A Taste For Staff Training

This was an opportunity to look at retailing in this region of the world. Most of the retailers in the centre were famous international brands and you could have felt you were anywhere in the world.

The only 'local' retailers I discovered were florists, who are open 24 hours a day. Men, especially, buy a lot of flowers in this part of the world!

It was the conversation with the salespeople in the shopping centre that was the most revealing though...

The average age bracket of a shop assistant was in their early twenties. The most common activity they were engaging in was talking on their mobile phone and, pretty much, ignoring the customer.

** On a personal side-note, I actually believe the most dangerous things to give any sales assistant is a smartphone. They are an unnecessary distraction on the shop floor at a time when your team should be focused on the customer and not on the latest post from your social media app of choice. **

I'm digressing though...

Back to the story... In one store we visited, we managed to get the attention of a salesperson; Linda, my wife, wanted to purchase some local jewellery.

The conversation went as follows:

[Linda] "I'm interested in this piece of jewellery; can you tell me more about it?"

[Salesperson] "It's on discount."

[Linda] "I appreciate that but where was it made?"

[Salesperson] "It is a 50% discount."

It was at this point where I stepped in...

** Firstly, I should point out that the salesperson had exceptionally good English; there were no translation or communication problems which may have been at the route of the exchange. **

I asked her if the team in the stores did any sales training and the response was, “Yes, every morning, we are told how to approach the customer; the customer is only interested in discount and that is all we have to say.”

“Do you do any product training?“, I asked.

“No, only discount as it is too expensive to provide training; young people soon leave retailing and move to other businesses.”

In the end, Linda, never bought the jewellery she liked and the company ultimately lost a sale.

I mention this story because it is very relevant to what we do in farm retailing.

The Management Dilemma

Many retail businesses have a training dilemma.

Do they invest 2% of their turnover in training (2% is the norm in the retail industry) or do they not invest because young people move to another job quickly.

For me, it is a simple equation.

Training people and telling them WHY you are investing in their training and assuming the training is effective, the average sale per customer always goes up. If you do not train them, the average sale stays static or goes down and in my view is less cost-effective as both customer and salesperson become de-motivated.

In my part of the world in the average small business, they lose 16% of their staff each year. In retailing it is 41% every 9 months at a cost to the small retailer of a whopping £80k GBP a year.

In major UK supermarkets, staff turnover is a comparative 35% per year with Tesco being the best retainer of staff with 29.9% turnover a year.

Not training staff can become expensive in many ways. In the UK, retailers work on a replacement cost, per team member, of 213% of their salary to replace a person.

The Farm Shop Advantage

Farm shops have a huge advantage over other food retailers. I often hear about the local or regional supermarket taking business away from small local food retailers; it should be the other way around.

We can learn some lessons from the supermarkets but, as farm retailers, our strategy should be different.

The key to staff training is the retention of team members.

That said, we also need to be honest with ourselves. Some team change over can be good for business as it can reinvigorate the team and the business in equal measure.

I recently worked with a business where they were proud of the fact that nobody had left the business in the last five years. That is not always good; in this particular case, the team and the business had become stale in their thinking and approach.

As a general rule though... 'Retention' is clearly a key component.

All businesses today need to offer flexible working conditions that include offering maternity leave, paternity leave, work for the disabled, career breaks, etc. These need to be made clear to the new team member at the start of their career with your business.

All farm retailers should have a structured training and development strategy. I realize that some may already have these things; there is always room for improvement, though.

Training should be a combination of in-house and external programmes and each business will, inevitably, have a different training strategy.

Personally, I like the approach that is used at Tesco’s as a training concept where they have three medals in the structure

This type of training should be provided in-house, but a national organization should be writing the programme to ensure there are common standards across the industry sector.

Companies such as Willow Farmers Market in Ontario, Canada have morning training sessions each day of no more than 5 minutes where they use the opportunity as a motivation session, they look at what they want to promote that day and share ideas and plans for the day. This builds team morale and keeps everyone on the same, proverbial, “page”.

Farm Shop University, An Opportunity?

Once team members have gone through the three medal training programme, where do they go next?

In the garden centre sector, which is closely aligned to farm shops, I have been involved with Garden Centre University in a number of countries.

This is where a group of around 20 senior retailers from a number of retailers, that are looking to develop their career, get together twice a year to deliver in-depth training. I have found this works exceptionally well for those involved and something I would love to see develop in the farm sector.

Recently, I spoke to Rob Copley, Chairman of the Farm Retail Association in the UK and this is what he had to say on the matter of a Farm University as a working concept.

Performance Reviews

Finally, it is often said, "If you can't measure it, then you can't manage it."

I believe all team members should have targets set for them and these should be reviewed on a fairly regular basis.

A simple question I often ask in farm shops is “What is the target average sale you are aiming at today?”. In some stores, I am told, down to the penny whilst in others, I get a blank look with no idea.

The average sale has nothing to do with the customer count. On our own farm we set a target, and celebrate when we exceed it.

Training is something many businesses are doing less of. I believe now is the time that small business, and especially farm retailers, should be doing more of.

It is an investment in your future and your opportunity to shine in front of the customer.