Imperial Tobacco teams with Condor to boost sales inflight

Sales staff training is very important to Imperial Tobacco’s global travel retail strategy, both on the ground and in the air. Motivated, knowledgeable and engaging people can be the final influential link in the long chain of ensuring the right brands and products are in the right locations at the right price. It’s seen as a vital addition to the sales ‘toolbox’, ensuring that staff are product aware and understand the differences between tobacco blends and strengths, being able to recommend alternatives and explain allowances.

Just how effective training can be has been proven recently in a joint training workshop series run by Imperial Tobacco in partnership with Condor Airlines during
Winter 2016/17. Condor offers a range of cigarettes to passengers on flights outside the EU, including the brands West and Gauloises, so training is imperative that crew are fully up to speed not just on the brands, but also on the latest legal requirements.

Imperial Tobacco’s Sales and Marketing Operations Manager Europe, Jonas Harder worked with Condor’s Training Team to engage with 500 crew members over five separate sessions, explaining the heritage, characteristics and key selling points of each Imperial Tobacco brand and outlining the current legal framework surrounding tobacco display, packaging, presentation etc. “We also discussed how crew could improve their sales techniques and gave each attendee memo cards with easy to recall key facts,” says Harder.

Each interactive session lasted an hour and, adds Harder, “It gave us a superb opportunity to talk to crew members directly and discuss all sorts of topics; even ways to fill the bar trolleys. Feedback from Condor and the crew was fantastic and we’re now looking at ways to further improve the learning experience for crew in future workshops.”

Condor’s Susanne Gier, Consultant Quality & Training, was equally enthusiastic: “This training has been tremendously useful for the crew and we’re sure that their greater knowledge and understanding will have a direct impact on the category.” A typical crew response was that the workshops were: “Very informative and delivered in a creative and engaging way.”

For Imperial Tobacco this is the perfect crew response. “We’re looking forward to repeating this exercise again with Condor in the future; sharing more ideas and sales strategies with crew  to not only grow sales of Imperial’ brands onboard but to drive the category in general,” concludes Harder.