ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349

www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

Training retail sales personnel in transition economies: Applying a

model of customer-oriented communication
Maaja Vadi, Maive Suuroja
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu, Narva Road 4, 51009, Estonia

Abstract

The former Soviet Bloc countries have been faced with the challenge of switching from a command economy to a free market-oriented
economy. The extent to which people have managed to cope with the resulting turbulent period of change largely depended on whether
they were able to break from their old attitudes and behaviour. Naturally, the knowledge and skills related to the previous dominant
paradigm in those societies all influence direct communication with customers. In order to train salespeople in transition economies, we
constructed a Model of Customer-Oriented Communication (COC). This paper describes the COC model, looks at the subsequent
training courses and discusses the evaluation of the training process.
r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Retail sales in transition economies; Sales communication; Training salespeople

1. Introduction invented numerous ways to improve the effectiveness of the

Under Soviet socialism salespeople had an unusual role—
to divide the available goods rather than provide service.
Under those conditions, where staple products were in short
supply, they divided the products instead of helping to meet
their customers’ needs. Their motivation to work was
eroded as the quantity of goods to be divided, unsatisfactory
as it was, decreased even more with the deepening crisis of
socialism. Reports from trade surveys in the late 1980s
revealed that the shortage of products in great demand was
the primary reason for professional dissatisfaction and
weariness among salespeople (Auväärt, 1988). The goods
deficit also appeared to be the main cause of conflicts
between retailers and buyers. Protests from buyers were
primarily directed at salespeople as the direct representatives
of the other side of the buying–selling relationship.
A peak in the deficiency, which could be described as an
absolute lack of everyday commodities, was reached in
January 1992. The inhabitants of the former Soviet Union
Corresponding author. Tel.: +372 7376 320; fax: +372 7376 312.
E-mail addresses: maaja.vadi@ut.ee (M. Vadi), msuuroja@hot.ee
(M. Suuroja).
division system and thus alleviate the hardships experi-
enced by consumers. Different rationing coupons were
introduced—some to be used nationwide, others only
locally or even within single enterprises. The latter can be
illustrated by the Baltika clothes factory in the capital of
Estonia, Tallinn, which implemented its own medium of
payment to be used in the factory store called reiska (after
the name of the financial manager).
In Estonia, the deficit of consumer goods was rapidly
offset after the monetary reform of June 1992. The
quantity of products increased and retail outlets entered
into competition to regain their customer base. The
direction and division of power relationships between
retailers and customers in the selling process changed. This
change in the situation led to a discrepancy between the
perceptions of the role of salespeople and the expectations
of the role of customers, and this became the main cause of
problems in the sales interaction process. While the role of
retailers as ‘‘dividers’’ was gradually replaced by that of
retailers as ‘‘service providers’’, under the conditions of the
fledgling market-economy their attitudes and skills still
lagged behind and they continued to behave as unfriendly,
haughty dividers.

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doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2005.11.001
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
340 M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
The situation in the Estonian retail trade was unaccep-
table. A huge number—50,000 employees—had to be
simultaneously retrained (‘‘Employed people’’). From the
psychological viewpoint, training was extremely necessary
in order to raise the retailers’ awareness of their roles and
the need to transform their ingrained attitude towards their
customers. Similar problems were faced by all the former
Soviet states.
In the Soviet Union salespeople used to be trained as
follows. Moscow stated that a certain retraining pro-
gramme for shop assistants had to last for half a year and
include 240 h of theoretical training. One and the same
programme was to be applied throughout the whole vast
territory of the USSR, including, for example, 60 h of
training in expertise with commodities, 40 h in accounting
and inventory checks, 20 h in selling psychology, etc.
Twenty full hours were allotted to studying ideological
topics. Retraining was also part of this system. Shop
assistants were required to attend 240-h off-the-job
retraining programmes every 5 years. Having successfully
completed the course, they were promoted to a higher
proficiency level. During retraining, the focus was on their
knowledge of commodities and skills for operating the cash
register. Quite a similar tendency in Western sales training
practice was proposed by Dubinsky (1996), who claimed
that approximately 40 per cent of training time was to be
devoted to product information.
The new market situation required organisations to
undergo strategic reorientation—they had to be market
oriented to cope well with the changes. As several studies
have pointed out that a strong relationship exists between
the orientation desired at the firm level and the orientation
practiced by its sales force (Siguaw and Brown, 1994), for
the success of the firms in this new situation, the attitudes
of the sales personnel had to be customer-oriented—they
had to behave and respond to their customers’ needs in a
manner congruent with the firms’ market orientation.
Entrepreneurs, businessmen and many other people work-
ing in the trade understood that there was an urgent need
to change the behaviour patterns in selling and that there
was no time to retrain shop assistants in the way described
above. The aim of the short-term training programmes was
to change the minds of those people who had already
started working or wanted to find a job in customer service.
The content of the new training programmes mostly
followed that of the long-term programmes; the differences
being that the ideological aspects were excluded and the
proportion of time spent on each topic was not the same.
Apparently, customer service and communication had
become more important than they had been before.
The primary need for post-Soviet countries was to create
a model of everyday sales communication that reflected
retailer–customer interactions in the shops. The commu-
nication model could then provide a useful basis for
salespeople to change their behavioural patterns, some-
thing that was necessary, given the transformed power
relationships in sales interactions. To bridge the existing
gap, one of the authors of the present paper, Maaja Vadi,
proposed the Model of Customer-Oriented Communica-
tion (COC). She had worked as a psychologist in a large
Soviet state-owned trade company for 8 years. In the
former Soviet Union, training and retraining were usually
part of the work of psychologists and thus this position
provided a good opportunity to learn about the previous
experience of sales personnel. Such an educational back-
ground forms a good starting point for bringing together
the theoretical knowledge of the interpersonal communica-
tion process and the issue of changing people’s attitudes.
The main purpose of our paper is to introduce our
Model of COC and describe its implementation in sales
personnel training programmes in the retail sector of
transition economies in former socialist countries. This will
highlight some aspects of the transition process at the level
of individuals expected to change their behaviour patterns.
The paper is divided into three main sections. The first
section describes the Model of COC and explains the
rationale behind our training programmes for salespeople.
This is followed by a discussion of the process of
implementing the model using a sample of 85 groups of
salespeople between 1991 and 2000 in Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Russia. The third section deals with an
evaluation of the model.
2. The Model of Customer-Oriented Communication (COC)
The changing economic paradigm called for a new,
market-oriented model of the sales process, as well as the
modification of the behaviour of shop assistants. This
could be looked at from the perspective of behavioural
sciences, which have been applied actively to selling since
the 1960s (cf. Webster, Jr., 1968). Several aspects have been
addressed within the behavioural framework, including the
view introduced by Evans (1963), that the content of selling
is a dyadic relationship leading to the adaptation of
knowledge about the communication process and its
specific features in buyer–seller relationships. Tradition-
ally, the dyadic relationship is described in theories as a
series of interrelated steps. For example, Wilson (1976)
presents a dyadic sales process model comprising the
following five steps: (1) source legitimisation; (2) informa-
tion exchange, problem identification; (3) attribute delinea-
tion; (4) attribute value negotiation; and (5) relationship
maintenance. Dubinsky and Rudelius (1980, 1981) distin-
guish seven steps in the personal selling process: (1)
locating and prospecting for customers; (2) pre-approach;
(3) approach; (4) sales presentation; (5) handling objec-
tives/sales resistance; (6) close; (7) post-sales follow-up, and
examining the importance of selling techniques for
different steps in the process. They mention about 84
distinct selling techniques and describe the significance of
some of them in their article, highlighting the typical
understanding of selling in the second half of the last
century. The aforementioned seven steps in the selling
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M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
process form one of the most widely accepted paradigms in
the sales discipline (Moncrief and Marshall, 2005).
The models of the dyadic process have served as a
framework for several sales textbooks (e.g., Anderson et
al., 1992; Churchill et al., 1990; Donaldson, 1994; Futrell,
1990; Ingram et al., 1997; Mason and Mayer, 1990;
Pederson et al., 1988) and therefore have proved a good
basis for sales personnel training in Western countries.
These models point out the principles of the process within
the broad context of personal selling, and mainly discuss
the various steps in a sales presentation; however, they do
not include any interpretation of the skills for the different
stages needed in post-Soviet countries where people were
only just learning about the market economy. So, for the
transition situation, the western sales models were un-
satisfactory. The buyer–seller and retail interactions are
influenced by the local culture and economic system (du
Gay, 1993; Kale and Barnes, 1992) and due to the dramatic
differences in the customs of service communication there
is a risk of leaping over the logic of development with
respect to both the roles of customers and attendants, if the
selling manners are simply copied from one system to the
other.
The COC model distinguishes between the following
three main stages in the sales process: the approach, the
selling and the contact closure. The number of steps in the
COC model is less than in traditional models (including
only the second, third and sixth step) as this facilitates
comprehension of the selling process during the training
programme.
The COC model is based on the process of communica-
tion in sales relationships. Interpersonal communication
between a salesperson and a customer has been widely
discussed as an important part of successful sales interac-
tions (e.g., Williams et al., 1990; Lee and Dubinsky, 1993).
As distinct from the earlier models that regarded the sales
process as one, consisting of progressive steps towards the
purchase transaction and selling techniques, the COC
model focuses on concrete behavioural instructions,
indicating how verbal and non-verbal communication
should be used at different stages of the process, thus
allowing the phases of the personal selling process to be
analysed separately. Western literature on selling often
refers to selling techniques, but in those days in post-Soviet
countries, because of their historical and economic back-
ground, there was a lack of vocabulary for understanding
selling techniques.
The model considers the sales process as direct two-way
communication. Good communication skills acquire a
central role in successful sales communication as they help
us to understand the interaction of factors by which correct
communication in the service process is accomplished.
Naturally, the main path to successful sales communication
is paved by proficiency in general communication skills.
Acquisition and polishing of verbal and non-verbal
communication skills together with the perception of their
proper choice and timing can develop this proficiency.
341
Indeed, the idea of focusing, in the selling process, on the
means of communication was by no means unique. Earlier
on, for example, Gardner and Houston (1986) had
investigated the effects of verbal and visual components
in retail communication; Williams and Spiro (1985) had
explored the use of different communication styles in the
salesperson–customer dyad; Leigh and Summers (2002)
had dealt with salespersons’ nonverbal signs, while Hulbert
and Capon (1972), 30 years before, had offered a scheme
for understanding interpersonal communication and its
elements from the marketing perspective. Thus, on the one
hand, there are several publications and traditions dealing
with the means of communication in retail selling, but on
the other, sales communication is a multifaceted topic and
authors sometimes also refer to anecdotal literature in this
field (i.e. Castleberry and Shepherd, 1993). These circum-
stances framed a rather distracted picture for those who
had no clear understanding about marketing at all. This
was certainly the case with most countries that gained their
freedom after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and this
context created limitations to the orientation towards and
application of the Western approaches.
Besides the abovementioned two dimensions of sales
communication (stages and means), the model also has a
third dimension—an evaluation of pleasantness, which
indicates how pleasant the communication has been
perceived—it covers all the stages and uses of the means
of communication. This dimension emphasises the sub-
jective character of selling and the sellers’ goal of attaining
the feeling of pleasure in the customers’ mind during the
sales process. Table 1 provides an overview of the model in
the form of a matrix presenting the stages of communica-
tion in rows, and different areas of communication skills in
columns. The third dimension—pleasantness—is also given
in the table. There are two new aspects of the presentation
of sales communication in this model. The matrix-shaped
presentation of sales stages and means of communication
was not found in the existing literature about selling, and
thus it was innovative that this component, about the
importance of subjective evaluation, was included in the
model.
The use of different means of communication at the
main stages will be briefly described in the following
sections.
(1n)—Use of non-verbal means of communication
at the approach stage: Non-verbal means of communication
form a connection between the seller’s inner speech and
the approach stage. The main goal of the seller’s
body language here is to express his/her readiness to
provide a service. The whole activity has a symbolic
rather than concrete character. From the client point of
view, the transition from dealing with goods to the
approach stage should be smooth, because a sudden
change in activity might cause discomfort. The salespeople
need to perceive when it is proper to approach the
customer as this enables them to achieve the best results
in the sales process.
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342 M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
Table 1
Model of Customer-Oriented Communication (COC)
(1v)—Use of verbal means of communication at the
approach stage: Verbal means of communication form the
basis for selling. Salespeople can resort to three different
approaches: to offer a service (the service approach), ask
direct or indirect questions (the question approach) or to
present a product (the merchandise approach) (Futrell,
1990). In order to guarantee good contact, the verbal
approach to customers also needs to be timely. The verbal
part in the approach stage creates discomfort in many
salespeople because of their lack of previous experience and
due to the Soviet traditions in sales communications. It is
like a feeling of apprehension or anxiety of some sort. Pitt
and ‘‘Ram’’ Ramaseshan (1989), who investigated the
impact of communication apprehension on a salesperson’s
performance, listed several causes for this apprehension
(e.g., lack of communication skills and experience, new or
ambiguous situations); finding that it established an inverse
relationship between the level of communication apprehen-
sion and the quality of performance. A salesperson’s ability
to make contact can be developed using visual training, in
which observing the selling process from outside will help
them to seize the right moment for making contact with the
customers.
(2n)—Use of non-verbal means of communication at the
selling stage: The selling stage involves determining the
client’s needs and wishes, demonstrating products and
recommending potential solutions. The non-verbal means
of communication enable the seller to emotionally bring
the products closer to the buyer, shape their attitudes and
transmit information. During the presentation of products
there is a danger that new products are added for
inspection too quickly, and undue haste may disturb the
rhythm of the sale. The seller has to show that he/she is
listening to the buyer (mainly by eye contact, movement of
the head, back channelling cues, body posture and facial
expression). Several studies have indicated the importance
of non-verbal means of communication in the success of
the selling process (Garside and Kleiner, 1991).
(2v)—Use of verbal means of communication at the selling
stage: Information about the products and services is
mainly transmitted by verbal means. Its influence develops
from the comprehensiveness of arguments, the choice of
words and the style of speech. The verbal means of
communication also dominates in situations where the use
of non-verbal channels is inhibited for some reason, or in
cases where there is a danger of staining or breaking the
items. One of the most difficult problems in the sales
process is establishing a good rapport with customers.
Sellers can gain more self-confidence in their behaviour, if
there is a consensus in the shop about the best techniques
for providing information to customers in particular
situations—for instance, whether to direct customers to
other shops when the item sought is out of stock. While
giving additional information and thus decreasing the
customer’s problems can be considered a service, the
immediate referral of a customer to the competitors may
tarnish the shop’s image.
(2i)—Providing information at the selling stage: To forge
enduring relationships, both the seller and the buyer should
benefit from the purchase. The information given at the
selling stage discloses the customer value of the item
expressed as an idea about the particular item. One may
raise questions about the difference between the verbal
means of selling and the provision of information at the
stage of selling. The borders between these aspects are
somewhat indistinct and subjective, but the issue could be
characterised by the discussion offered by Gillis et al.
(1998) who express ideas about uncomplimentary tones in
selling. They claim that ‘‘pushy’’ salespeople talk too much,
‘‘sell’’ rather than ‘‘tell’’, placing their own needs above
those of the customer. Consequently, courses must teach
the importance of the customer’s needs and relevant
information. Sellers need to determine the buyers’ needs
and connect them with what they supply, informing their
customers about the features, advantages and benefits of
those goods. The benefits of products indicate what a
particular client can gain from consuming the product and
what needs the product meets.
(3n)—Use of non-verbal means of communication at the
contact closure stage: Non-verbal communication at the
stage of contact closure guarantees the arrangements for
payment, gives positive feedback to the customer and
indicates the seller’s willingness to be of service in the
future. Customers may start displaying signs of being ready
for contact closure, such as long pauses in speech,
increasing their distance from the salesperson or expressing
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M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
less interest in additional offers. At the non-verbal level of
communication, the salesperson’s body posture should
indicate an attitude of readiness to serve like that of the
Approach stage. It should embed in the customer’s mind a
feeling about the salesperson’s willingness to be of service
in the future as well.
(3v)—Use of verbal means of communication at the
contact closure stage: While wrapping up the item, the
seller can also use verbal means of communication to
provide additional information about the commodity or
reassure the customer that their choice was good. Even if
the customer did not make a purchase, a positive tone
should be maintained—for instance, the customer should
be asked to call again.
Pleasantness: whether the selling process is perceived as
pleasant or not depends on the interaction between the
means of communication and the transmitted information.
Customer orientation cannot be taken for granted or as
being self-evident even in countries with long traditions of
working within a market economy. Gillis et al. (1998)
revealed a gap between the perceptions of customer
orientation from the perspective of customers and sellers,
concluding on the basis of an empirical study that
customers do not perceive sellers to be as customer
oriented as the latter themselves think they are. We
consider it as confirmation that pleasantness should
constantly be in the seller’s mind.
When comparing the roles of a customer and a
salesperson, we have to emphasise that the role of
salespeople is more structured, and this gives them more
advantages during many aspects of this shared activity.
Salespeople have more opportunities to influence the final
result and ultimate customer satisfaction within the
communication process. Service is perceived as pleasant if
it lives up to consumers’ needs and expectations.
Non-verbal means of communication are important in
the development of pleasantness during Approach and
Contact Closure. Whether contact is pleasant or not
depends on the seller’s appropriate and tidy appearance.
Kind facial expressions, eye contact that instils confidence
and gestures that indicate a willingness to serve will create a
good impression of the service and of the shop in general.
Verbal means of communication have a greater role to
play in making the contact pleasant at the selling stage.
Clients appreciate a kind tone of speech and the use of
easily comprehensible vocabulary. Words can help to
appraise the purchase at the stage of contact closure. The
use of polite expressions is also important in unpleasant
situations.
All in all, pleasantness in a sale is important to a
customer, but it is a complicated issue for the seller.
Investigation of disclosure and its reciprocity in the
buyer–seller relationship by Jacobs et al. (2001) is
summarised as follows ‘‘y findings imply a need to teach
salespeople to recognises the rather delicate balance
between being sufficiently personal to establish rapport
and maintaining task-specific efficiency’’ (p. 59). Their
343
opinion is based on the result of empirical research,
according to which reciprocation of certain disclosure
elements has been shown to explain a significant amount of
variance in sales effectiveness.
3. Implementation of the COC model in sales training
3.1. The need for sales training
Futrell et al. (1984) offer the results of their study, which
reveals that sales training is considered to be the most
important resource for increasing sales effectiveness, but
even though expenditure on sales training is high, there is
no consensus about its effectiveness in general. For
example, Dubinsky (1996) argues that he found little
empirical support for the purported indicators of the
effectiveness of a sales training programme. Despite this
situation, in post-Soviet countries, the need for sales
training was inevitable because the market economy
required a radical change of behaviour patterns.
The COC model has been part of many training
programmes for salespeople since late 1991, and the
frequency of its use has been increasing rapidly in
subsequent years. The training programmes are short,
lasting approximately 1 week or 40–50 h. Here, short is
used in order to indicate the difference between the new
training programmes and those characteristic of the
command economy period when various combinations of
on-the-job and off-the-job training modes were applied in
Estonia.
3.2. Participants in the training programmes
The present paper explores the implementation of the
COC model on the sample of 85 training groups in the
period 1991–2000. Consequently, over a thousand sales-
people participated in these training programmes arranged
to teach new patterns of sales communication. Maaja Vadi
conducted the training sessions. Many groups were
composed of the employees of a single company.
The most solid cooperation was accomplished with
Baltman—a chain of stores established in 1991 by the
Estonian manufacturing company Baltika. Baltman’s
target group includes gentlemen who prefer classical
high-quality clothing. Baltman’s products are marketed in
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Poland, Sweden,
Finland, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Great
Britain and the USA (‘‘Baltika Gruppy’’). Baltman has
grown rapidly and has opened several new shops every
year.
The training programmes at Baltman were commenced
in December 1991, and 3–7 training groups were taught
every year until 1999. Some groups consisted of salespeople
who were selling well-known brands. For example, the
employees of JalaJälg, the official distributor of Nike
products, participated in the training programmes twice in
1999. Salespeople dealing with the British brand NEXT
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344 M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
were trained in 1994, 1995, 1997; and employees from the
SPAR supermarket chain also participated in 1995 and
1997. These are but a few examples of the training
sessions where the COC model was applied as a framework
for improving customer orientation and communication
skills.
In terms of group structure, there were two types of
groups in our sample. Some groups incorporated sales staff
from recently formed entities, whereas others consisted of
employees who had been working together for a relatively
long time. Indeed, they had common and shared attitudes
towards customers, and their communicating habits
represented ingrained Soviet-type trade traditions. The
‘‘novice groups’’ were put together in accordance with the
principles and techniques of personnel selection. They
demonstrated a radically different understanding of human
resources management compared to the salespeople with
lengthy seniority, who were used to the Russian term
‘‘kadrovaja rabota’’ (operating in cadres). This term was
the brainchild of the Soviet system and implies a military
domain, illustrating the underlying philosophy of the
Soviet economic system and the prevailing attitude towards
recruitment. This attitude was based on instructions from
the top; subjective criteria once had an important role in
personnel selection.
The formation of the ‘‘novice groups’’ started with
advertisements in newspapers, followed by filling in
application forms, writing reference lists, taking aptitude
tests and interviews that led to the recruitment of the
participants in our sample. This procedure was used in all
cases of recruitment by Baltman in Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania. Russia was the only exception where different
paths of selection were followed. In February 1996, the
recruitment of sales personnel in Moscow was still strictly
subject to decisions taken by the management of the GUM
department store (Baltman’s partner in Russia), whose
criteria remained undisclosed. The selection procedure
mentioned above was successfully completed in Yekaterin-
burg (Russia) in September 1997.
Usually, plenty of people applied for the sales positions,
partly due to the expectation that new enterprises would be
able to survive in a society undergoing reforms. However,
the transition also generated unemployment because many
old enterprises simply went out of business.
3.3. The framework of the COC model in sales training
The sales training sessions consisted of three main parts:
(1) An overview of the sales process—understanding the
salesperson’s role and customer expectations.
(2) Introducing the COC model—understanding the
course in the sales communication process and the
means of communication.
(3) Training the skills and patterns of behaviour needed to
exploit the COC model.
Overview of the sales Introduction of Training of
process the COC Model communication skills
and behaviour
Salespersons’ Steps in sales Use of the obtained
role communication knowledge in the
sales communication
Customers’ Means of practice
expectations communication
Lectures and discussions Videotaped role-play
Fig. 1. The structure of the sales training sessions based on the COC
model.
The structure of the training sessions is schematically
shown in Fig. 1. Lectures and group discussions were
employed to provide an overview of the sales process and
introduce the COC model.
The perception of the salesperson’s role is especially
important in this respect. It is mentioned several times in
analyses of the selling process. Two examples that provide
us with the necessary assurance for insisting on the role
framework could be proposed here. Webster, Jr. (1968)
offers his reflection on how a salesman plays his role, and
Churchill et al. (1985) take a reflective look at 116 studies,
emphasising the importance of role variables in the
investigation of the determinants of a salesperson’s
performance. In the training programme, a role-play
session is used to develop the necessary skills for
implementing the (knowledge of the) COC Model. Often
there was a gap between the perception of the salesperson’s
role and customer expectations. This difference helped the
participants to understand the importance of defining their
customers’ expectations. In regard to the COC model
training process, it should be mentioned that it was only
very rarely that customer satisfaction occurred in the
perception of the role of the participants—it was men-
tioned in only five training groups out of 85. Likewise the
participants very seldom emphasised cleanliness, honesty,
accuracy and setting the pace of direct communication. On
the other hand, they often pointed out these aspects when
expectations of the role were under consideration. The role
framework enabled us also to discuss the actual role
behaviour and role conflicts.
Lectures and debates on different aspects of sales
communication were followed by role clarification activ-
ities. The table describing the model (Table 1) was then
handed out to the participants and the trainer explained the
principle of using different means of communication.
Naturally, not all members of the groups accepted the
suggestions for more efficient communication. For exam-
ple, the trainer and the participants often held heated
debates about the first stage of communication. The
salespersons objected to the suggestion that they start a
conversation with customers. Instead, they preferred
passive modes of communication, drawing their arguments
from their past experience. It had not been customary to
initiate a conversation with customers in the conditions
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M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
where goods had to be divided rather than sold and were
anyway in short supply. With the changing situation both
salespeople and customers felt a certain discomfort,
particularly with regard to relaxed communication. Most
groups refused to accept the advice to start verbal
communication with a greeting. But this variance of
opinions provided a trigger for encouraging the sales
personnel to pay attention to their customer’s readiness in
making the initial contact in the changed situation.
Another target in the debates was the affirmative style of
communication. The salespeople tended to say ‘‘no’’
when they could not offer precisely the commodity the
customer was asking for or when they lacked proper
information about the qualities of certain goods. Prior to
the training process, the importance of customers’ needs
was explained. Training the affirmative communication
style enabled the participants’ attention to be focused on
the analysis of how different qualities of goods can meet
the customers’ needs.
Some unconscious presumptions about customers’ needs
raised difficulties for those salespeople who came from the
era of deficiency. The limited amount of goods and the
uniformity of supply and selection also induced their
thinking about the uniformity of demand. They looked at
the customers’ needs from a very personal and quite
narrow perspective and were keen to say ‘‘we don’t have
the item you are looking for’’ rather than interpret the
customers’ wishes and suggest offers on the basis of the
goods available. Most of them believed that there were
only two possible answers—‘‘no’’ and ‘‘yes’’. Discussions
revealed that the participants considered these answers to
be attributes of honest statements. As a result, a
paradoxical situation emerged: many of the salespeople
were well trained for dealing with the particular merchan-
dise at hand, yet they were unable to see connections
between different qualities of goods and their customers’
needs.
The communication necessary during payment appeared
to be a problematic issue in several training groups at the
contact completion stage. The sales staff were influenced by
an underlying preference to communicate with customers
as little as possible, and argued against the requirement to
properly enunciate the formalities involved in paying for
goods, such as the price payable as well as the amount of
change and the need to keep the receipt as proof of
purchase. They thought that it might frighten the
customers if the shop assistant suddenly started to talk to
them.
3.4. Elaboration of skills and patterns of behaviour in
accordance with the COC model
The videotaped role-play method was used to develop
the necessary skills for implementing the knowledge gained
from the COC model. Video enhanced sales training
programmes are generally used to transfer product
information (Honeycutt et al., 1993), but the videotaped
345
episodes allowed us to analyse the effects of verbal and
non-verbal communication as well. The starting point for
the discussions was often the potential eventual outcome
(purchase or other issues) of the customer’s visit to the
shop and the focus was placed on the means of commu-
nication, which either contributed to or worked against this
outcome. The participants worked in small groups of 10–14
members, focusing on different problems and performing
different roles during a 2 to 3-day course.
Most groups dealt with four major topics during the
training course:
(1) Elaboration of means of non-verbal communication.
(2) The direct communication process when two sales-
persons are serving a single customer.
(3) The direct communication process between a sales-
person and one customer.
(4) The direct communication process between a sales-
person and two customers.
The practice of every topic consisted of video-training
and different psycho-technical exercises that bound the
separate sessions into a whole. Here ‘‘psycho-technical’’
means the practical application of psychological principles
to the control and management of behaviour. It enabled us
to train the participant in the art of being at the centre of
attention in order to be able to perceive the characteristics
of others and focus on their principles of interpersonal
communication. For example, all group members became
focal characters at least once when the game, ‘‘compli-
ments’’, was played—everybody was asked to discern a
pleasant attribute or quality in the focal person and express
this to them properly. The task was sometimes difficult for
both the sender and receiver. But these exercises often
reduced tension, for example, when role players failed to
achieve a result and only acquired a broader perception
from the training experience.
Non-verbal communication was the focus of work after
the opening session of the video training. The participants
played the roles of customers and sales staff, using only
non-verbal communication. They looked as if they were
mute and usually sold and bought some imaginary
commodities, such as ten yellow buttons, a blue scarf,
etc. Every role-play was followed by discussion to reveal
the functions of the non-verbal means used. In order to
give the participants time to adapt and settle into their
group and the situation, there was no videotaping in this
session.
The key words from the second session referred to the
skills of recommending different goods and cooperating
with other sales staff. Two people took on roles as sales
assistants and tried to explain to customers the qualities of
goods selected from among a variety of goods available.
Each customer’s typical wish was tied up with their need to
find a present for somebody; and the cases became
gradually more complicated. In this and subsequent
sessions videotaped feedback was used.
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346 M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
The third session was the most difficult because of the
intensity of the role clarification. The customers had very
different intentions when entering the shop. For example,
they might have wanted to merely collect information as a
competitor or a journalist, to express their bad mood, to
shoplift, etc. The salesperson’s task was to behave properly
in their role and use every opportunity to offer the goods
that were on sale. These cases confirmed that selling
techniques are very useful tools in stressful situations—the
trainees only managed to ‘‘sell’’ some goods if they used
proper body language and verbal expressions.
The last session often created a convivial atmosphere in
the group. The participants were asked to role-play
customers and sales assistants in pairs and meet each
other’s needs. The members of the group had by then
acquired several skills and started to display very different
combinations of the customer role—mother with child,
teenager with friends, bosses and their secretaries, married
couples—these are just a few examples of the roles that
were used in this session. The exploitation of different cases
served to confirm the idea that customers’ needs, demands,
and behaviour patterns vary to a great degree and
salespeople have to recognise what the customers want
and wish.
Typically, the final case in the video training was often
completely opposite to the previous cases. Those playing
the role of shop assistants were quietly requested to do
everything in opposition to the character of their role. At
the beginning of the role-play, the members of the group
often did not understand what was going on and were
confused. But as soon as the deviant role behaviour
occurred, they immediately realised what their customers
would be feeling in this situation.
4. Evaluation of the model and conclusions
Hood, Vahlane and Kilis explain the meaning of
transition in the introduction to their book, ‘‘Transition
in the Baltic States—Micro-Level Studies’’: ‘‘Transition
has become a key word in contemporary thinking about
the series of complex changes taking place in the post-
socialist world. [y] Emerging market mechanisms increas-
ingly pervade the economy and society, and it is time to
carefully consider how economic actors and social groups
not just adapt to a new economic environment, but also
struggle to form the new rules of the game’’ (Hood et al.,
1997, p. 1). Customer communication is a sensitive affair at
both the interpersonal and societal levels. Society forms a
framework of behaviour patterns and relationships be-
tween customers and service staff. The economic condi-
tions in Soviet Bloc countries shaped a type of customer
communication, reflecting the rules of economic deficiency.
Changes in society created an urgent need for a new
pattern of behaviour in the service industry, including
salesperson–customer communication. The COC model
was created to be used as a tool for the development of a
new understanding and new skills to meet the requirements
of a market economy. More than a thousand sales staff
have taken similar courses in several post-socialist coun-
tries.
In this light it could be mentioned that the situation has
created new challenges for the training systems as well.
Mansfield (2004) analyses how the former Soviet econo-
mies have been reforming their systems of vocational
education and training for the past 12 years. He argues that
the ‘‘transition’’ economies still bear much of the legacy of
the previous system and culture, which was academic in
orientation, but there is an increasing tendency to follow
the western competence-based training systems and the
introduction of common or ‘‘core’’ skills. It has also been
shown that in introducing these approaches and concepts,
fundamental flaws appear, flaws that have not been
seriously addressed in the countries and cultures of their
origin. This is one of the lessons gained for the rest of the
world by these transitional societies, and hopefully, the
abovementioned model and training process can contribute
to the discussion of sales communication in retailing. We
proposed a model, which is easy to understand and
memorise.
The courses were evaluated in different ways and by
different people. The companies involved expressed posi-
tive opinions about the effectiveness of the training and the
improved level of motivation among their employees. They
also offered feedback after having participated in the
training programmes a number of times. Most of these
companies are successful and have adjusted well to the
conditions of a market economy. For example, Baltman
stores, as subsidiaries of the leading Estonian company,
Baltika, were several times among the Estonian TOP 10
list. Baltman’s sales staff earned praise for the good job
they were doing. At the beginning of 1996, they were
considered to be the best after a local radio station in the
capital city of Estonia, Tallinn, surveyed customers’
opinions in order to find the shop with the best level of
customer communication in the city. Ülle Sõstra conducted
a survey of Baltman, studying the influence of its strategy
on its customers in Estonia, and concluded that the friendly
and helpful behaviour of sales staff was an important
aspect contributing to the positive attitude towards the
Baltman brand (Sõstra, 1996).
Later, two interviews were conducted with key members
of the company. Meelis Milder (2004), the CEO of Baltika
for the last 15 years—throughout the transition period—
expressed the following ideas: ‘‘When the training pro-
gramme started in 1991, I had quite a sceptical attitude
towards it because I didn’t believe that it would be possible
to change people’s behaviour patterns so fast. The sales
manager convinced me to try because our new business
concept required that we should differ from others to a
large extent in all aspects—goods, service and overall
atmosphere in the shop. My doubts began to disperse when
my friends who bought from our shops appreciated the
better level of service than in other shops.’’ Herodes (2004),
the sales manager in those days said: ‘‘The shop-assistants
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M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
who have been trained according to this model are still our
best people, because they acquired good skills and gained
motivation from the feeling of being successful and
different from those who followed Soviet-type shop
assistant patterns of behaviour.’’
The sales staff representing the official distributor of
Nike participated in a training course where the COC
model was introduced in 1999. They kept a record of their
training process, evaluating its results from their own
personal perspective. The sales manager of the company
asked the participants to write essays giving feedback, and
33 out of 45 participants responded to this request
(Feedback essays 1999). Three aspects could be concluded
from these written submissions. First, most of the
respondents mentioned that it was easy to remember
different aspects of selling process because the visual aids
facilitated this process. Second, they were able to put their
own working experience into this framework. Third, the
role-plays enabled them to understand what kind of
behaviour was expected of them.
The participants of retraining groups, however, had
various opinions. It sometimes happened that some
members of the training groups were dissatisfied with the
training process or preferred to be passive. Four points
could be offered to explain this:
(1) some participants had a low level of motivation to
work in the group or for some reason disliked being
videotaped;
(2) they had had negative experiences in the past with
working in small groups;
(3) the problems in the group were associated with some
antagonistic relationships;
(4) the trainer was unable to deal with participant
frustration.
Lack of motivation or inherent opposition influenced
some participants—mostly members from the retraining
groups. Their instructor paid less attention to the reasons
for resistance and insisted on attending the course. For
example, one young man refused to participate in the video
training, but his boss coerced him into attending the
course. This shop assistant was passive all the time, simply
watched the activities of the others and only in the end
agreed to participate in the last exercise, taking on the role
of a non-service-oriented salesperson.
Some group members had poor skills for working in
small groups, especially in the training groups. These
participants would disrupt the activities of the whole
group. Intruders were the most frequent problem because
their chatting disturbed group work and violated the rule
of disclosing one’s opinion. Their failure to be either in the
positive or negative focus group disturbed both training
and learning.
The process of intensive study might have evoked ill
feeling that already existed due to past experience of intra-
group behaviour and organisational culture. Sometimes a
347
hostile attitude towards a colleague led to people taking
revenge. One of the role players ended up performing a
very complicated case because she/he intended to push the
other person into trouble.
Instant feedback is a special feature of role-playing and
video training. It leads to the desired results, but also
includes the risk of having a participant fail to accomplish
the task on several occasions. The trainer’s skill and
competence are crucial for noticing the signs of such a
situation and resolving it. Such an intensive learning
process is always linked to an intrapersonal reassessment
of knowledge, and sometimes the participants may lose
grasp of their emotional balance. This highlights an ethical
issue and one weakness of this training method. The
trainer’s shortcomings—things such as a superficial
approach to the work or other insufficiencies—can partly
account for any failure. Even a well-prepared and
competent instructor may encounter problems in commu-
nication training.
In Estonian society, a change has taken place in people
in all spheres of life. The COC model was directed towards
modifying behaviour patterns—aspirations and feelings
were addressed in order to involve the emotions, and the
videotaped role-plays created a predisposition to act
according to the new knowledge.
To sum up, first it should be mentioned that the
formation of the group played a crucial role in several
cases. Those applicants who passed the careful selection
process were much more active and enthusiastic during the
training than those groups (‘‘old groups’’) who attended
for the purpose of retraining. Indeed, the perceived success
created aspirations in the participants’ minds and increased
their self-esteem. Interestingly, those sales staff with a
background in the command economy were better
motivated when placed in ‘‘new groups’’.
Second, commonly shared attitudes, values, beliefs, and
behavioural patterns were under consideration during the
training courses. These aspects formed the organisational
culture that deals with intangible issues when people
belong to organisations. Organisational culture is in several
respects seen as an important aspect in the formation of a
customer service orientation (e.g., Wilson, 2001; Homburg
and Pflesser, 2000; Boyle, 1997; Langan-Fox and Tan,
1997). It is one of the key questions at the organisational
level in transition countries. Meyer and Møller (1999) claim
that the local organisational culture, having evolved within
a socialist environment, inhibited strategic change in
companies with an Eastern German background, while
Fey and Nordahl (1999), focusing on the positive, have
verified that it was a certain type of organisational culture
that led some Russian companies to perform successfully.
Therefore, the opportunity to design and develop a
customer-oriented organisational culture could be one of
the outcomes of our training programmes. Further
investigation should examine this potential.
The COC model is mainly evaluated in terms of mental
outcomes—for example, changes in attitudes, skills and
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348 M. Vadi, M. Suuroja / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 13 (2006) 339–349
impressions concerning the training sessions. Future
research should also use tangible measurements, such as
sales performance, when evaluating the model’s effective-
ness because sales training methodologies usually have one
main objective: to develop a productive salesperson.
In the mid-1990s, new topics also evolved within the
training programme—especially for groups comprised of
Baltman employees who required retraining. For example,
language skills were brought into focus. Hundred-word
vocabularies comprising expressions used in interpersonal
communication and names for items of clothing were
compiled in English, German, Russian and Finnish. The
salespeople acquired these vocabularies in two languages
and subsequently used this knowledge in their role-plays.
Lots of foreigners visit Baltman stores; thus training in
language skills helped facilitate communication with these
customers.
It has to be admitted that our paper has a limitation in
terms of moral categories because we have not analysed
whether the COC model actually furthers the manipulation
of customers. This idea is raised in the light of Oakes’s
book, The Soul of the Salesman: the Moral Ethos of
Personal Sales (1990), where he complains about the moral
ambiguity of sales training. It raises the question of the
moral consequences of a rapid change of behaviour
patterns without a prior in-depth analysis. Perhaps future
research could address this question.
The COC model has been used in training programmes
in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia for over a
decade, in fact, throughout the period of transition in these
countries. These training programmes provide a vivid
picture of the nature of the changes taking place in these
countries.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their supportive critiques of an earlier draft
of this paper.
The paper was prepared thanks to the support of the
Estonian Science Foundation, Grant no. 5527.
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