Maximising frontline team performance through effective on the job training and coaching

Our mantra at The Retail Solution is – “Training hasn’t worked until behaviour changes back on the job.” Unfortunately some managers hold the belief that training of staff will fix everything – as you know there is no “silver bullet.”

As well as providing leading edge training courses that are tailored to your business needs, we focus on the need for your managers to put the training in place where it matters most – on the job. There is no point in sending your managers to a training course and not have them use the skills they have learnt back in the workplace.

So our focus with any training is to provide store and area managers with the tools and techniques that they can immediately put in place that improves their own performance and that of their staff.We have many real life examples where store managers have returned to their store and coached a team member (who hasn’t been to the training) and their service and sales performance improves immediately.

I honestly think that with the tools myself and my team have been armed with over the last few days we have a real chance of becoming heroes of service. I think all three groups of staff in the training were very keen to be involved and bought in to the process, I hope you would agree. I would like to make a point of saying after having been to many courses around service in the past, the point of difference with your program and what I believe will make it successful in my store is the session with the managers and the in store work you completed. Too many courses fail to reach their potential due to a lack of follow up or should I say effective follow up.

Michael Edwards, Store Manager, Ritchies Spit Junction

The secret to this is simply providing store and area managers with the skills to evaluate their team member’s performance in a way they have never done before. They can then provide feedback to improve or maintain that performance in less than 20 seconds, in between customers. There is no need to take a team member off the floor to provide feedback, it is done instantly and in most cases results in an instant improvement.

Your area managers are integral to the ongoing success, by following up during their regular store visits. Once these processes become imbedded in your business you have a sustainable coaching culture that leads to enhanced performance in all areas of store operations.