Whatever business we are in - retail, services, manufacturing or professional - we are all in the business of sales. Competition is tough for everyone, so how do we persuade potential customers to buy from us?

Geoff Burch, speaker and author (known as the alternative business guru, mainly due to his unorthodox delivery) believes that we should expect everyone who works with us, to use simple questions to gain information and conduct basic sales. In other words, he believes sales takes place in every facet of our business, not just the front line. Our accounts department speaks to our customers. Everyone who works for us is an ambassador and has a part to play.

Burch advocates recruiting people for attitude, personality and character and training for skills -not an entirely new concept by any means but do we focus too much on the job specification and not enough on the attitude?

We experience, almost on a daily basis, the frustrations of poor attitude, something everyone can identify with in many retail outlets. Don't we find the comment ''everything we've got is out'' so incredibly annoying? We were likely to be asking for something in a particular size or colour, but this is often the only response we get. How much more would that person sell to us if they asked a few questions and explored what the alternatives might be - or just simply made more effort to be vaguely interested and alert.

To quote from Burch's book: (Writing on the Wall), ''one of the great misunderstandings of sales is what is required is gift of the gab''.

Nothing can actually be further from the truth. What he actually calls it is the ''gift of the ear hole'' - in other words being a good listener. Listening to our customers' needs, gathering information, asking questions to enable us to establish their desires and selling them what they want and what they value.

I loved Burch's story about the time he went into a shop to buy a book. The shop didn't have one left on display but offered him a coffee while they got one from stock. He then saw someone ''legging it'' up the road, obviously off to the local bookshop to buy the book. A no-profit exercise, but the customer didn't escape to sample the opposition. Who knows what else he would buy while he was waiting and he would certainly return... wouldn't he?