As retailers move through their seasonal journey, it’s crucial that you as a brand are seeking opportunities to create retail experts and brand evangelists. Your retailers are on the floor, face to face with your customers, every day. You want them to be excited about your products and eager to share your brand.
This is accomplished through a number of different ways, but providing high-quality clinics for retail sales employees is one of the most effective. These clinics involve your rep, in the store, going over product selling points with the retail staff. This hands-on experience and product education allows them to have confident interactions with customers, builds excitement, and creates ambassadors for your brand, while showing your specialty retailers that you’re in-it-to-win-it, together.
Here are some key features and recommendations to consider when planning your approach and training your reps.
"In less dry terms, clinics are an opportunity for your reps to share your passion for your product with your retailers."
Reps can use the clinic to encourage feature-based selling that corresponds with the brand’s price point and value. They can also provide context to the sales staff by comparing your products with other brands, pointing out noteworthy differences, and teach cross- and up-selling opportunities. In less dry terms, clinics are an opportunity for your reps to share your passion for your product with your retailers.
With the right tools, reps can make the clinics more memorable and effective by using high-quality digital presentations (made by them or by your brand) as well as giving the retail staff a chance to be hands-on with the product.
Clinics are also a great time to introduce incentives. These can include free promotional products for sales staff to wear on the sales floor, as well as sales contests with rewards for selling the most of a product or meeting a certain threshold.
To reach their full potential, brands need to support their buyers throughout the buyer’s journey. By creating retail experts with in-store clinics, brands are utilizing two of the fundamentals of building a successful wholesale channel - rep enablement and buyer self serve. The results of enabling reps with the tools to host effective clinics are retailers who are excited to sell and have the knowledge they need to succeed. This is how you become a strong, successful partner to your specialty retail channel.
Paired with continued support and follow-ups to ensure that employees are well-equipped and confident selling the product, the reps are setting everyone up for success. Long term, the specialty retailer’s loyal customers will remain familiar with the brand’s products and continue to seek them out, creating a winning scenario for all involved.
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