Ongoing Staff Training
One of the most import reasons customers shop at independent juvenile retailers instead of big box stores and mega chains is knowledgeable sales people. Customers value dealing with sales people who are able to recommend the right product for their needs and explain the benefits and features of that product.
Unless your staff is better trained and more knowledgeable about your products than your competitors, you'll be competing primarily on price. This is a losing proposition for you, as it is next to impossible to compete on price with the big box retailers and mega chains given their huge buying power and economies of scale.
The good news is that having a well trained staff versed in the products you carry and being able to explain the benefits and features of each line will allow your store to stand out and be recognized as an expert in your niche. In addition, customers are willing to pay more for this type of knowledge and expertise.
Why You Should Spend the Time and Money to Train Your Staff
A retailer once said, "Why should I train my staff? They'll probably just leave anyhow." A wiser retailer replied, "What if you don't train them, and they stay?"
Think about this for a moment. If your staff is not up-to-speed on your products' benefits and features and is not able to recommend the right products to meet the needs of your customers, you're losing sales. Is it smart to invest in advertising and marketing to drive traffic into your business and then watch customers leave without buying? Of course not!
The cost of ongoing training in both time and money is minimal and the rewards are great.
If you close just ten percent more sales without increasing your advertising and marketing expenditures due to better training (which is not hard to do), what will that do for your bottom line?
Properly trained employees convert more shoppers into buyers, promote repeat business, and establish your store as an expert in your niche. You'll also experience higher employee morale, less employee turnover, better attitudes, a more pleasant shopping experience for your customers, and a more pleasant working environment.
Setting Up Your Ongoing Training Program
Holding a one-time or periodic training session for your employees is nowhere near as effective as holding regularly scheduled weekly training sessions. You get more results with weekly training sessions, as you can cover training topics in detail so that your staff is able to internalize and then use the training on the sales floor with customers. Execution of the training is more important than knowing what to do but not following through.
Include the following in your weekly training sessions:
- Any changes to your product line
- Benefits and features of your products
- Which products are the best choices
for certain needs and uses
- Upcoming sales
- Any operational issues
Sales topics that should be covered in your weekly training sessions include:
- Best qualifying questions to ask
- How to determine customer needs
- How to overcome customer objections
- Best ways to ask for the sale
- How to use scarcity and urgency to close the sale
- How to create add on sales by recommending products that go with or complement items
Each week's training session should be long enough to cover in some detail that week's topics. 30-minute training sessions work well. If you decide to have a longer training session, try to keep them less than one hour.
Remember what your objective is with your training sessions: to train your staff so that they are more knowledgeable about the products your store sells and the best way to sell them so that you convert more shoppers into buyers. Try to limit the amount of time you devote to operational issues, as they rarely help you make more sales.
You should consider modeling the selling process of your best salesperson if that person is getting above average results. Build your sales training around the best of what this person does. Find out before your training sessions exactly how your top performer handles different customer scenarios and the most effective ways to close sales, and then teach the strategies and techniques that are done right to the rest of your staff.
Bottom line: you cannot afford to have untrained or poorly trained sales staff handling your customers. Carve out training time each week and train your staff on product knowledge and selling techniques. The payoff will be huge and will allow your store to close more sales and become known as the expert in your retail niche.
Editorial provided by Joe Reuth. Joe is publisher of RetailBusinessOwner.com, a website that provides tools for retail store owners, including forms, manuals, spreadsheets, tactics, and strategies to help independent retailers run a more profitable business.
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