Retailers ordered to 'hard-sell' the lottery

Shopkeepers are to be taught hard-sell techniques in an effort to bolster National Lottery ticket sales. They face losing their terminals if they do not reach targets.

Staff in 2,000 struggling outlets, mainly small shops falling short of Camelot's £1,500-a-week target turnover, will be retrained by a sales force that will go into action in the New Year.

They will be taught to suggest to customers they buy a lottery ticket or scratchcard in a development that is bound to grate with shoppers already bombarded with sales messages.

The National Lottery operator said stores would be offered a six-month grace period to improve their performance after the 200-strong sales team has gone into action in January.

The announcement on failing terminals comes as part of Camelot's effort to stop profits falling. Last year, sales of tickets fell by 2 per cent to £4.98bn, with three consecutive annual falls in sales since the £5.5bn peak achieved in the year ending March 1998.

A Camelot spokesman said the training was part of a drive to raise the number of lottery players – which stands at 30 million – but he denied they were encouraging a hard-sell, preferring to call it a "proactive" method of raising sales.

"We are saying we will help some retailers reach this target as it is in our interests to do so. It can be as simple as asking a customer if they want to buy a scratchcard when they come in for a newspaper or a pint of milk," he said. "But if they continue not to reach the sales target, we will remove the terminal and put it somewhere where the target can be reached. We are ultimately aiming for maximum sales to put into good causes," he said of the National Lottery, which has raised £10.8bn for good causes and made 1,200 millionaires since it started in 1994.

Some community outlets in rural areas that are less busy than their town and city counterparts will be immune from the £1,500 minimum target.

The Camelot spokesman said retailers and trade associations had responded positively to the minimum weekly sales target and regarded it as an ideal opportunity for those competing for terminals.

"We have got a database of more than 80,000 shops who want a terminal and we can never hope to meet this demand," said the spokesman.

Roy Turnbull, a former president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, supported the initiative but conceded it might put some stores in danger. "I am obviously sympathetic with those shops that could lose terminals and, in some cases, it will put them on the borderline of staying open or closing. But Camelot are being as understanding and thoughtful as they can be," said Mr Turnbull, who owns two newsagents near York.

He said the pressure to perform would lead to "hard selling" in shops desperate to keep their terminals. "If you want to keep your terminal, a hard sell is one of the ways to do it but it will have to be used carefully, with regular customers rather than strangers."

Up to 300 shops a year lose their terminals to a competitor and this may increase under Camelot's new regime.