At the supermarket recently a staff member on the public address system announced the latest offers available.

“Today you can get a free cholesterol test at the pharmacy department,” we were told. She then went straight on to announce that “in our bakery today we have a buy-one-get-one-free offer on ring doughnuts”.

A few of us shoppers caught each other’s eye and smiled at the incongruous link. Although it cheered up the shopping trip it made me think about the importance of promotions.

With Asda’s latest household income tracker confirming the largest year-on-year fall in family spending, every retailer is battling with the realisation that needs have overtaken wants on most shopping trips. This makes it even harder to tempt people to buy something they didn’t at the time realise they needed.

So how you carefully position and craft an offer based on price, bogofs or product linkages is a tricky business that forces retailers to think about how it matches the brand or whether it makes sense from the shoppers’ point of view.

I’m still to be convinced by a certain retailer’s tactic to try to persuade customers that they really should buy a mega bar of chocolate with a newspaper.

Promotions or special offers are all about selling and, as veteran retailers lament, this is a core skill that seems severely lacking in too many stores. Great sales people are worth their weight in gold and leave me awed when I buy something extra without minding.

It doesn’t have to be a store either. A maitre d’ recently succeeded in selling-up my order with side dishes, sauces and particular wine purely by the strength of her well-founded recommendations.

As we enter an era where every shop has to fight for every sale, there will surely be an even greater premium on great sales people. While some great retailers are born not made, it doesn’t mean that you can’t train great sales people.

Which comes down to that magic chemistry of confidence, product knowledge and the reading of customers’ minds, who may, or may not be thinking that today they need a cholesterol test and a doughnut.