Ensuring Your Training Program Has Long Lasting Impact – How to Get an ROI on Training

Training is an important tool in your aresenal.  It can help you improve retail sales productivity, launch new products, impact customer service, and orient new retail team members to your business practices.  But, with that being said, one of the things that I hear from clients is that they feel that the investment in training is not as long lasting as they would wish.  There are two issues involved here: 

First is that many retail companies look at training as a “one and done” experience.  They will bring their team members into a classroom setting for an evening or for a day of instructor-led training and then assume that their employees will have seen the light. 

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  The truth is that interactivity, repetition and re-training are critical to ensureing team members retain your message and then execute effectively.  Consider holding weekly “Lunch & Learn” meetings of conference calls that allow you to present on an ongoing series of training topics. 
   
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  Another great tool for is e-learning for retailers.  You can host or purchase excellent training content on sales techniques, products, compliance, and operational practices for very low costs.  Plus the benefits are that your team members have acccess to the training 24×7 and can view it whenever and wherever they want!  
  

The second issue is a lack of follow-up, inspection, and relevance with regard to the retail training activities.  Keeping your training message top of mind is important so that you can imporove results and get an ROI from your training activities.  Here are five best practices that you can implement in order to get a longer lasting impact out of your training clases and programs.

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  Ask each attendee to email you a brief summary of the two most important points they took away from the training. Gather the feedback together and post the responses in a central location. After another two weeks email the responses to the group, along with any additional feedback that has occurred in the meantime.
  
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  Post statistics related to the retail training after it occurs. For instance, if your training was on reducing customer complaints, report complaint statistics at set intervals so attendees can see their progress.
  
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  Send out a quiz related to the training's after the initial session. Post the responses and award a prize for the “best” answers.
  
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  A week after the training, ask attendees what new skill or technique they have tried based on the materials covered in the program. When appropriate, post the anecdotes in a public place or mass email. Be sure to solicit feedback as to what worked well, what didn't go as smoothly, and what additional training is needed.
  
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  At the close of the training, ask each attendee to commit to trying 1-3 new skills from the program. Ask them to write them down, and let them know that the group will get back together to follow up and discuss techniques tried.
  

The keys to improving the results that you get from your instructor-led training and web-based retail training programs are creating an on-going training rhythm and following up on tracking the impact of your trainings.  When you repeat your message and inspect what you expect you will find that your training ROI will jump!

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David Goodwin is the CEO of Retail Training Services (RTS).  With over 100 years of operational experience in the retail sector the RTS team creates and delivers top quality e-learning and instructor-led training programs.  You can learn more about RTS services by visiting www.retailertrainingservices.com