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8 Tips How to Hold a Profitable Employee Meeting

One of the best things you can do for your business -especially if you are a luxury retailer – is to have a weekly meeting with your crew. An employee meeting an hour before your store opens lets you share information, give updates and focus everyone on sales.

Unfortunately, meetings are rarely held because managers don’t know what sections to organize a meeting around. So here you go…

Here’s my plan so you don’t waste employees’ time.

1. Begin by Continue reading 8 Tips How to Hold a Profitable Employee Meeting »

3 Deadliest Words In Retail Sales Training

The three deadliest words in retail sales training are, “I get it.” They are a form of short-hand that discounts the need for further explanation as in a friend talking to another friend about being dumped, “I get it, you’re bitter, go on.”

How often do you hear that in a film, on the TV or say it to your friends? I’ll bet a lot.

I have created some fairly expansive sales training programs that take about a month for an employee to fully be trained. They all end with Continue reading 3 Deadliest Words In Retail Sales Training »

Best Retail Employee Training Adds To Design

I’m in Chicago today staying at the Hyatt at McDonalds Hamburger U. It is an unbelievably beautiful complex.

But this post isn’t about that…

A buddy of mine picked me up to go to dinner with his daughter and granddaughter at the Weber Grill. As soon as we stepped in the door we found a life-size bronze of a guy cooking on a Weber grill. I asked the hostess, “What’s with the bronze man?”

She told us how George Stephen purchased a metal shop that made buoys for Lake Michigan. He came up with the idea of the Weber Grille based on those buoys. The went from fabricating buoys to fabricating BBQs.

She was:

Personal.
Professional.
Perfect.

The food and the service were great and I would tell my friends, “You gotta go there.” The servers and the hostess had obviously been well trained but they hired above average people who could be trusted to make it their own without sacrificing the story details that made it interesting.

Contrast that to the All Saints Spitalfields store in SOHO I recently visited. It is an intriguing store design filled with hundreds (thousands?) of Singer sewing machines.

As I looked around I also saw a bunch of rams’ horns on the wall so I walked over to a girl who was stationed as a greeter…

“Excuse me,” I said “what’s with the horns and Singer machines?”
“Oh,” she said, “they’re just decoration” as she went back to looking out the door.

You don’t just buy that many Singers as a stand-in for slatwall. Design moment wasted.

You want to compete? You have a story? Make sure your employees know what that story is, whether it is how you founded the company, your eco/green choices or other intriguing facts or you’ll waste the very thing you are using to draw attention to your store.

And if you’re ever in Oak Brook, Illinois, make sure to stop at the Weber Grille.

10 Retail Training Tips For the Holidays

The holidays are here and I’m convinced some of you are going to have banner sales. Why? Because you have set aside the belly-aching and TV watching for action. You don’t have much time so here are my retail training tips:

1) Have a plan. If you haven’t had a formal training program, create one even if it is on a legal pad. Make it logical with the most basic at the start and the most advanced at the end. Continue reading 10 Retail Training Tips For the Holidays »

Train The Trainer Secret For Any Business

Four Steps for the Trainer to Train Effectively

So many times we hear (or worse) see training performed by an employee who is disengaged. You know, the one that showed up for work ready to make good tips but told, “You’ll be training [insert name] today.” Eyes roll. Heavy sigh. Employee feels like an albatross.

An employee who is just starting is the most impressionable and can absorb the most information.

That’s why you need to train the trainer. They need to be clear on what they are teaching as well as how to present the information in a clear fashion.

Employees remember: