The Jewellery Retail Industry has evolved greatly in the past decade with the brands coming in but yet jewellery sales training in India hasn’t. We always talk of the vast amount of knowledge that is there in the Jewellery industry – knowledge of gold to knowledge of platinum, diamond knowledge for sales, market and environment knowledge that is always evolving and also the skills to use this knowledge for effective sales.
However in a typical independent family jeweller format, there is no one with a profile to train Jewellery Counter Staff or even help them develop a Jewellery Sales Pitch. Colleagues are asked to train new employees and the induction many a time isn’t very healthy and welcoming. And more than the Knowledge that gets transferred, what happens many a time is that, the new joinee ends up feeling more insecure rather than confident about his or her role. Reality Bites but it’s the truth, there’s lots of knowledge but no one is making it their job to share it right for a win-win. Hence we lose some of the best talent to another industry.
At NYUZ, we realised the shortcomings of the Jewellery industry and also the fact that for Jewellery Retail Training to work, it had to be about “real world knowledge and skills” and in “real world time” with “real world methodology”.
REAL WORLD KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS of Product, of Environment and of Process. Unless the sales teams are not confident to introduce the store and the products that they deal with, knowledge of the diamonds and their qualities, explain the concept of hallmarking and its benefits, introduce the new millennial metal that came to India as Platinum, how will a 45 year old lady trust a 24 year old young sales girl. Because of this basic level of knowledge that is absence, the client wants to speak only to the Owner and hence Owners become the Super Salesperson of their stores. And if that keeps happening then the Jewellery sales person would remain a helper.
REAL WORLD TIME implies clearly that the Indian Jeweller has largely been a shopkeeper at heart and would never digest the fact that the team is being trained during open shop hours. Keeping the same in mind, our modules have been developed which require just a couple of hours of training daily for a week to make the sales person take the first step to become a Jewellery sales professional.
So in effect our Jewellery Sales Program is a 15 hour module divided into 5 days of 3 hours each. But we are able to customize this based on the comfort of our clients nationally.
REAL WORLD METHODOLOGY is the way a way by which we understand that most sales people are experienced people and may feel that their experience makes them educated enough. Unknowingly they remain clueless to the changes. Our friendly methodology that promotes interaction as industry colleagues, games that are structured around ideas that enable participation, confidence building opportunities within the program make the entire training program as a fun-learning exercise. Even within the teams a lot of blockages are opened up and jealous colleagues become great friends in the process. A sense of ownership is also developed when the larger goals of the organization are shared in a matter of fact manner.
SALES TRAINING PROGRAMS : We have constructed two levels of training program for the retail sales teams of Jewellery stores. JSP-1 is a lot to do with knowledge acquisition on Product, Environment and Process in a manner so that it could be used for selling. JSP-2 is all about the softer skills that includes Personality & Grooming, creating a Sales Pitch, a Sales Technique and Customer Interactions in Sales Situations.
STORE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM : Understanding that the Managers role in a retail store is more than achieving just numbers, a very niche module has been developed for the Retail Store Manager that includes various facets of management like Operations, Sales, Marketing, Visual Merchandising, Merchandising, Security & Systems, HRD and even MIS Reports Generation. This gives a sense of purpose to the Manager and he is able to realize that his job is more than just selling and sales targets.
ADMINISTRATIVE EXECUTIVE PROGRAM : A small program designed for the back-end team who also need to understand the essence of our industry as well as product as they play an important support role to the frontline sales team. The AET program Ideal for Merchandisers, HR Department, Operations Team and even Software Developers in the team.
JEWELLERY EXECUTIVE TRAINING : Also called JET, this program begins with understanding the industry, the company goals, creating a vision and mission, planning of inventory and merchandise, understanding the different marketing tools and also marketing strategy, store set-up and infrastructure requirements, creating an organigram as well as personnel policies and many other things. In fact it’s the perfect program to launch the next gen or any family member into the boardroom.
WORKSHOPS : Workshops are tiny classes that can be conducted based on a specific need or problem that needs to be attended to. It could be as simple as a workshop to create a Sales Pitch and as technical as how to handle diamonds. Whatever is your specific need, can be fulfilled with quick fix training which are referred to as workshops.
In the clients success is where we seek ours. So for us Success Stories of our clients are what give us a thrill, especially of a certain set of family jewelers who have managed to take the leap of faith and believe that training is a shortcut to experience.
Among our premier success stories is when KHIMJI JEWELLERS placed their faith in us from 2014 to train their sales team through a customized induction program called KISS-1 (Khimji Induction Sales & Service Program-1). This program began with the fundamentals of the company - products, promotions, policies and then went on to a refinement of their personality and grooming.Then there was product knowledge that covered gold, diamonds and platinum and also had a little bit of sales pitch formation and a test. All pass-outs of KISS-1 were awarded with a certificate that was signed by the Directors of Khimji and NYUZ.
This was followed up with KISS-2 (Khimji Induction Sales &
Service Program-2) in which the onus shifted from the
basics to Advanced Selling Skills that included knowledge of
prevailing market conditions, using different sales
techniques,
understanding different kinds of customers and their buying motives,
mock sessions and role plays.
KHIMJI JEWELLERS
diligently ensured that every employee was put through these two
programs and that did help bring about a level of
standardization of knowledge levels across the team and also helped
them bond better. So from 1 store in
Bhubaneshwar, this exercise was carried out subsequently for all
their new recruits across Cuttack, Rourkela,
Berhampur and Chandrapur.
We have also been the first company to be approached to train leading jewellery brands like TBZ-The Original, Malabar Gold & Diamonds, Nirvana, Gili, Irasva. But we pride ourselves in the fact that leading family jewellers like Anmol, Hazoorilal, Hari Prasad Gopi Krishan Saraf, Popley, Ghanasingh, Shobha Asar, Ishwarlal Harjivandas even had faith and accepted training as a part of their people building exercise. At NYUZ, we also have earned the faith of trade bodies like DTC, PGI and now NDC for their training initiatives.
Do you do training only in Mumbai ?
Though our office is based in Mumbai, we do training across the
country and have even trained jewellery sales
teams internationally in Dubai, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Do you train only retail sales teams or even others
?
We train all kinds of employees in Retail. Whether it is
Frontline Sales Teams, or Store Managers or
Merchandising & Design Teams and even Administrative Teams with
focused knowledge and skills required for
performance of their roles.
Will my sales show a big growth after doing your sales
training ?
Everyone wishes to do investments only if there are guaranteed
results, its an accepted norm.
What kind of Guaranteed Results can you expect after a jewellery
sales training program by NYUZ :
1. Yes, you can surely expect a better strike rate and
conversions after your frontline sales team is
trained by us. Hence more sales.
2. You would also see a bigger sense of responsibility and awareness of ones role in
the organization because of this training
3. An enhanced confidence to handle diamond sales, in case quite a few sales people were not
confident about the same
4. Team Bonding amidst the members and even Confidence increases greatly
5. Sales people ask for bigger roles and also start sharing management responsibilities
6. Knowledge about the trade in general, competition in particular increases and hence people
work smarter
What is the cost of a sales training program ?
The cost of training every employee for a module that would last for 5 days in a manner where each day around 3
hours of training is conducted would be roughly Rs 12500/- plus gst. This is roughly 50% of the salary of most sales
people on the counter.
The norm in the jewellery, watches and luxury space is that a company should spend at least 2 times an employees
monthly salary to build the employee, so that he/she in turn builds the company.
What kind of training is done by NYUZ ?
We believe that your sales team already know how to sell best to your customers. Hence our training simply respects
their skills and arms them with the relevant knowledge and attitude that helps them sell better. We call it Coaching
which means that we treat your team as friends and make the training into a very interactive and fun learning
experience. No one likes to be treated like a student especially when the average age is 27 plus in most jewellery
stores. Hence our training methodology is real-world and even our Coaches are employees who have been in jewellery
for a fairly long time.
Would people who are weak in English understand your training ?
Since we believe in adult learning, our methodology is very interactive and promotes sharing compared to just a
classroom type of approach. Our Coaches are comfortable with every kind of an audience – Gujarati, Hindi,
Marathi..though we use English as a medium for the slides.
We believe that Coaching is not just about good content but also about great deliverance and that is possible only
when we connect in the local language that is comfortable to the
participants.
