Retail Team Coaching in the 21st Century
Retail team coaching or sales team coaching refers to the labour sales team leaders, shop floor supervisors and department managers execute of directing their collaborators in their teams. The objective is to optimize sales, keeping the teams alert and awake to satisfy clients’ needs.
Retail Coaching
Hence, looking at it from the perspective of a Retail Coach, the objective of retail team coaching is to generate commitment from the members of the team. This commitment is a voluntary agreement, shared by the whole team, and it generates energy towards performing your job. Most noteworthy, these are some of the differences between a Retail Coach and a traditional Manager:
- Traditional managers try to motivate people, while coaches insist on people motivating themselves.
- Traditional managers are responsible of the people they direct, while coaches demand that their collaborators take responsibility for themselves.
- Traditional managers think about ‘what’s wrong’ and ‘why things happen’. Coaches focus on observing from the future to generate a context of commitment that will create a new reality and look for ‘what can be improved’.
Tools for Retail Team Coaching
A Retail Coach cannot manage their teams without quality tools. And among all the tools at their disposal, the first are KPIs. From the point of view of team coaching, what can’t be measured does not exist. Indeed, a good team leader has to be able to check the evolution of their team based on clear and objective numbers, to get a good overview of their situation, without bias or mistakes.
On the other hand, retail team coaching require clear objectives, that help our collaborators orient their efforts and motivate themselves to complete them.
SMART: Objective
For this, it’s necessary that our objectives be SMART:
- Specific: run from generalities.
- Measurable: an objective that cannot be measured does not exist.
- Achievable: do not mistake dreams for objectives. The consequence of not establishing achievable objectives is incredulity and low morale.
- Realistic: context, competition, and other factors must be considered.
- Time-bound: an objective without a deadline lacks usefulness.
Coaching de equipos y objetivos SMART
Once these objectives have been established based on clear data, they have to be transmitted to the team. Therefore, Communication is one of the main factors in retail team coaching success. Keeping your collaborators informed is vital for the correct development of your store. But it’s also important for the manager-coach to be able to perform their duties without interruptions and successfully delegating.
Briefing
A very useful tool to ensure a good communication with your retail teams is the briefing. This short talk fulfils the same function of the motivational talk a football coach gives to their team before they go into the field. It’s done minutes before opening the store, and the aim is generating a shared energy, explaining that day’s priority, and raising team morale.
Furthermore, the retail team coach must not forget the individual collaborator. A routine of periodic Retail Coaching sessions needs to be created, in where each team member is dealt with individually, talking about their situation and their ideal situation, how to reach it, their problems, etcetera.
CapKelenn in luxury retail
CapKelenn is the primary certification in Retail Coaching worldwide, certifying managers in Retail to really become coaches for their sales teams, facilitating the transition towards a supreme clienteling savoir-faire. CapKelenn delivers the certification in 12 languages on all the 5 continents. CapKelenn accelerates change, thanks to people, with results that are fast, visible and sustainable, contributing to fertilize a client experience that is memorable and personalized.
