retail manager training

If you ever doubted that retail is its own breed, take a generic leadership development course. You’ll quickly discover that what applies in other types of organizations doesn’t necessarily translate. It’s not just the setting — although the environment certainly is a factor — it’s the nature of the challenges, the dynamics of the different people…

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retail manager skills

We’re often asked what key skills and behaviors store managers, district leaders, and other retail leaders need to succeed in today’s challenging retail environment. While the retail world continues to go through disruption and upheaval, we’ve seen through our continuing research over the years that there are a few core, foundational attributes that are consistently…

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Watching the Olympics on TV is a completely different experience from watching it in person. For one, when you’re watching on TV, you’re entirely focused on one specific event, and one particular heat or match. But in an Olympic track and field stadium, as an example, a number of track events might be taking place…

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retail hiring

Whether it’s preparing for the holiday ramp-up or gearing up for peak demand seasons that affect your niche — like the busy spring season for home improvement stores — at various points in the year, retail managers will turn their attention to recruiting and interviewing to staff up. When there’s a tight labor market, this task can…

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customer experience

The National Retail Federation’s Big Show is upon us, and once again, the digital transformation of retail is front and center: Topics like the latest disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence, and innovative apps and new ecommerce developments abound. At the same time, we know that tech, on its own, isn’t the cure-all for retail’s latest disruptive…

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With the holiday season is in full swing, the new year will be here before you know it. For store leaders, getting people on board and committed to new initiatives will be critical to setting the stage for a successful year ahead. Now’s the time to be thinking about communicating new directives and making sure…

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retail coaching

When you send a district manager or retail store leader through a training program, it’s an investment—of time, money, and effort, not to mention the fact that they’re going to be away from their daily responsibilities. But it’s also an investment in the future of the business. It’s a down payment on the results and…

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retail omnichannel

Every new technology announcement in the world of retail is guaranteed to generate a lot of buzz. Take Amazon’s Dash Button, for example. Press a button, and you’ve instantly placed an order for those common, high-volume commodity items. Convenience for the consumer, more valuable data on customer buying habits for Amazon, more talk of robots taking…

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retail trends

It seems like every time you turn around there’s another gloomy story of “retail’s apocalypse.” While it’s true that brick and mortar retail is facing an array of challenges right now, change isn’t a new thing in retail. In fact, retail is one of the most adaptable industries, which is why it’s had so many…

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retail online training

E-learning is an attractive option in retail, especially when you’re making the tough call about whether or not to take people off the floor and put them into a classroom for a training workshop. But depending on what kind of training you’re doing—and what kind of outcomes you need to achieve—the choice isn’t always so…

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