to hold (one’s) hand

Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast number 856: Training Salespeople.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast episode 856. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

This episode is, like all of our episodes, one that has a Learning Guide. You can find that guide at ESLPod.com.

Today we’re going to talk about training salespeople – people who, well, sell things. Let’s get started.

[start of dialog]

Our company brought in a consultant to do sales training for our store. For some reason, we’d been getting some complaints from customers.

Consultant: My job in this training is to help your store improve its customer satisfaction, so that it can attract and retain more customers. When you interact with customers, you represent this store. It is very important that, from the get- go, customers are greeted in a friendly and positive way.

Employee: Sometimes, people are really rude. They don’t even say “hello” back.

Consultant: That may be true, but it’s still your job to make