Retail Training
“Like your store has 100% Hall-Marked Jewellery, 100% Certified Diamonds - Do you have 100% Trained & Certified Staff ?”
- Retail Guru Shivaram
You all know that training refers to teaching someone a particular skill or type of behaviour through sustained practice and instruction.
What is Retail Training?
Retail training is sales training that is done by experts in the retail field who wish to help other retailers. Usually, the primary focus will be on customer service and how to keep the customer happy. Of course, the customer is the most important part of your business.
Retail training is similar to retail consulting except for the fact that the latter focuses more on the theoretical aspects whereas the former is about the practical elements. Both of them are similar but not the same. However, they both share the same aim: to help you succeed in retail.
Why training is Important?
People who work in retail should know how to deal with the customer. They should be able to resolve complaints effectively so they don’t lose customers. You want to make sure the human element shines through when you communicate with the customers. Retail training will help you establish that bond.
It’s not just the customers, though. Retail employees should also have sufficient knowledge of the products sold, inventory management, handling cash and credit transactions, and how to deal with product returns and exchanges. They also need to know about the store’s policies in depth.
When such scenarios come up, people are at a loss as to what they should do. Retail training can walk you through the course of action in the heat of the moment.
Who should invest in training?
- Traditional family run retailers, who want to become Successful Retailers
- Store owners facing challenges, inside, outside or in attracting new consumers
- Senior Management of Chain Stores, wanting to achieve new milestones.
Selling Skills for Higher Sales
As a retailer, you manage 3 parts of your business: Your customers, Your products and Your employees.
Employees
Your employees are in direct touch with both your customers and products. Are they able to consistently deliver to your expectations? Don’t you agree, there is a big scope for improving their performance. Interested?.We can help.
Course Content
Selling Skills for Higher Sales, is our flagship program where we train them on Better S.E.R.V.I.C.E.S = Higher Sales
Here, we cover Grooming, Selling Manners, Smart Skills, How to ask the right questions and get answers, how to handle objections, Multiple techniques of closing the sales, Exceed expectations of both consumers and the organisation and Servicing the customers after sales.
This course and other content related to product knowledge, store operations etc are covered over a series of face to face or online programs spread over different days.
How many have we trained so far
We have trained over 6000 plus retail store staff in various aspects of retailing across India and Dubai.
What has been the results?
Feedback from our past participants has shown sales increases of upto 20 % over a period of time. These results are for those who have been trained, have implemented the learnings and also improved upon the learnings on an ongoing basis.
Interested in seeing a upto 20 % increase in Sales?
Call us on 9036036524 or Register here for a free evaluation and discussion on how Retail Gurukul can help your business
Retail Inventory Management
Any retailer knows how tough it is to manage the stock of all the products and their variants. Which product to order more and what strategy to apply when you reorder? All these things will be overwhelming in today’s e-commerce, social media and rapid tax change are driven retailing world.
Taking the help of an expert and learning to do things right is always a great decision. Shivaram has a high level of expertise in retail inventory management has spent more than a decade in retail inventory management and retail merchandising. In the first five years of his consulting career, he helped more than 120 retailers grow their business with his this training, consulting and analytical skills.
Why are analytical skills important in Retailing?
Analytical skills play a vital role in retail inventory management because you have to keep tracking every merchandise in your store.Those days are gone when the customer had fewer options. Today if you don’t have the merchandise which they want then they will go to other retailers. Managing your inventory is more important than it was ever before.
Inventory management is one area which differentiates successful retailers from unsuccessful ones.A significant opportunity to improve profits is through better inventory management. What is your current stock turn? Are you having systems and processes to improve stock turnarounds? How much of your inventory is old and dead? Is a lot of inventory really more than 6 months to one year old! or even older?
Take this simple test now!
- What are the sales target for the year and are you on track to achieve or overachieve the target?
- What is the stock rotation in this year and how much has it improved over the last year? By 0.25 to 0.5?
- What is the percentage of your inventory that is more than a year old in the plain gold jewellery/jewelry for example? Less than 15%?
- Do you have a profitability target for the year and are you on track to achieve it?
Course Content
The program content is 12 Best Practices in Retail Training on Retail Inventory Management based on our experience of working with more than 120+ clients and our team’s expertise over the years.
This will help in improving your profitability to a level never seen before. Ask us for proof and references. See our client testimonials on this site and elsewhere.
- Profit for the business: Is a result of focused strategy and execution of the right best practices.
- Purpose of the business: Beyond making profit, what makes you want to do it day in and day out, 365 days in a year.
- Planning your business: Developing a business plan for the next month, next year, 2 to 5 years ahead with specific roadmaps to achieve them. Identifying strengths, weaknesses and focus areas.
- Property: Location identification, Need for expansion, Size of the store? Etc.
- People (Customers): Building Personas, Understanding the Target Customer, etc. represented by a Jaya Bachchan to an Alia Bhat
- Products: Retail inventory Management Techniques, Stock to sale ratios, Improving Stock turn, Pricing, slow-moving stocks, Open to Buy, Necessity to hedge or not? etc.
- People (Ours): Recruitment, Training, Motivation, Salary Structure, Incentives structure, etc.
- Processes: Set up Standard Operating Procedures, Identifying Improvement Areas etc.
- Performance Metrics: Identifying and tracking business metrics beyond Kgs of gold, top, bottom line profit, sales conversion, etc.
- Partners: How to build a Win-Win Relationship between Vendors and Retailers.
- Promotion: Above The Line Marketing (ATL) & Below The Line Marketing ( BTL), Out Of Home (OOH) and Digital Media or even Face to Face promotions.
- Problem Solving: Online / offline - one on one / in groups.
Take Away
Minimum 25 specific actions points are guaranteed through our training for retailers.
Results?
For Owners
Retail Gurukul clients have seen higher profits from improved cash flows, motivated staff, committed vendors and significant improvements in stock rotations from a 0.25 to 0.60 in the plain jewellery/jewelry category in less than a year and 0.25 to 0.5 improvements in Diamond studded jewellery/jewelry.
For Staff
- Staff who are thus trained can be expected to become significantly more aware of their responsibilities towards delivering a much better customer experience.
- Our studies have shown that staff trained by us have shown sales increases of over 20% in the following months.
- Co-branded Final examination and certification. Along with 100% HallMarked jewellery/jewelry, 100% Certified stones, companies can also add 'Certified Sales Staff' to their marketing campaigns to communicate with their customers.
Methodology
- Presentations
- Discussions
- Videos
- Problem-solving
- Q & A Sessions
Training Languages
We train staff in Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Gujarati and a combination of Hindi, English and other languages depending upon the staff comfort.
Retail Trainer Profile & Track Record
Retail Gurukul has a proven track-record and practical approach to problem-solving. Understanding the uniqueness of each client, working on their strengths and overcoming their weaknesses has been the benchmark of each engagement.
These workshops and are led by our Founder Shivaram who was Tanishq's Head of Merchandising, Training and Regional Sales, etc. for over 10 years. Since setting up Retail Gurukul in 2012, over a hundred companies in India and Abroad have benefited from his expertise and experience.
Shivaram and his Team have worked with Small & Medium Size Single Stores, Large Single Stores, Family Run Chains, Professional companies and International Organisations.
Experience & Expertise
Our experienced team of Retailers, Content Developers and Trainers have trained over 6000 retail store staff across every major jewellery/Jewelry retailer in India.
- From chain stores like Tanishq, Malabar Gold, GRT, WHP, TBZ, Prince, Orra to single stores like Manubhai, Zaveri and Sons, Alankar etc.
- We have trained your staff across more than 35 locations in the country from Mumbai to Kolkata, Delhi to Trivandrum, Mangalore to Lucknow. In Mumbai itself, we have worked with retailers from Worli, Dadar, Bandra to Borivali and beyond.
- Our teams have trained your employees in public programs, in-house training programs for multiple retailers, organisations like Platinum Guild International (PGI), The Gem and Jewellery Skill Council of India (GJSCI), Rio Tinto, etc.
One of our large and successful projects was for the PGI where we trained over a 1000 staff from almost every major retailers across 19 cities in under 2 months.
A few examples of successful Retail training programs
- Program for the Womens Jewellery Association, Mumbai, and what designers can do to improve their businesses.
- Program For Zeiss ExcelLens Academy (Vision Care) - How luxury retailing can enhance Vision Care business.
We regularly conduct workshops across the country or can even do a customized workshop for your Team or Association. Phone us on 91 9036036524 or email us for Retail Guidance.
Want to know what our client speak
"He has opened personally my eyes, towards how to look at inventory and he had made a sea change in the culture within our organization…"
- Ashish Pethe, Waman Hari Pethe Jewellers, Maharashtra
Would you like to improve your business?
Talk to him today! You can also contact us to book your appointment on retail sales training programs.
Related Blog Posts:
Top 7 Benefits of Online Retail Training Courses by Retail Experts
What is a Business Plan and why do you need it?
What is a Business Plan and why do you need it?-Part 2
How can retail training can help your business?
Why retail staff should be training themselves?
How to Manage Slow Moving Inventory in Retail?
Five Best Practices to Improve your Retail Sales Training Program