Engaging Retail Sales Training: The Ultimate Guide

Retailers need more than a good deal to make a sale,  and even more to keep loyal customers coming back.

In a world where customer expectations are rising, the efforts made by companies to train their sales associates can be the go-no-go for making leads and closing deals, which is exactly why each year, millions of dollars are spent by firms globally on retail sales training, with hopes that their investments will yield significant organizational returns.

The bottom line is that successful sales reps aren’t born with their skills. Indeed, traits of successful sales reps are made, and this grooming is an investment made by companies in the form of training. 

With corporate returns from training, expenditures have been estimated to be as much as 300 percent, it becomes a top business strategy for organizations who want to see a significant turnaround.

So, what’s the key to developing a retail sales training program that actually keeps trainees engaged?

What’s in this post? 

1. What is a sales training program?
2. Retail sales training with AI video simulation
3. The value adds of AI in in retail sales training
   
   

What is a sales training program? 

The business landscape is facing a storm of challenges; as the pandemic lingers, and we witness ongoing trends and shifts due to digitalization, keeping up with the pace of self-development becomes imperative for organizations to stay competitive and continue delivering ongoing value for the business. 

So how are top companies doing this? The answer is simple - investing in retail sales training programs. 

These areas of training all have one overarching foundation, which is increasing initiatives to build soft skills. According to the McKinsey Global Survey on reskilling, the proportion of companies addressing empathy and interpersonal skills has doubled since the pandemic. Organizations have invested in various e-learning platforms as well as increased budgets for training methods, however, both aren't without their limitations. 

Retail Sales Training with AI-Video Simulation 

Driving revenue essentially comes down to this one factor - making sure every sales rep is prepared to lead any conversation and close any deal. With much of today's sales enablement programs being disconnected from real-world selling situations, sales teams risk the chance of moving forward with new critical sales concepts. 

That is why so many companies are turning to AI video role plays to help their reps gain self-awareness through testing real-life situations. By implementing immersive learning that evokes or replicates substantial aspects of the real world in a fully interactive fashion, sales reps have the golden opportunity to train in critical client conversations, such as answering difficult questions or leading conversations with skeptical clients. 

Customer interactions ultimately present companies with the golden opportunity to provide strategic, experience-oriented customer care, and thus the opportunity to take proactive control of the customer relationship. When done wrong, entire customer relationships risk being severed. Therefore, testing real-world outcomes is crucial in order for sales reps to build their ability to train and develop their adaptability, empathy, and communication abilities. 

The Value Adds of AI in Retail Sales Training 

Using AI in retail sales training lets companies: 

• Introduce fully-remote, on-demand training & coaching
• Scale their training and standardize training program quality (globally)
• Offer interactive & immediate feedback to their learners
• Speed-up onboarding & ramp-up times to grow even faster
• Steepen the learning curve and ensure the sustainability of training programs

As companies globally are turning to AI-video role plays to help their sales reps gain self-awareness through testing real-life situations, Retorio's AI training program has been gaining a lot of attention in the remote training scene, particularly for training soft skills. 

Retorio's AI platform combines video analysis with role-plays of client simulations to offer interactive soft skills training solutions for customer-facing roles, such as sales and consulting., etc. their clients, including one of Germany's biggest automotive manufacturers, use Retorio to scale up their soft skills training programs, as well as coach their sales teams. 

FAQ about Retorio's Training Platform:

1. How does Retorio's AI work?

Retorio works with a video-based Artificial Intelligence system that supports human intuition. Our technology is based on one of the most well-researched personality taxonomies, the so-called Big5 (or OCEAN) model, which has been validated as a reliable predictor of personality and job performance.

Our AI quantifies the behavior that participants of Retorio's assessment show in short video recordings; their facial expressions, gesture, language, and voice in order to derive a perceived personality prediction, meaning that our AI predicts how your candidates and their behavior would be perceived by a representative set of people.

2. How does the training platform work?

In the training overview, you’ll find all information necessary.

Firstly, you have a short introduction to the training, which gives you the underlying concepts of things you will learn in this training. Further, you will find the reason why this training will help you in your everyday work life.

The “What you’ll learn” section precisely shows you actions that are important in dealing with the client scenarios. Those are actions that you will be able to apply after you successfully finished the scenarios.

Lastly, you have the list of training scenarios. Choose from the virtual clients and “Start” interacting with them. If you already finished a scenario, the “See results” button will lead you to your prior results. If you want to improve your score, click on the “Do again” button to start another try. No worries, old results will still be visible to you even if you redo a scenario!