We offer an independent analysis of your general business operations with recommendations for improving efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

When we’re on the ground in your community and store, we can assess your staff, your business operations, your marketing, your merchandising, and your competition. Our assessment of your business includes a detailed report that identifies specific strategies for growth and improvement. This 3-day on-site visit can always include in-store staff training on any topics from our in-store menu.

To represent your brand and business adeptly, your staff needs training in key areas:  product knowledge, selling skills, customer relations and store operations. As a former GIA instructor and director, Janice has deep reserves of the product information that is most critical to a frontline salesperson and can help them understand what, when and how to use it. She has developed wide-scoped materials to help your people embrace the art of selling and the skill of developing customer relations. Equally important to smooth operations are the arts of communication and teamwork. We specialize in providing training, either virtual or in-store, on the following subjects:

Selling

• We are well-known for our quality- and emotions-based sales training that is so important to the culture of independent jewelers. We pioneered the "Emotional Selling Process" and we have related it to different product and consumer groups. We understand how you must use your unique position in your community to leverage quality and services over discount selling. We can provide you off-the-shelf sales training products or develop and deliver a custom sales training program that embraces your unique position and objectives in your market.

Clienteling

• Clienteling is the art of getting people to buy your product, from you, more often. It is highly dependent on service - the right kind of service at the right time in a way the customer will respond. There is different methodology, timing and technique with different types of customers. We have a solid, basic clienteling program or we can identify your specific needs and deliver a customized clienteling program for you. This is great team training followed by one-on-one coaching to help each person develop the style that works for them. We offer a pre-printed Client Book or will help you work with reports generated through your POS or CRM system.

Effective Communication

• Although your personal communication style may serve you well, it doesn't always accomplish your purposes. You may have staff or colleagues who frequently seem to misinterpret or miss your message. You may become frustrated with others who talk too much or can't get their point across. Business, and life, can seem like a modern Tower of Babel. We can help you understand the different styles of communication within your work team and how that understanding can improve effectiveness, minimize conflict, and make a good team better.

Team Building

• Every position in your business requires certain abilities. Every person on your team has a unique collection of traits and work style. We will show you how to accurately assess each person's individual strengths and suggest what positions they should fill to optimize their natural talent and maximize your team productivity. Cross-training and cross-functionalism is more than just multitasking. It's utilizing the best traits from each person in the right position to create an awesome, smooth-running team. This training helps your team not only understand, but appreciate each other's value and contribution to the bottom line.

Employee costs in today’s retail environment are simply too high to take chances on hiring the wrong people, or having the wrong people in critical positions. You’ll get the most productivity out of staff who are in positions for which they’re naturally talented. We use a behavioral assessment tool called PDP (Professional DynaMetric Programs) ProScan®, proven to be one of the most accurate and comprehensive systems available, to help you understand the traits and strengths of not only potential hires, but also your existing staff. Understanding each person’s traits and natural strengths helps you organize and manage a staff of high productivity. ProScan® also helps you identify your leadership and operational styles and how you can utilize them most effectively. PDP offers a variety of reports including detailed, summary, management insight, and job-matching.

In any market, it's difficult to find the right people and debilitating to hire the wrong people. We help you articulate the traits required for different positions in a store. With the aid and accuracy of PDP, we can identify whether or not those traits exist in candidates who apply for certain positions. The right match of traits to the position will dramatically increase the chances of new-hire success, particularly in sales positions. We can help you advertise more effectively for the traits you need. We will evaluate, screen and interview applicants, advising you on the probability of success. Once hired, we will assist you in onboarding with the training they will need to upskill quickly. Based on their profile, we can provide management insight to get the most out of them while keeping them motivated.

Every employee wants to know exactly what's expected of them and how they're doing. Timely and regular performance management keeps people on track for productivity and profitability. We will help you refine role descriptions and performance expectations for each of your unique positions and then coach you in how to conduct effective performance appraisals and set future goals.

Every business needs frontline people who understand and continually reinforce a company's culture, standards, and goals. These people must be fully prepared to lead and motivate and deliver the desired experience to the consumer through the staff. We help your manager learn the skills to engage and inspire their teams. With competent managers, performance improves, turnover diminishes, profits increase, and customer satisfaction can skyrocket.

Sometimes you're just too close to your business that you can't see the forest for the trees. We help you step back and take a look at the big picture. We guide you to work ON your business rather than just IN it. We help you be more self-aware so you can understand what you do best and why and how your personal style affects the culture and success of your business. We work on vision, leadership, structure, management, communication, delegation, and goal setting.

Bottom line results require not only sell-in, but sell-through. We will start with a thorough understanding of your product and unique market position. We will work with internal or external sales reps on proven selling and customer service techniques. We can develop a specific product training program around your selection. We can deliver not only product information, but adaptable selling skills in your retail outlets to move that product successfully for maximum turn and replenishment.