Training your retail staff.

Kim Simons used to file papers and forward emails into a database for Goodwill of Greater Washington in Washington, D.C. That was before someone noticed other skills in her.

Simons worked as a staff member at a thrift store for Goodwill for about a year before becoming keyholder. A keyholder or assistant manager makes the rounds on the floor and supervises others.

Maybe one of the skills that placed her as a keyholder is the bubbly attitude that comes through when Simons talks about her retail job. "Working with customers is a challenge because we have fun setting out colors of the clothing and seeing the look on the customer's face," she said.

What did management see in Simons worth training? "When we look for people to train, we look for a good personality," she said. "We ask them questions about how they get along with people because customer service means that you have to greet people."

Retail training depends on a certain blend of counseling, continuing education about the nonprofit, and a focus on customer service. In general, retail training aims to increase skills to deal with customers.

Yet because of the mission many nonprofits face, the equal task is training workers with special needs. Those special needs could interfere with the interactions the attendant has with customers. However, Simons has been trained that people continue to come into the store based on the attitude shown by the retail staff.

As a supervisor, Simons' eye is always on the lookout to maintain customer service. "If an attendant is just standing around when a customer walks into the store, I'll ask what's wrong," she said. "A keyholder shares the person's needs to see if there's problem at home. We give them an ear."

Simons also knows that Goodwill maintains a psychologist on staff in the headquarters upstairs from the retail store should the staff member require extra assistance.

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Counseling appears as the role of a job coach at Ben & Jerry's PartnerShops. The job coach is basically a social worker who works with the scoop shop manager.

PartnerShops are Ben & Jerry's (B & J) retail stores that are independently owned and operated by community-based nonprofits. The concept aims to provide job and entrepreneurial training to youth who otherwise may face obstacles to the workplace. Nonprofit operators retain the business proceeds, which help finance programs.

"We found we could offer a way for nonprofits to make money and train people at the same time," said Jennifer Shewmake, manager of community programs and communications for B & J's PartnerShops in South Burlington, Vt. "We've found a double bottom-line exists--the greater strength of the model happens with job training."

The shop operates with B & J being the franchisor while the shop is the franchisee. The B & J organization also supplies support in management and training.

The PartnerShops work with youth development organizations that have training in mind, aiding around 400 workers any given year. "In the past four years, we've honed in on many youth who could be homeless or struggled to find some form of housing," she said. "Others might have dropped out of high school and are working to build up a resume."

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Usually the job coach is a fulltime role although some places offer a three-quarter situation. The role calls for a social work background with a sense of business and retail.

"The job coach or case worker sits down with the worker to go over areas the person seeks to improve," she said. "Sometimes this comes down to figuring how to handle child care or a sick parent."

Workers go through a life skills component besides the job skills area. Training in life styles includes seeing examples about how to give and receive feedback, how to get along with supervisors, how to manage money or time, and how to think about customer service.

Technical training occurs as well, where workers are shown how to make a cake or sundaes. The employment progress is tracked by the job coach along side the manager as plans about transition to a next job proceed.

The initial training phase varies in time with PartnerShops. One style offers three afternoons a week so the total can be 15 to 20 hours for the life skills training.

The training environment calls for a size of store and number of trainees to be effective. The magic size in most stores ranges from 700 to 1,200 square feet where three to four trainees go through at a time. The largest stores might handle seven to 10 people.

All forms of mentorship are rewarding for the employee, the mentor, and the organization, according to Sandra Mottner, associate professor of marketing at the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.

Mottner conducted a study to measure museum retail stores, called "Measuring Nonprofit Marketing Strategy Performance: The case of museum stores." The research looked at financial and educational strategies and aimed to provide a measurement for those strategies.

"We found that the type of training had an effect on the outcomes of the stores," Mottner said. "This shows up in financial ways and in furthering the mission."

Mottner discovered that educational training about the museum's collection showed up in significant ways. Mottner designed two measurements. In one, the perception of the manager examined nine to 10 items of whether or not visitors were learning from being in the store. This developed from customer feedback about the museum and whether they took away items from the museum.

Mottner also looked at the outcome of the store as sales per square foot that showed a financial impact existed for the higher degree of training and lower for those situations without the same training. This occurred in a statistically significant amount, according to Mottner. "This is an interesting finding because it relates to the part of the museum that brings in income," she said.

Most training focused on education about the historical significance of the museum, especially when the employee has more time to talk to customers about the goals of the museum. Could this approach be translated to a Goodwill-type of retail where the customer is simply interested in picking up a piece of clothing? "We don't know how important it is to the customer about helping that type of mission," she said.

Mottner completed a small study of stores in churches to see how much the store was helped by increased education about the church. "The concept that the visitor would help the church seems to increase the retail sales," she said. "But whether that would aid other such stores is unclear."

Even without complete details, Mottner is confident that training helps the public's awareness of the organization and the retail operation. "Training is something people take for granted," she said. "But it's critical for the success of the store and the organization."

The Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation (NRF) considers training so crucial that the research and educational arm, called the NRF Foundation, maintains 22 retail skill centers to recruit, assess, train, and place people with developed retail skills.

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The foundation is a charity organization supported through grants and conducts research to assist for-profits and nonprofits. "We have a collaborative effort to develop a stronger workforce," said Kathy Mance, vice president of the NRF Foundation.

The foundation developed retail industry standards, including those for training. Many arrive from experiences seen in Goodwill types of places, technical schools, and from job core experts.

Standards for training include modules that show how to greet customers, close sales, and promote safety. The aspects are broken down to tasks so workers can obtain knowledge about how to perform. The tasks show step-by-step acts like, looking the customer in the eye, or showing a smile.

Most retail organizations are small mom-and-pop stores, and operate with fewer than 50 employees, according to Mance. While she keeps no numbers on the exact figures of nonprofit retailers, some giants exist, like Goodwill or The Salvation Army.

Training that retains workers continues to stand out as a major goal. The cost to recruit, train, and retain a retail sales position that averages $12.36 an hour is around $2,370. Along with a full-time employee turnover rate of 64 percent, the implication is that an organization pays heavily for retail help.

"Training doesn't mean the employees will perform at the same level," she said. "But they will all perform better."

The job retention of employees at PartnerShops is about 75 percent--workers who finish the job training program and have a job two years out with higher wages. That figure is 11 percent higher than industry standards as listed by the NRE.

"Measuring that training is helpful because you can look at how to track which skills were built up," said Shewmake.

Some tools to measure effects on customer service start with tracking people who had no idea how to handle customers. Then record how well the employee maintains eye contact, a certain voice level, and the attitude of confidence.

In a sample of 130 museum stores from around the United States responses indicated that more stores than not had some kind of sales-related training. Most of the staff had some kind of museum collection training, according to Mottner. Indications that training for selling and having museum expertise explained 3.6 percent of the sales per square foot.

"The 'selling skills' training appears to have a stronger positive influence on sales per square foot than the 'museum training,'" she said. "It appears that there is a high positive correlation between stores that do both types of training and increased sales."

Sales per square foot ranged from nearly zero to $4,000 with a mean of $248.40. "It can be safely assumed from this research sample that money and time spent on training in a museum store will result in an incremental improvement in sales per square foot," she said. "Unfortunately, the data was not structured in such a way that I can say how much that improvement would be."