This is the sales & retail training website of George Roch. What is retail training? Retail training is distinguished by its content and its delivery methods. Retail training content targets the combination of sales, service, operations, management and leadership skills necessary to run profitable businesses that target end users. These skills drive the total buying experience from initial customer engagement, to the merchandising, delivery, and customer support that impact buying decisions and relationship building. Retail training delivery is distinguished by its integration into each businesses environment and each retailer's culture. Effective retail training minimizes the limitations and takes every advantage of the opportunities unique business environments present to drive individual and team performance improvement every day. Like any training, retail training can include a blend of mentoring, online training, on the job activities, performance evaluation and debriefing, written content, and manager or trainer lead team meetings and workshops. The challenge is that busy retail environments can severely limit opportunities for group training events and live facilitation or coaching by dedicated trainers. In retail, new employees must be hired and trained where and when they are needed. Each member of the retail team will have differing competencies; and training must often occur in a busy environment. As a result, effective retail skill building most often combines online training and assessment with on-the-job learning. Effective programs harness the resources of each retailer's leadership. They also establish systems that support development of fiercely collaborative customer driven teams. Collaborative teams share knowledge, teach each other, and hold everyone accountable for developing and executing the skills needed to reach store goals. |
George Roch Sales Trainer / Instructional Designer Most of my work life has been spent learning, teaching, and learning to better teach, sales and retail skills. My background includes more than a decade as a commissioned sales person followed by eight years as general manager of specialty retail stores ranging in size from 9 to well over 100 employees. I then became a regional training manager where I was responsible for facilitating , creating training and leading the team that executed all company training in a four state area. As dean of a corporate university I developed leadership curriculum, facilitated workshops and assessed the progress of over 300 future company leaders. Later, as manager of corporate training development, I lead a team of talented training creators who were responsible for designing, implementing, and evaluating all corporate training programs including live classroom, e-learning, video, and paper based systems. Today I am an independent trainer and instructional designer specializing in the sales, retail and technical consumer products segments. I am a founding partner of Consumer Electronics University (http://www.celectronicsu.com). I can be contacted here for instructional design work, and through CEU to discuss retail training programs. I am always excited to learn about new training challenges and opportunities. |