Smarter Retailing – Coaching and Training your Frontline Team

A Retailer’s Frontline Team are the best asset they have so Retailers should invest in them and not view them as a cost.

Motivated staff, well trained and led by the store manager or retailer can grow the sales and the store profits.

Coaching them to have the right service attitude is essential.

When frontline staff behave like cashiers, standing behind the counter and taking money offered by customers for fuel and shop products, it is unlikely that extra sales are being made. This means that not only is the store not reaching its optimum sale per customer, but it is likely that the customer’s expectations of service in the C-Store are not being met.

Over the past 5 or so years there has been a focus on risk management training – the business society has changed and nobody can ignore their obligations in this area such as workplace safety and food safety.

However – does the training engagement with frontline teams stop there?
Are operator’s investing time and effort into training their frontline people to be great service providers and retailers?

Operators and managers need to re-connect with their store and customers. They need to remember that frontline staff follow good examples. It is important for managers to practice what they preach by demonstrating good customer connections and showing the team how to make suggestive and promotional sales.

Staff should be coached to know their customers, and informed about how the business functions. The customer is king and making sales to them is critical to success.

Discuss with the team what customers expect in the store.
Show them how to make the shopping visit to the stores one that meets their expectations. Convenience is about fast and efficient, accessible and so on – but it’s also about friendly, conversation and customer care.

Everybody who works in retail knows that the customer is important – but how many really go out there and talk with their customers?


While we are talking to them there are always opportunities to make those value added sales – from promotions or whatever seems appropriate to that customer – for someone buying a coffee “why not try a fresh baked muffin today?”

Managers and retailers should spend time training their staff and helping them understand how a specific store promotion will benefit the customer. Many customers see the point of sale placards but still don’t understand what the value to them is.
The frontline team need to identify what value the customer is getting and why a customer would want to buy the deal?
Many people are naturals at this – however many others need the manager’s help, coaching and support to feel comfortable with making added sales to customers.

Don’t underestimate how the team might respond; there are a number of positive examples of this out there. Let me show you how it really can work.

atmp training have a number of UCB client’s store managers who have undertaken C-Store Manager Training, a two year Certificate IV Qualification in Retail Management SIR40207.

In July this year, one of the current participants had a marketing assignment that she needed to complete as part of her Certificate IV program with us.

This assignment required her to develop an in-store sales support program with her team and their monthly promotional activity. Using a UCB promotion she prepared her strategy , set out how she would train the frontline team at the store and worked out how she would communicate their weekly results to them and so on. A key component she identified was to lead by example to the staff – so she made it a point to talk to customers and get in there and give it a go too.
It was decided that nothing out of the normal would be done for the 1st week of the promotion which was on Choc bars. She measured the result and only 32 bars were sold.

However in the 2nd week when all the training, feedback and leading by example started the immediate result was huge. 233 bars were sold in one week – remember only 32 last week – when the point of sale was up and the stock was displayed, but staff weren’t talking to customers about the benefits of the deal to them.

During week 3 of the promotion the manager was actually away all week from the store, however the momentum continued with 291 bars sold.
And week 4 didn’t fall too much either – 249 bars were sold.

The results were on average a massive 687% increase in the sales of choc bars during the promo period. But the real result was that an additional $300 GP dollars were added to the bottom line by getting frontline staff to talk to customers and offering the benefits of the promo.

As the results above prove, focussing on being a smarter retailer by remembering to get involved with your customers plus coaching and supporting your front line team will get you increased turnover and improved gross dollars in your business.