CCS In the News

Today's Sales Associates Can Make a Bigger Impact

Published in TWICE
Retail Vision Issue, Fall 2000

LOS ANGELES -- The typewriter has morphed into the desktop PC, which has upgraded to the mobile laptop, and has now been modernized to the fully web-enabled, wireless, handheld computing device. This high-tech explosion has forced the median consumer into retail computer stores desperately attempting to keep current with complex technology that is growing faster than they can sustain.

The rush of these exciting times has not only brought us the metamorphosis of technology products, but also the evolution of the consumer. With an abundance of marketing messages, ad campaigns, TV commercials and the accessibility of the Internet, consumers are able to adapt to these changes and can research top-brand products for their consumption choices. The Internet has affected business and product consumerism in a very positive way; however, the notion of people responding more to machines than humans is certainly not the case.

Today’s booming economy along with the savvy consumer are the trends that are shaping the future of retail. This, in turn, creates an even greater need for retail sales associates that are armed with information, possess great selling skills and are knowledgeable of consumer’s individual needs and desires.

Despite popular belief, the portrait of the technology retail sales person as an indifferent minimum wage earner roaming the aisles is an undeserved representation. In attempt to better understand the retail sales associates that effect consumers’ point-of-sale purchases, Creative Channel Services, Inc. (CCS) has undertaken a series of research studies from a pool of more than 30,000 retail sales professionals that indicate an entirely different truth.

Based on this research, statistics confirm that Retail Sales People (RSP) are the #1 in-store influence on purchasing decisions, with 84% of all consumer purchasing decisions influenced inside the store environment. Moreover, these studies have also proven that today’s retail associate has surpassed basic knowledge of manufacturer’s brand names and become a highly educated sales mechanism.

Having firmly established that a manufacturer’s success in effectively reaching the retail sales person will strongly impact its bottom line, determining how this large and diverse group of frontline sales associates best receives and retains training messages is critical. To answer this, CCS conducted a nationwide training study based on over a thousand completed surveys, both in store locations and online, to measure RSPs’ preferences as it relates to the various training vehicles currently offered by both product manufacturers and third party service providers.

The response provides valuable insight for manufacturers on how to allocate marketing and training budgets to most effectively reach retail sales associates. Not surprisingly, the retail camp is starkly divided. Online respondents, for example, showed a distinct bias towards online training (62%), citing both convenience and consistent access as key strengths. On the other hand, respondents surveyed in the store yielded a strong preference to face-to-face training (80%) over web-based options. Most notably, all of respondents indicated that they are overwhelmingly interested in gaining product/category certification and store level recognition for their efforts (90%), and would make an on-going commitment to maintaining this status on a regular basis (86%).

Working closely with manufacturers, retail marketing service providers have come up with several powerful resolutions to meet the needs of the sales associate. One such solution is personalized one-to-one training. These programs elevate mindshare and give manufacturers a chance to exchange information one-on-one with frontline salespeople who represent their products everyday and function as extensions of their own sales and marketing staff.

Along the lines of this crucial face-to-face interaction, several leading manufacturers have acquired a network of field representatives that canvass key accounts across the country, and provide sessions at the store level. This process is effective for creating ongoing awareness and developing individual relationships with their accounts.In addition, regional training events such as CyberSmart® provide manufacturers with the unique opportunity to train hundreds of influential sales associates in a single evening.

To keep up with this fast paced industry, however, retail associates also have a need for daily product training and product and new technology updates. Online programs provides such time sensitive information through customized web-based training solutions that reach thousands of retail sales associates in all markets (and worldwide) on a 24/7 basis. Although web-based training is currently perceived as somewhat limited because it does not easily support the Q & A dialogue qualities of in-person training, the merits of convenience, consistency and coverage present an extremely viable, cost-effective solution for manufacturers.