Selling Without a Script — with Daria Tcherkachina

0:00Ron:This is Retail in America, and I'm Ron Thurston. For two seasons, this show has been about the people, the stores, the technology solutions, and the operators reshaping how America shops. Season three is sharper. It's about the human edge of selling and what it actually takes to win a customer in a world where algorithms handle the easy part, AI agents handle the decisions, and the only thing left worth paying for the business. a premium for is a human who actually knows how to sell. Every guest this season has built something, run something, or figured something out about that topic. So I'm excited to get into this today because my guest is Daria Chirkachina.

0:47Ron:She climbed from door-to-door sales to running luxury sales floors at Harry Rosen on Bloor Street, co-founded a bespoke suiting studio in Toronto whose clientele included Drake, Built Lighthouse Immersives entire North America retail operations from scratch to 27 markets, growing per customer spend from four to 500 % increases, and consulted on retail operations for Johnny Depp's art exhibit in New York City. She now runs a company called Public Service, which is a consulting agency built on one belief, that the customer experience is the most underrated revenue strategy in the entire retail business.

1:32Ron:And that's why I'm very excited to have Daria on the show today. So welcome, Daria.

1:38Daria Tcherkachina:Ron, thank you so much for having me. I have been looking forward to this conversation more than I can say. Getting to talk about something that, you know, we're both genuinely obsessed with.

1:51Ron:Yes.

1:51Daria Tcherkachina:Is not a conversation that I have every day. So thank you.

1:54Ron:I love it. You're welcome. And we are new friends. You know, sometimes people I have on the shows I've known for 30 years. You and I recently met. But the minute I heard you speak about your, again, obsession about frontline and sales and training and what it really takes to build a business, I was like, we need to hear your story. The audience needs to hear more about you and what you've built. And I believe as we spoke, I said in the intro and we spoke on the phone, we are at a time where sales skills, and I don't just say service, I say sales with intention. The sales experience of being very human to human, connected, building a business is a core foundation of this next iteration of retail.

2:48Ron:And believe that we've always said it, but I don't know that we fully believed it. And now I think it's time. It's time to talk about sales and why this is so important. So if you don't mind, Daria, walk us through a bit of your career. Start at the door-to-door, you know, the sales where you really learned how to sell up until the last several years. Give us an overview of you.

3:14Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. I've spent the last 22 years in retail and there's absolutely nothing I'd rather be doing with my time or my life. I've held all kinds of job titles imaginable from, like you said, door-to-door sales to a sales rep, store manager, regional manager. I built a 27 market retail operation across North America with Lighthouse Immersive. I consulted and I just love what I do. And I have this big, ridiculous dream of changing how the world views customer service one project at a time.

3:51Ron:And why is that your dream? Where did that come from?

3:56Daria Tcherkachina:I believe that customer service is the easiest way to facilitate connection. And that is something the world needs so much of right now. Yeah, agreed.

4:08Ron:So let's go back to Lighthouse Immersive. What is that for people that don't know? and what did you walk into when you arrived and what was it when you left?

4:22Daria Tcherkachina:Lighthouse Immersive is an incredible company that brought immersive experiences to North America and I got the privilege to develop their retail sector for them. So gift stores, essentially. When I arrived, the company was doing, it was just one store here in Toronto and the company was doing$3 per head. in a venue seeing thousands of customers a day. I got the team to$15 consistently across 27 markets in North America. And the way I got there was not by revolutionizing the product or the pricing strategy. I gave my team purpose. We were helping guests make memories. We were no longer selling t-shirts or cashing people out.

5:14Daria Tcherkachina:We were a part of the experience. I built a full training ecosystem that changed how each member viewed their job. They stopped seeing themselves as people selling merch on the side of an art show and started seeing themselves as a human layer of something that people came to feel. And when you understand that you're not just processing transactions or cashing people out, everything changes. And that$3 to$15 jump was not a sales result, but a purpose result. The revenue was just proof.

5:54Ron:I mean, it's fascinating, Daria, to listen to you talk about transactions that had a significant increase, but still relatively small in dollars at$15. But the idea here of not giving it a script, not giving it exactly do this, stand here, do that, which can feel very transactional. You made it very transformational and emotional and connected to an art experience. So where is that? Tell me more about that passion for not using a script and thinking about it being a human first experience.

6:35Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. I think scripts and closing techniques, you know, that is transactional. When you think connection and being of service to somebody who is in front of you, that's the whole thing. That's where, you know, connection starts. You get to build a relationship. You get to make somebody's day. You get to listen to their story. And connection tends to ripple. and when people feel like you're not working them, when people feel that they're, you're there with them, it changes the whole interaction, transaction, right? And you get to build a relationship and to, to change how the person left that exhibit, the store, the, you know, hotel, whatever it is that wherever you're working, basically.

7:32Ron:So it isn't in your experience, it's not about what they're selling. It's about the experience they're creating. Right. From hearing. Yeah, absolutely.

7:44Daria Tcherkachina:And it's about being curious and truly caring about who is in front of you. Right. Adding that human layer and human connection, I think, is everything because we we love experiencing the best customer service on the planet, right? But for some reason, people in customer service roles, you know, I don't want to say they don't want to give it. Maybe they're not trained properly on how to deliver world-class customer service. And that's where I would like to change the game.

8:23Ron:And I'm going to get to, you have a specific framework and want to get there about how to do it. But I want to think, I want to take a step back and think about the industry because it's been built on big training programs that give very specific direction about what to say and what to do. And I've been someone, I think this is where you and I are similar, of like the experience you create is the experience that person needs at that time in a language, in a way, in an energy that's right for that customer. And you can't put it in a box and say, this will work for everyone. If you do this and stand here and say this, it's going to result in a sale.

9:09Ron:I believe you hire great people who are natural connectors and have the natural ability to engage and create a level of comfort and connection. and then you start to talk about product. And it sounds like you've had a similar path of like, it doesn't really matter what it is we're going to sell today. I'm going to teach you how to connect.

9:35Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. And I think that can take you, you know, on so many avenues and you're developing that skill of connection that you will need regardless of whether you're going to become, you know, a pilot or a neurosurgeon, if you are in a customer service, customer facing role right now, this is your training ground, right? And once you know how to connect, that skill is so transferable and so necessary too.

10:08Ron:Agreed. Agreed. When it's necessary, so I spend quite a bit of time with kind of college, university students, and saying they may not want to go into retail. But what I tell them is learn how to sell. Work in retail to learn how to sell because you'll be better as a candidate. You'll be better as a leader. You'll be better connecting with your team. You know, all of it is so human in how we build relationships. And if you learn it in retail, it's a great place to start. I'm sure you would agree.

10:43Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. You know, going, having that experience of door-to-door sales where I was absolutely petrified. I did not, I barely spoke English. I didn't have any product knowledge. I didn't have any polish to me. Right. But what I had was my ability to stay present with the person in front of me. And that experience, you know, learning to connect with people and learning how to connect with people quickly. I am absolutely comfortable of, you know, put me in front of the Queen of England. I am just fine. Right. And I will know how to connect and handle myself because I got an opportunity to learn those skills.

11:29Ron:Which is incredible. and it sounds like in some ways self-taught. I could say that. Or did you have people around you and mentors who taught you these skills? You know what?

11:43Daria Tcherkachina:I think early on, it was definitely self-taught. It was just a realization of, okay, how do I survive in here? Ah, okay. My ability to connect is moving the needle. I am getting somewhere right now. And along the way, of course, I was so fortunate to have so many incredible mentors that, you know, polished me up and nurtured me and nurtured my skill and my talent for connection. And I think most importantly, I just, I have this obsession with what I do. I love being in retail. I love the impact that I get to create every day by talking to people, right? And I feel like I have the ability to leave them better than what I found them.

12:31Daria Tcherkachina:And what a privilege.

12:33Ron:What a privilege. Yeah. And often experiences that we create for free. That's the way I kind of describe the business. Retail is an industry that doesn't require, in majority of cases, no price of entry. There's free access to human connection in retail. We sell human connection for free. Who doesn't want that? And we have no expectations of you. We just want to build relationships.

13:05Daria Tcherkachina:Yes, absolutely. And imagine a world where we feel more connected, right? It's not, you know, on an average, how many times a week do we see our friends or our loved ones? And on average, how many times a week do we get to experience customer service? We go grab a coffee. We drop off our dry cleaning. We greet our post office guy, right? We call Amazon for return label. Imagine a world where each of those interactions, you know, fills you up and you feel more connected and you leave better than, you know, last five minutes. Right? Yeah.

13:51Ron:Life-changing, to your point earlier. Very much so. Yeah. So let's dig into, you know, now you teach this. You teach this perspective to organizations. And I want to give you the chance to speak about the logistics here. So you have a framework. I want to make sure I've used the words correctly, of five elements, which are purpose, presence, connection, curiosity, and care. And so if you think about those five elements, what do most retail organizations miss on when you've been brought in? And where do you really lean heavily? And just tell us more about what you bring for those that would be interested in having you come in and teach their teams.

14:42Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. I think curiosity without a question is where I tend to lean in the hardest, right? Because on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, when a guest walks through your door, most associates see a transaction, not a human. They see a potential sale instead of somebody with a story, instead of somebody with a reason for being there. and a moment they're trying to navigate, right? A curious person sees someone they're trying to get to know and not as a closing or sales technique, but just because they're so curious about who's in front of them. The same kind of curious they would be about their friend's new boyfriend or their friend's vacation they just came back from, right?

15:37Daria Tcherkachina:Because curiosity changes everything. It changes the questions we ask, how we listen, what we recommend, and how. And the customer feels that difference immediately. Curiosity is not just one of those five elements that I teach. It is the glue that holds them all together. You know, without curiosity, purpose, presence, care, connection, it's just theater essentially, right? You're performing instead of truly getting to know the person in front of you. Without curiosity, you know, purpose is just a mission statement. Presence, it's polish, you know, and care becomes an assumption. And curiosity is the one thing that makes all of those five elements actually mean something.

16:32Beautiful.

16:33Ron:And when you meet a team who, or maybe someone on the team who isn't naturally curious, who has been doing it the same way for a long time without real thought into it, how do you inspire someone to become more curious in that? Or can you, I guess is my question.

16:57Daria Tcherkachina:I think I try to give those people purpose. Right. When you give them purpose of just, you know, to somebody can be like, can we be the most memorable person in the room today? Can we try to change this customer's or this grumpy customer's day? Can you put a smile on their face? I think that flips a switch from someone just going through the motions to someone becoming of service for that day or that shift. Yeah, agreed.

17:37Ron:And when you think back to your career, maybe particularly Harry Rosen comes to mind, that's so rooted in long-term customer experiences, long-term relationships. Curiosity becomes an important component of that because people's lives change. So every time they come in, the curiosity is it's not a one time. I check the box. I've been curious. Like curiosity builds on itself over time. Would you agree with that?

18:13Daria Tcherkachina:Absolutely. And you get to develop that relationship and connection, right? Because you cannot develop anything real. You cannot develop loyalty without being genuinely curious about the person in front of you. Right.

18:30Ron:So if I think, Daria, about the framework, you know, kind of the word that I think is sometimes hard to teach is presence. And often we speak about it in terms of leadership presence. It's been a competency that has been used in the industry. How do you think about presence when it comes to sales? Is it confidence? What is it that someone like you has that can now teach that to others? What does that mean?

19:02Daria Tcherkachina:Presence, I'm so glad that you asked that question because in my world, in my framework, presence is something that is actually tangible that we can measure. It is how your associates show up. Do they have their product knowledge locked in? Are they trained on their operational standards? Do they greet a customer within the 10 seconds of them walking in? And is that greeting, hi, can I help you? Or welcome, it's so good to see you. Right? Presence is the uniform, the training, the greeting, the posture, the tone of voice. it's all the behind-the-scenes work that creates the impression of authority and credibility essentially you have three seconds to make sure that somebody trusts you and presence is everything that happens in those three seconds and everything you've done to prepare for them it's not a feeling it's it's the sum of every operational decision that you've made the before the customer walked in and you can train it and you can measure it and i'm sure we can agree that you can see it the

20:22Ron:moment that someone steps onto the floor yes see it and and feel it too yeah and and through your work, not just with sales teams, with the leaders who observe and coach these people, how do you, how does that translate into leadership skills? Are they going through the same experiences? Are you teaching them coaching on your, on your five principles? What's the, what's the way you make sure it happened the minute Daria leaves? How do you ensure that, that that continues when you're not in the building?

21:01Daria Tcherkachina:um that's a great question ron i think that i am able to quickly gauge who needs what in that moment i think i've been you know again the privilege of being in a sales role for so long i can read the room and for most of the roles that you know and most of the companies that i got i go into, I have been in their shoes. So I think by adapting my approach and really seeing the person in front of me, I am able to deliver. And so far, it's been great. I think my, it's working my, I think my greatest achievement or my greatest pleasure, the thing that brings me happiness in my work is that most of the time on the projects that I've consulted, I am not invited back there.