This holiday season, The Furniture Training Company announced that it is extremely thankful to have reached a goal of 4,000 sales associates that have been educated using the company’s online furniture training.
“When we began teaching, testing, and certifying salespeople, our goal was not only to increase sales for the store, obviously, but also to increase the level of respect that our industry’s salespeople have in the minds of consumers,” says Mark Lacy, president of Furniture Training Co. “Especially in a time where every single sale counts, the salesperson needs to be equipped with the product knowledge and sales tools to be effective.”
Ed Smith, owner and president of Chariho Furniture, says that every member of his sales staff has completed both the sales training as well as the product knowledge training offered by The Furniture Training Co. — and the training is now required of every new hire as well. For those salespeople who are not educated as interior designers, Chariho has them complete the room designer program as well.
“It certainly gives each of our sales associates more confidence, and it is a very cost effective way of training staff and insuring uniformity regarding approach and product knowledge,” he asserts. “We display all of the completion certificates near our sales counter to show our customers that they are dealing with professionals who are trained in the furniture industry.”
Smith has personally taken each of the courses to “try them out” prior to requiring his sales team to do so, and he says the programs are “very user friendly and easy to follow.”
“As far as investment, we have utilized many different methods, including books and expensive consultants. To date, I have not seen anything that is as effective at such a reasonable price,” he adds. “I want to speak highly of The Furniture Training Company, but I almost don’t want the competition to know how cost effective and beneficial the programs are!”
Similarly, the sales associates at Smitty’s Furniture are enjoying the increased confidence that comes with training.
“Through our improved confidence and product knowledge, the customer is able to be more confident in choosing us,” says Bryan Huck, president of Smitty’s. “The courses are reassuring that we do things well and that we have very knowledgeable sales consultants.”
Huck polled some of his sales consultants for some of their thoughts about the training, and they responded with “very enjoyable” and “fun!” One salesperson commented that “the selling skills module was very good in that it helped me hear things from the customer’s perspective, and it got me to change my usual patterns of interacting with them.” Another said that the training led to many conversations among the sales team around the various topics covered, which reinforced the learning process even further.
“I wish we would have started the program sooner in 2009 and got more of our consultants on board right away,” Huck adds. “It took a while to catch on with the sales team initially, and a few of them were reluctant. However, once a few of them started completing modules, the others quickly joined in and started working on it. We are in now in the process of creating an overall certificate that we can post and be proud of, and we will consider this from a marketing perspective as well.”
The Furniture Training Co. website contains the most scientifically advanced and validated sales training resources in the home furnishings industry. It provides all of the content a home furnishing retailer could hope for — including training lessons, podcast interviews, entertaining review games, showroom practice worksheets, video role-play examples, and dynamic customer simulations — to assist in training sales associates to become experts at selling furniture to shoppers in their store.
More than 90 percent of sales associates using this Internet-based training have increased their sales — this data has been collected through anonymous course evaluations by every sales associate that has completed the training. Sales associates with subscriptions to the Furniture Training Company website have unlimited access to more than 1,000 facts, techniques and skills, and attitudes essential to becoming certified furniture sales experts. They can master the latest trends in furniture product knowledge, how to sell furniture, the essential principles of room design, and become officially certified in these areas.
Access to the website costs just $20 a month per person. Retailers who belong to furniture associations and buying groups may receive additional discounts.
For more information on the training opportunities that Furniture Training Company provides, call Mark Lacy at (866) 755-5996 or visit http://bit.ly/6m2ONJ to get details on the "first month's training free" promotion offered by Furniture Training Company.
About The Furniture Training Company: The Furniture Training Company designs and delivers award winning online furniture training courses exclusively for home furnishings retailers. The National Home Furnishings Association and many other industry groups sponsor their Internet training. Home furnishing retailers from top 25 companies to small independent retailers all find The Furniture Training Company's web-based training programs highly affordable, effective, and easy to implement.