One of the most basic elements of any retail sales training program is covering the features and benefits of the product. The feature is a fact you can't dispute; the benefit is what the customer gets from that fact. You know that already, I hope. But only a list of features is often heard on the sales floor ..read more

Retailers play an important role in community engagement by supporting local causes, participating in local events, and partnering with other businesses. Retailers are the glue that brings the community together and betters it through cause-related marketing and collaborations that build strong connections within their local communities ..read more

This is a classic post from 2011. Lemonade Day is Sun. May 7, 2023 Lemonade Day, started by Michael Holthouse in Houston 16 years ago, shows youth K-12 how to become entrepreneurs. I was the Lemonade Day champion for Greene County, New York with a goal of registering 500 kids to open stands on May 1. When hundreds of thousands of kids picked up one of the bright yellow backpacks, they embarked on one of the oldest methods entrepreneurs were exposed to early in life - opening their own lemonade stand. But this isn’t about opening a Lemonade stand. Anyone can do that ..read more

Ever wonder if great displays can really affect sales ..read more

Have you heard of generative AI? It's the technology that helps computers learn and create things on their own. I wrote this blog using Grammarly, which is a form of AI, but ChatGPT is the most popular of the AI technologies out there. According to Mint, it is the fastest technology to hit 100m users, doing what took Facebook 4.5 years and the mobile phone 16 years in two months. In the next seven years, AI's impact on retail will be even more significant than that of big stores like Walmart and Target in the 1990s. I asked ChatGPT to define generative AI with an example ..read more

When I was in high school running track, I always wanted to see where my competition ranked to compare what I was doing and improve. That is harder to accomplish in specialty retail. That’s what Manhattan Associates, Google Cloud, and Zebra Technologies sought to give the retail community with their 2023 Unified Commerce Benchmark for Specialty Retail ..read more

Movies provide some of the best training and reminders for retailers of all sizes. Here are 25 of the best sales movie scenes ever released ..read more

Effective sales training is crucial for success in today's fast-paced retail environment. Training has never been more critical as shoppers pause and rethink purchases they would have impulsively made just a few years ago ..read more

With home prices falling in many areas, demand for various items sought after at stores is slowing. There are many ways to improve your sales performance, but running a sale isn’t the best. It is often the worst as your best-sellers run out, and you must return to the vendor and pay more to restock ..read more

Have you ever been in a retail store where the employees all seem like they'd rather be anywhere else but there? Maybe they're standing around chatting with each other or on their phones, or maybe they just have that vibe that conveys they don't want to be bothered with helping shoppers ..read more