In my position at the Furniture Training Company, I talk with furniture retailers all day, every day. Although most of them understand that training is necessary, they simply don’t want to pay for it. They tell me things like:
“It costs too much.”
“We’ve decided to put your training on the back burner.”
“I already know how to sell what we have. I’ll train my salespeople myself.”
It’s likely that half of the people working for you today won’t be working for you next year. It can be difficult to want to invest too much into a person that isn’t that invested in you.
That being said, have you ever wondered why turnover is so high in your store or at your company? If your employees were as successful as they thought they were going to be when you hired them, would they leave at such a high rate?
Some time ago, I told an employer of mine that I had accepted a position with a different company. I told them why I decided to go another route and they understood. Shortly after that conversation, my employer sat me back down and let me know how important I was to the company and told me all of the reasons that I should stay. He flat out told me that he wanted me to stay. I was in his office for nearly 90 minutes. When I left, I knew that I wanted to stay, and I did.
Those 90 minutes saved the company the need to search for and hire another person to fill my position, allowed current and potential customers to maintain their relationship with me, and helped me feel even more invested in the company’s success.
If you are a leader in commission based retail, please invest in your people. I know from experience that if you invest in them, they will invest in you. When your employees took the job with you, they believed they would be successful and make money. Help them to do that. Their success is your success. It just makes sense.
Show your people that you are invested in their success. Get them training. Sit your employees down individually and tell them, “I just purchased access to a training program for you. I did this because I want you to be successful. I care about you and want to make sure that you are happy here. I can’t wait for you to get into it.”
Stop thinking about how much investing in your employees will cost and start thinking about the real benefits you and your employees will enjoy. I know you will be happy with the results.
Visit our website and register for our training to become best sales person you can be. www.furnituretrainingcompany.com. Or, feel free to email me at mikep@furnituretrainingcompany.com.