A Magic Bullet for Increasing Retail Sales

While I am still bringing Teamwise.co to market, I have been quietly collaborating with another platform focused on increasing retail sales by providing training for Point of Sales (PoS) staff.  There are many platforms around that can provide online training however Cheddar Labs is quite different in that it highly motivates retail sales staff to partake in training modules.  When the retail staff become more familiar with the products they are representing to customers, an increase in sales follows.  The platform has been so successful that ROI is achieved within weeks.  

Cheddar Labs is a win-win-win scenario.  The brand owners win by increasing loyalty amongst those who sell their brands.   The problem with the entire supply chain disintermediation is that a large gap exists for knowledge transfers.  Cheddar Labs provides a valuable service in terms of putting brand owners and stakeholders in direct contact with the Point of Sales (PoS) staff.   From the 4 years of statistical data acquired, the average retail employee sold an average of 1.9 more units per 8 hour shift for one brand surveyed.  Given the cost to train that employee was less than ten dollars, the ROI was immediate to the brand owner.  More importantly however, the brand owner created another advocate for their brands.   That new advocate statistically will sell more of a product they are familiar with themselves hence the brand owner has acquired another trained sales staff member for mere dollars.

The training programs are not hard to deliver.  While Cheddar Labs has a powerful platform in terms of content delivery, the real intellectual property rests within the motivational component whereby the PoS staff are highly motivated to take the training.  The graph below shows actual training tests taken per month.   

The brands provide their product training materials to Cheddar Labs.  From that material, several modules are built to educate retail staff on the products.    After taking the training, each retail staff members is then given the opportunity to take tests to prove they have retained knowledge.  In exchange for taking the training and tests, the brand owners reward the retail staff with incentives such as discounted goods.   This provides a high degree of motivation for each retail worker to take the training.

Each employee who takes a test becomes more knowledgable about the product or brand they received training on and are more likely to sell more of that product in a competitive environment.  When surveyed, over 81% of the retail sales staff contacted felt that they sold more of the brand they were trained on.  That is a fact that brand owners can take to the bank.

I am seeking five to ten brands to test the new version of the Cheddar Labs platform on.   If you are a marketing professional and have a brand or product that is sold in a retail environment and requires knowledgable sales staff, please ping me at duane at nickull dot net.