With summer quickly coming to an end and we look ahead to the biggest, most important selling season in retail, we wanted to ask you, who’s leading your team to battle during this make-it-or-break-it time of year? (And yes, that’s our fearless leader, Kevin Graff, suited up and ready to win at this crazy game we call Retail!)
All joking aside, retail is a battle. To win, you certainly need a strong, well-trained team, with every team member understanding their role and executing to plan without fail, or people die…ok, that’s dramatic, but sales die and eventually retailers end up dropping out of the battle altogether.
We used to have to prove the importance of frontline training to retailers; many didn’t even have any formal sales training in place for their most important brand ambassadors. Today, we find most retailers do have something in place for sales training (but amazingly, still not all – if this is you, please do something about it – call us today, we can help right away!).
The huge gaps seem to be at the leadership level; every role from Store Manager to VP of Retail Operations. These individuals are often times not receiving any training, yet they are leading the charge into battle every day. That’s retail suicide! While most leaders in retail are well equipped to handle the technical aspects of their jobs, so many have never been trained to actually lead and manage their teams … the critical roles that support store level. Their roles have a direct impact on store performance, yet a lot of leadership teams still lack synergy, work in silos and struggle with communication. In a lot of cases, the sales teams in retail organizations have better training for the role they play than any of the Managers and leaders at their head office! That’s backwards when you think about the trickle-down effect that great leadership (or not-so-great leadership) has in an organization.
At Graff Retail, we talk all the time about the potential in retail stores and we focus our efforts on providing various training solutions to drive performance at store level. But what about the potential in your leadership teams? What kind of ongoing training are they receiving? If you are having a revelation and now realize just how little training is in place for your Retail Leaders and you’re getting nervous about the upcoming major selling season, it’s never too late for a battle plan.
A great place to start? Check out a few of the Leadership solutions we are offering this fall:
Get Managing Online Training System
And if you haven’t registered your store managers to our One-Day Retail Manager’s Bootcamp yet, be sure to do so now!