Merchandisers’ turnover is a common thing in retail, but still it impacts customer relationships and company’s bottom line. Therefore, motivation of merchandisers is one of the most important components of management a retail merchandising team. Merchandisers, who feel satisfied and engaged with their work, are more productive and efficient. In the same time, motivating merchandisers, who are constantly on the go, can be quite a challenge.
Merchandisers spend most of their workday outside the office, collecting retail data at various locations. It’s no wonder that their motivation is down. When it comes to job satisfaction, wage is not always on the top of the list. For outside employees feeling part of a team and being appreciated is at least as important as financial rewards. Getting no feedback from the management, merchandisers, begin to look elsewhere for a place where they’ll feel valued and appreciated.
Keeping your merchandisers motivated allow to minimize costly employee turnover and maximize their productivity. Staying continuously in search of new methods and techniques of merchandisers’ motivation, a field team manager gets a worthy investment that benefit the company and long term goals – an employee who enjoys coming to work and being a part of the business. Below you’ll find some techniques for making your merchandisers motivated and satisfied with their work.
- Encourage communication. Today, with widespread of mobile devices it’s much easier to communicate effectively with your field merchandising team. Messengers, email, and social media allow creating a framework, where merchandisers and office managers work together, sharing achievements and getting engaged. To maintain a sense of ownership for each team member, engage your merchandisers in planning and decision-making, bring their ideas to life, and ask for their input. Encouraging merchandisers to use corporate communication channels strengthens the team spirit of employees, which increases their loyalty and leads to more efficient teamwork.
- Give merchandisers the right tools for their work. Merchandisers, empowered with a kind of mobile solution for retail data collection, are able to perform their duties more efficiently, having better results and becoming more satisfied with the job done. Having all necessary tools on a single device, which they are used to and familiar with, your merchandisers become more engaged and productive performing various tasks with ease. Merchandising software allows your merchandisers to be targeted with their time, spending more hours negotiating with customers and driving larger order size. Making merchandisers’ job less manual enhances their productivity and allows you to use your mobile workforce for more rewarding work.
- Provide feedback. A feedback from supervisor is another great motivator, which provides merchandisers with a sense of how they are performing. A good field team manager provides feedback regularly and frequently enough to keep merchandisers motivated. In today’s mobile world you don’t even have to organize a meeting to tell your merchandisers how they are performing. Use corporate messengers or emails to thank merchandisers for the job done, instantly encourage more of good performance, or make timely remarks to give them opportunity to quickly correct the situation. Publicly acknowledge your merchandisers’ contribution using corporate communication channels or social media.
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To try our data collection software for free register at www.visitbasis.com and download the VisitBasis Retail Audit App FREE on Google Play or App Store. To learn more about how our field merchandising system works request a demo or check the links below to watch the demo videos.
