My experience working with retail for more than 10 years has been positive, either here in New York or in Brazil working at my family business. I remember once that I went to a workshop for managers, in which the speaker was giving directions on how to motivate the team to sell more, creating games, promoting the best salesperson, setting goals, giving prizes, but one of his notes was, to, during the business’ best months, forget about all the games, long term strategies and focus on selling.

However, since most of the retail businesses need to hire temporary employees for the holidays, it is important to pass them what your company stands for, even if they will work for you for a couple of months or even less.

Salespeople are your company’s face to clients, and you don’t want them to have a wrong impression, since if they get a good customer service, they might come back, but if they are treated badly, they WON’T come back, plus, they almost certainly will tell friends and family about their terrible experience.

I know, you are probably asking, who has time during holiday season to train the new team? Well, probably no one, right? A good idea is to have a manual with relevant information especially for the holidays. Here are a few points that you should include:

• Company’s mission statement
• Corporate culture and a short history of the company: how long has it been in business, is it franchise or own company, does it franchise, how many stores are there?, and all information you know customers may ask.
• List of tasks and duties.
• How would you like your team to approach the clients?: saying hello, and following the customer all over the place?; giving the customer some space?; only wait for the customer to come to them? (Bad idea!) or asking them the question: How may I help you today? Even though they may not want any help at that moment, at least they will know to whom they should come to if they need assistance.
• If your products need complex explanation, write down everything and give it to them. At least if they can’t memorize it all, they will have it handy, rather than having to ask someone else that could be probably busy as well.

Ask your full time employees, what are the most important questions they receive, and what they think would be helpful for the new temporary team to know, so that they could offer a good service.

Happy Holidays and great sales!