Train Yourself to Profit from Product Training

As Forbes tells it, Samsung’s ready to recruit retailers to go to war over sales of smartphones and related devices. In the third quarter of 2012, Samsung shipped almost twice as many devices as did Apple. Still, Samsung is choosing their battles carefully. At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced that, because of retail partner reluctance, Samsung won’t be releasing their Windows RT device in the U.S.
     The concerns have to do with the projected costs of training shoppers about the benefits of Windows RT over Windows 8 when consumers still aren’t firmly convinced of the benefits of Windows 8 itself.
     If shoppers are convinced of those benefits, though, Samsung could help retailers appropriate a tactical battlefield advantage from Apple Retail Stores: Train customers how to use the products they buy from you. All sorts of retailers can turn a profit by training customers. The opportunities aren’t limited to high-tech items. Food retailers are charging for cooking lessons, and sporting goods retailers for skill-building clinics. Even if you don’t charge a fee, training customers can help your bottom line by increasing product attractiveness.
     Here are a few research-based tips on getting the best from product training:

• Set reasonable expectations about ease of learning. If you think the process will be tough, give fair warning. If there are multiple skills to learn, teach one at a time before asking the learner to combine them. Researchers at University of South Carolina and University of Colorado-Boulder find that when consumers have reasonable expectations, their evaluations of the products are more accurate. On the other hand, if the learning process is much more difficult than they’d anticipated, they rate the product quality more negatively. 
• Accommodate different learning styles. An important example of this comes from research at State University of New York-Buffalo and Indiana University: With the people who learn best by following instructions, give brief lessons plus some spacing between. With the people who learn best by actual experience, give longer lessons and/or lessons that come closer together. 
• Involve a variety of the learners’ senses and capabilities. Tell them in words, give it to them in writing, demonstrate it to them, have them move their muscles to demonstrate it to you or others. A broad range of research over the years confirms that this helps people acquire skills more easily and use the skills in more situations. 

Click below for more: 
Turn Product Training into a Profit Center 
Give Customers a Clear Sense of Progress