Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Have Suppliers Train Staff & Shoppers

If a supplier wants you to carry their products, they should be interested in your staff selling those products well and in your customers using the products to best advantage. To help you achieve these goals, deal with suppliers who are eager to provide your staff and customers with professional-quality training.
     The key qualifier is "professional-quality." You don't want the time of your staff or customers taken with instructions that are confusing or with trainers who know their subject thoroughly but bore people to tears or, worse yet, make people feel dumb when the trainer answers their questions.
     Checking out the training is a chance to team up with retailers who operate businesses like yours. Ask the supplier to put you in contact with other retailers where the supplier has done training.
     The best of the suppliers will collaborate with you in setting up customer how-to sessions as advertised special events, whether it's about how to configure that twenty-speaker sound system your store sells or about the intriguing ways to tie that scarf your store features as a fashion accessory. Look at customer training as one of the ways you draw in shoppers and give superb service.
     Professional training of your staff is essential when it comes to products you're introducing. New products with the highest potential for success are those that solve a customer's problems in an innovative way. But the greater the degree of innovativeness, the greater the degree of unfamiliarity to the customer and, therefore, the greater the need for the salesperson to learn how to tutor the customer. And it's not just about how to use the product. It's how to get the best from using the product and how to avoid the sorts of problems that lead purchasers to return products.

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