Have to say, I totally agree that there is a retail issue going on here.
The vast majority of smartphone buyers are just ordinary consumers, ie - not technical people. Their source of information for the best phone to buy will come from a variety of sources: what they read about, what they see on TV adverts, what they talk about with others, and their experience going to the store, and trying a few phones out, and asking for advice - it's here, in this last and final step that actual buying decisions are made, and if sales staff don't even bother to suggest trying a Windows Phone, well, it isn't really going to help Nokia turn things around.
Nokia (and Microsoft) do need to take some of the blame though. When it comes to stuff like television advertising, short of sponsoring the whole of Channel 5 for a while there, I don't feel that I'm regularly seeing ads for Windows Phone. By contrast, I do see ads for the iPhone quite regularly, as well as HTC and Samsung's Android devices. Nokia & Microsoft need to sort this out and fast.