Will experienced salespeople accept sales training?

What Jackie Hirschhaut says

Hirschhaut is executive director of the International Casual Furnishings Association. SalesRX+ is the retail sales training program of the ICFA, and it is in 500 of their showrooms.

I smile when I think that more than several of these very accomplished retail management executives have come back to me and said, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

These are not new hires. These are people who have run furniture floors for decades, which is exactly the group owners expect to dig in.

I would encourage anyone who's considering the SalesRX program to actually step into it yourself.

An association director telling owners to take the training before they hand it to the floor. That is the right order, and it is the one most owners skip.

Veterans are not resisting training. They are resisting bad training.

A twenty-year associate who rolls their eyes at a training launch is usually right about what they have been handed before. Plenty of programs are a few tips and an instruction to try harder, and those do sound recited.

A framework does the opposite. It teaches what has to happen at each stage of a sale and leaves the words to the associate.

A chess player does not memorize a list of winning moves. They learn principles they can apply to a board nobody has seen before. An improv actor does not work from a script either. They train for years so they can respond to whatever their cast gives them.

That is the only version a veteran will accept, and they are right to reject the other one.

Managers go first

Take it yourself before anyone on your floor does. Two reasons.

You will find out how much of it you assumed your associates already knew. And when a veteran pushes back in week three, the person answering them has been through the same lessons rather than forwarding a login.

In SalesRX+, the manager finishes a trainer track first, so there is somebody on the floor who can actually coach it.

Will experienced salespeople accept sales training?

Yes, when it is a framework rather than a script. Accomplished retail executives in ICFA member showrooms came back to Jackie Hirschhaut saying you can teach an old dog new tricks. Veterans reject tips and closing lines, which they have heard before, not a structure for what happens at each stage of a sale.

How do I get a veteran associate to buy in?

Take the training yourself first, then name the behavior you expect and coach it on the floor. You are not teaching a twenty-year veteran to sell. You are giving them permission to sell again and a reason to believe it will work this time.

Who should take retail sales training first?

Managers and owners, before the floor. Hirschhaut tells anyone considering the program to step into it themselves. A manager who has not done the lessons cannot coach them, and an untrained manager is the most common reason training stalls in week three.

What changes it

SalesRX+ online retail sales training teaches the selling framework, practices it against an AI customer before anyone faces a real one, and measures the floor with an unannounced shop before training and again at six months. Veterans included.

More on the subject: retail sales training.

Full transcript

I smile when I think that more than several of these very accomplished retail management executives have come back to me and said, You can teach an old dog new tricks.

My name is Jackie Hirschhaut. I am the executive director of the International Casual Furnishings Association.

The SalesRX program offered total flexibility that each participant could take advantage of the lessons at their own convenience. The material was no-nonsense, but it was also very well presented and very well kind of scripted.

The associates who have been so successful in completing the lessons feel genuinely empowered. Ultimately, be successful in gaining the sale, making it the right sale for the customer, and everybody enjoying a win-win situation.

Some of the areas that really stood out for successes were just the basic greeting and how to engage a customer from the moment they step in the store. And then how to keep that dialogue going in a pleasant, uplifting way.

I would encourage anyone who's considering the SalesRX program to actually step into it yourself. And I think you'll find quickly, one, that you're possibly learning more things than you thought you knew and you thought you just assumed your sales associates would know. The curriculum really takes you from soup to nuts, and really poises your sales associates in giving them all the tools they need to be the most successful that they can possibly be.