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Mahhernosh Ichhaporia
Hello, I am from Surat working with one of the textile firm. We have our sales staff deputed at various Saree shops (counters) in various cities of India. We need to develop a sales skills among them and for we want to prepare a ppt for them. Following points we are trying to incorporate into ppt.
1. Effective Communication
2. Product Knowledge / expertise
3. Customer Service
4. Problem Solving
5. Business Acumen
6. Sales Demoing
7. Negotiating
8. Prospecting
9. Integrity
10. Grooming
11. Appearance
12. Body language

Also we would like to cover the below

The six cylinders of Professional Selling

1. Business knowledge
2. Industry Knowledge
3. Company knowledge
4. Product knowledge
5. Selling knowledge
6. Attitude

Please suggest anything else need to be focused

From India, Jalalpur
Dinesh Divekar
7879

Dear Mahhernosh Ichhaporia,

You have given a long list of the topics on which you would like to train your retail salespersons. However, to grasp these topics, retail executives require a certain IQ. Your training will succeed provided they have sufficient IQ. Therefore, the question arises whether you have taken an IQ test while recruiting them.

To answer your query, let me add here two important points which are not there in your list. One is cross-selling and another is add-on selling.

A few topics applicable to the retail store but applicable to the managerial level are:

a) Various ratios associated with the inventory
b) Ageing analysis of the products at the retail store and also at the base store if any
c) Demand forecasting techniques like the least square method, linear regression, multiple regression etc.

Very very high-level subjects are:

d) Application of linear programming
e) Finding out the applicability of the theory of waiting lines (theory of queuing)

While training for retail executives is important, the savings generated by the implementation of topics from (a) to (e) will be far more substantial. If you implement these methods, you will find training of the retail executives superficial.

I provide training and consulting in the field of Operations Management and Supply Chain Management. It includes consulting on Retail Supply Chain also. Feel free to contact me at +919900155394. Thanks.

Ok. All the best!

Dinesh Divekar

From India, Bangalore
aussiejohn
661

I am sure that any person sitting through a boring powerpoint presentation covering so many topics would be brain dead by the end of the session, and remember nothing.

If you are going to train people in so many topics, it needs to be gradual, and it needs to be far more creative than someone standing in front of them just reading the words on a powerpoint slide that was designed by someone else, most likely for a different industry.

You need to outsource at least some of this training to experts who can enthuse and develop your staff to give them the knowledge, the tools and the skills to do their job effectively and efficiently. A powerpoint won't do that.

From Australia, Melbourne
Dinesh Divekar
7879

Dear John,

Most of the topics mentioned in the list do not require any training. If written material is provided, then the staff is expected to learn on their own. But then this is what the question is IQ is. For a chap with low grasping power, certainly, training or education is required. However, for an average+ IQ person, a few instructions or an SOP manual is sufficient.

In the list, one of the topics is "integrity". Can anyone teach integrity? Is it a subject to the taught? But then for a few over-enthusiastic HR professionals, basic terms of HR Management can become topics of the training. Matching their misplaced enthusiasm, training professionals also provide training on such topics. Of course, neither HR professionals nor training professionals take accountability for the measurement of ROI on training. If only ROI starts getting measured, all the unwanted training programmes will get reduced automatically.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

From India, Bangalore
aussiejohn
661

Hi Dinesh,

Agree with you on the points in your post. I am always at a loss to understand why so many people think training is just standing up in front of the trainees and reading the words off a powerpoint with no context and no additional information. I suspect this is part of the reason we have so many members here with little or no real world knowledge of HR in the industry they are working in. I know that sounds harsh but I've been reading posts here on CiteHR for 16 years now and some of the stuff I read here just astounds me.

"Integrity" is an interesting issue. Yes, you cannot teach integrity, you either have it or you don't, and hopefully you will have weeded out those who don't via the interview process. But, as we all know, people are clever at hiding stuff, and the interview process is far from perfect, especially in the hands of those not trained in how to do it properly.

However, integrity and ethics are often much the same thing, and I have had ethics training in several jobs I had in my working life. Again, this is not a general catch-all topic, ethics training while having some commonality across all spheres of life, still has to be tailored to the industry sector. In my case I spent a lot of time working in Government, and ethical behaviour there is a minefield. Government and corruption go together like curry and rice :-)

The OP refers to sales staff, and there again it can be a minefield. There is scope for a lot of unethical behaviour by sales staff, e.g. doing underhand deals with shops, taking bribes, kickbacks, bogus invoices, etc.

As for ROI, I think very few people have any concept of that, which is why so much training is pointless. It is only being done because people suddenly think, Oh, we need to train the staff because that's what HR does. Wrong. It is one of the reasons I continually post about doing a Training Needs Analysis FIRST and find it if it is really necessary, and what the benefits will be. And I wonder if the OP has done that. I suspect not.

From Australia, Melbourne
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