A retail client of ours, one with a national presence, was asking about our work with associate performance and how to move them from being just friendly to being real salespeople.  Now we both agreed that at some point we would need to talk about what the senior leadership vision is around service and selling and what the organization’s messages are to the stores.  At the same time they’re looking for some quicker impact ideas.

We have helped hundreds of retailers improve both their service to customers and their bottom-line results.  Sometimes it’s a fairly tactical training intervention and sometimes it’s a large scale consulting engagement starting with senior leaders all the way through the organization.  Both create results; some are more long lasting than the other.  It seems to me that for retailers who tend to think fast on their feet and want lightening quick results, slowing down to explore the full organizational operational and systemic alignment isn’t a natural bent for them.

Focuing on a targeted group at store-level though isn’t an all bad idea either.  Training not only builds skills to improve relations and results but is also a way to communicate what the organization expects.  Even if they haven’t figured everything out yet.  Can training be a beginning phase or should it always come after exhaustive organizational analysis.  I’d like to hear your thoughts on this one.  Tweet us @mohrretail or just post a comment on this blog.

Posted in Editorial
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About MOHR Retail

For more than 30 years, MOHR Retail has developed the critical people-to-people skills needed to create results in the retail industry—and we’re just getting started. Through innovative classroom and online learning methods, as well as our ongoing national retail research projects, we continue to stay on top of the trends so we can fuel the success of specialty stores, chain stores, outlets, catalogue retailers, department stores, and more. Nowhere does learning meet experience as it does in a MOHR Retail training program.