Both manufacturers and retailers benefit from a well-trained retail staff. A thoughtful conversation between a customer and a retail sales professional improves client satisfaction, increases sales and creates both brand and retail loyalty. So how do manufacturers help ensure that in-store conversations effectively position the strengths of their product line? Most brands invest in training programs to provide retail sales teams with specific product knowledge. Of course, there are many decisions to make as you implement training. Should you add more brand reps? Host regional conferences? Create webinars? And what’s the incentive for store associates to effectively learn your lingo? Read More >
Tags: retail training
When It Comes to Retail Sales Education You Have Options
May 14, 2013 – 3:00 am | Product Knowledge, Retail Insights 
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Survey Results: Store Associates Share Knowledge On and Off the Sales Floor
May 7, 2013 – 3:00 am | Industry Trends, Product Knowledge, Retail Insights 0 Comments
eXperticity recently commissioned a study to learn more about the people we work with every day − retail sales professionals. Here are some key takeaways: They like their jobs. Over 32% of the store associates polled plan on staying in retail sales over 10 years and 35% plan on staying at least 1-4 years. It’s not just about making more money as many sales associates don’t earn commission. They want to learn more to help make their lives more enriching as 90% are using their product knowledge at least weekly for personal use. Their product knowledge helps sell more on Read More >
What do the country’s top bike retailers have in common?
April 30, 2013 – 3:00 am | News & Events, Product Knowledge, Retail Insights 0 Comments
Each year, Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, the leading publication for everything in the bike biz, releases its Top 100 and Gold Star Retailers list. The list salutes top retailers nominated by their peers for excellence in categories such as professionalism, sales, community involvement and customer service. Beyond being the best at what they do, these retailers also have one other key attribute in common – 57 of the 58 nominees participate on our 3point5.com platform! To learn more about 3point5.com and how to get your store added to the list of top retailers next year, visit eXperticity.com today.
7 Easy and Effective Ways to Promote Your 3point5.com Platform
April 23, 2013 – 3:00 am | Best Practices, Product Knowledge, Team/Member Engagement 0 Comments
You’ve already taken the right step in enhancing retail sales education for your brand by partnering with eXperticity – now it’s time to put your 3point5.com site to work. Below are seven easy steps you can start using today to help drive traffic to your site. Add a link to 3point5.com on your website. Placing a link to your 3point5.com site on your retailer-facing or dealer homepage is an easy and effective way to encourage your retailers to register with 3point5.com. Include links to your 3point5.com platform on your social media pages. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social Read More >
Six Steps to Creating a Successful Contest with 3point5.com
April 9, 2013 – 3:00 am | Member Experiences, Team/Member Engagement 0 Comments
Looking to increase engagement, drive sales or draw attention to a new product launch? A contest on 3point5.com can help. Here are a few tips for planning your contest: Determine your goal. Are you looking to enhance engagement or sales? Reward top performers? Get feedback from the folks on the sales floor? Pick an audience. Are you targeting one dealer? A group of dealers? A top-20 sales location? Everyone connected to your brand on 3point5.com? Choose a time frame. How long do you want the contest to run? When will your reps be in stores to promote it? What Read More >
Build a Better Web Story: Strengthen Brand Connections to the Sales Floor
April 4, 2013 – 3:00 am | Best Practices, Engagement, Member Experiences, Retail Insights, Team/Member Engagement 0 Comments
Back in my newspaper journalism days, I was taught to pay close attention to how the words actually looked on the page. Turns out readers tend to zone out when faced with similarly sized paragraphs, so writers are taught to vary their cadence – a longer sentence here, a shorter, punchier one there – add in a graphic “explainer,” or divide copy into more easily digestible chunks using a series of punchy sub-headlines. In constructing retail sales training sites, eXperticity leverages the same concept in a broader sense. The result: Our clients take full advantage of the different ways the Read More >
J.D. Power Survey:
Knowledgeable Staff is Key Driver in Customer Satisfaction
March 27, 2013 – 9:00 am | Best Practices, Industry Trends, Product Knowledge 0 Comments
J.D. Power and Associates recently released their 2013 Sporting Goods Retailer Satisfaction Report. They found (once again) that a courteous and knowledgeable sales staff is the key driver of customer satisfaction. Congratulations to our friends at Cabela’s and REI, who received the highest marks in staff knowledge, courtesy, availability, and speed of checkout! We also salute our friends at retailers throughout the world who are working hard to improve every customer’s buying experience. There is no substitute for truly helpful product knowledge.
5.11 Tactical Boosts Product Training by Nearly 700%
March 22, 2013 – 3:00 am | Customer Spotlights, Industry Trends, Product Knowledge 0 Comments
5.11 Tactical is paving the way in the booming industry of tactical gear and clothing. The brand offers a range of diverse products aimed at law enforcement and first responders, as well as civilian outdoor enthusiasts. But with the gain in both popularity and number of products came the task of reaching and training thousands of retail sales associates located throughout the country. Enter eXperticity. To deal with the logistics of properly educating such a large number of sales associates, 5.11 Tactical deployed eXperticity’s training platform and the results speak for themselves. 5.11 reached more than 7,000 sales associates in Read More >
Your Very Own Super Squad:
The Professional Services Team
March 13, 2013 – 5:06 pm | Best Practices, Product Knowledge 0 Comments
“So what does eXperticity do?” I’m often asked (and surprised at how adept people are at pronouncing the uppercase “x”). It’s a question with a simple answer — eXperticity builds and rewards expertise. But a more important question, and one with a far more complicated answer, may be, “How does eXperticity do it?” To answer that question I could talk about planning, platform innovation, content generation, script writing, edu-games, e-learning, asset manipulation or a hundred other things that go into an eXperticity training experience; instead, I’ll mention only two words: Professional Services. Clients are often amazed at how little effort Read More >
Nordic Naturals Teams
With eXperticity
March 8, 2013 – 11:45 am | Customer Spotlights, Product Knowledge 0 Comments
We’re excited to announce the addition of Nordic Naturals, the leading manufacturer of omega-3 supplements, to the eXperticity platform. The educational training for retailers, which will be available around the clock, will teach associates about the Nordic Natural brand, its products and the basics of omega-3s. Nordic Naturals has always strived to provide top-notch education to store associates selling their products. “Consumers look to retailers for guidance. Nordic Naturals has always made education an important part of its mission by providing accurate and important information on the benefits of essential fatty acids and how to choose quality supplementation,” said Nordic Read More >
