Quick Facts About The Impact of Retail Training Programs

It seems that the retail environment is increasingly challenging every day.  With retailers being squeezed by competition from the Internet, being challenged to defend their base of established customers and facing difficulties navigating new marketing programs it is becoming clear that the best way to differentiate their businesses is by providing a top quality customer experience.

As retail sales training specialists, we are often asked to help our clients with improving their ability to deliver on their customer service promises.  Our clients know that training pays off because studies by leading researchers find that retailers who make ongoing investments in training their team members significantly outperform their competitors.

As an example, a recent study sponsored by the American Society For Training and Development or ASTD found that companies which employed training on a regular basis created profits that were 45% above the market average and 86% better than firms that have not made increased investments in their team members’ development.

Another study by Zenger and Folkman showed that retailers who invest in ongoing training for their employees had:

• Profits that were 4-6 times higher than their competitors
• Revenues that were up to 6 times higher the industry average
• Employees that were 10 times more engaged in making the business successful
• A 50% reduction in employee turnover
• Employees who were more satisfied with their pay (even though it was comparable)
• Team members who were 4-5 times more willing to go the extra mile for their customers

According to the same study, all of this resulted in customer satisfaction ratings that were 1.5 times better than the industry average.

Having an ongoing sales and customer service training program like our Top Check Selling System is a perfect way to ensure that your team engages in your business and with your customers.  Once you have laid the foundation you can then build on it with product training, management development and more.  The key is to remember that having an ongoing retail training program will help to differentiate your business, drive customer loyalty and build your retail business.