE TOBACCO OUTLET TAKEAWAY:
If
you want to get serious about selling pre-
mium cigars, consider fully investing in
cigar-dedicated salespeople.
SELL THE EXPERIENCE.
With good
staff in place, what brick-and-mortar ci-
gar sales are ultimately about is the expe-
rience, especially today when anyone can
click and buy cigars online, tobacconists
recognize.“At the end of the day, it’s expe-
rience in the stores that make customers
come back,” says Anderson. “I have some
of the best tobacconists in the world sell-
ing in my stores—iconic merchants that
do a phenomenal job and know it’s all
about the experience. If we give our cus-
tomers more than they expect, they come
back. Price is not important. You want
them to leave feeling that everything you
did and said was all about them.”
Anderson relays that one of his best
teaching points for selling the experience
is when a customer walks in asking for
a brand that is not sold in the store. He
shows his staff how to engage them and
get them involved anyway, to try some-
thing else, and to leave feeling good about
the transaction that just transpired. “We
are in the experience business, not the ci-
gar business,” he says.
Dababneh adds that even part-timers
need to be taught that “if you haven’t
greeted a customer who walks past, you
failed for the day.” He stresses that “all
the little things matter” when you’re sell-
ing a premium product, such as cleanli-
ness in the bathrooms, working faucets,
first impressions walking into the store
and walking into the humidor, and ul-
timately, how comfortable they are and
how much time customers want to spend
in your store.
THE TOBACCO OUTLET TAKEAWAY:
Sell-
ing premium cigars requires leaving cus-
tomers with a premium experience.Details
matter.
USE ONLINE REVIEW SITES AS
SURVEILLANCE.
Setting out to sell a
great experience does not end with the
experience. There should also be a mea-
sure of performance, and perhaps the
easiest and cheapest way to gauge it is
online social media platforms, as well as
online business review sites such as Yelp.
“Historically, you didn’t know if you
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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016