How to train employees in the lingerie industry
If you own or manage a lingerie store, you know that even if you're well-versed in every aspect of shop floor management, one thing is clear: there's always room for improvement.
In today's market, it's no longer enough to simply stock lingerie; you need your employees to be informed about everything from fit measurements and fashion trends to basic upselling techniques. So how can you prepare them for success? Follow the tips below, and you’ll be on your way to success.
Provide a digital training handbook for your lingerie staff
To help your lingerie employees become successful salespeople, you must first help them become experts at what they do. The more knowledgeable they are about the products you sell and how to fit them properly, the better they'll be able to serve customers who come into your store.
A digital handbook is a fast and easy way to introduce new employees to your lingerie brand and provide information about your products and processes.
Providing a digital handbook means your lingerie staff can access it wherever and whenever they need it and most of the best sales training apps for lingerie brands have these included.
Perhaps your sales associates need to refresh their memory on your upselling techniques. They can go straight to the app, search for ‘upselling techniques’ and be presented with all information related to their query. Just like Google, but specifically for your business.
It means you can also include other popular training formats within the handbook, such as
Videos to help explain processes or procedures more clearly.
Step-by-step guides so they can jump to the relevant steps more easily whilst they’re in the flow of work.
Company podcast so they can listen on their commute to or from work.
When your lingerie staff have a digital handbook which they can easily access whenever they need it, it also boosts their confidence. They no longer feel uncertain about what they should or shouldn’t say because they have everything they need in the palm of their hand.
What’s even better is that the more content you put in, the more they’ll get out, so you know you have full control over their training and progress.
Combine comms with your sales training
To train employees in the lingerie industry, it’s crucial that you use your comms to guide your employees on what they need to learn and how to put it into action. The lingerie market is an ever-changing industry, and things can fast become outdated if you don’t keep on top of things.
If you look at most of the top sales training apps, you’ll find that they offer a comms platform alongside a training solution. This is because they know that retail employees need constant guidance on the training they need to do and where to find it.
For example, here’s how our platform, Ocasta Engage, can guide your lingerie staff on what they need to learn;
Customisable banners display proudly on the homepage of the app so you can decide what news you want to sit there. Perhaps you’ve just launched a new celebrity-endorsed underwear line and built a training course around it. You can create a banner on the app to click through to the relevant training.
Notifications pop up on your employee's mobile or tablet device, which cut through the news of WhatsApp and email. This means you can use these to point them in the direction of what you want them to achieve for that day. For example, ‘don’t forget it’s our Black Friday sale next week. Please complete the Black Friday training before Friday.’
Unread news can be highlighted with small markers, which let the user know what news they have and haven’t read. This means if they were ill or off on holiday, it doesn’t matter; they will always be in the loop with your latest training news.
Training in the lingerie industry works best when you encourage questions and dialogue
On the whole, people are more willing to learn if they feel like they can ask questions and not be made to feel silly or a burden. Sometimes that means encouraging them to ask questions and challenge things.
To train employees effectively in the lingerie industry, you need to open up two-way communication on all of your comms and training. Ocasta Engage makes this easy for their users; when a lingerie client publishes content about their products and processes, they can turn comments on or off for each page they publish.
This is great because it means your sales associates can ask questions to expand their knowledge and overcome any confusion. Let’s say you published a section around bra fittings, and you weren’t clear on what measurements they were supposed to use. Your employees can leave a comment highlighting that it’s unclear, which helps your lingerie training in two ways:
You can immediately edit the text to ensure it’s clear on exactly what your sales associates need to do.
Your staff won’t be afraid to speak out when they don’t understand something, which is detrimental to learner success.
Flexible training is essential for lingerie employees working on the shop floor
You don’t want to bombard your sales associates with more tasks on their to-do lists.
Instead, ensure their learning fits flexibly around them.
You can do this by offering microlearning courses which only take 1-5 minutes to complete, and your staff can jump in and out of them when they’ve got the time.
This means learning can fit around their time with customers. They don’t have to learn at home (which most retail employees won’t be in favour of) they can do it when they have some downtime in the store or for a few minutes at the end of their lunch break.
With so many new lingerie trends and selling techniques emerging, it’s crucial that your employees are learning daily, and microlearning is the perfect way to encourage regular learning habits.
Because they’re in small bite-sized chunks, you can more easily encourage your employees to learn in short bursts and build learning into their daily routines.
Did you know that up to 45% of all our daily behaviours are automatic? This means once you’ve embedded the habit of learning, it will become an automatic action for your employees to learn at a particular time of day.
Don't insist on memorisation of facts.
Training employees in the lingerie industry works differently from other businesses because it’s such an intimate purchase for customers.
In an industry where employees must be able to see their customers as real people, it's important for them to empathise with your customers and fully understand what they want, need and are comfortable with.
If you're training a new sales associate at your lingerie store, you don't want that person to be focused solely on memorising facts about your company's products. Instead, you should make sure they also have practical skills like how to greet customers and answer questions about sizing or fit. When teaching new employees, encourage them not just to read from a script but also to think for themselves; ask questions if something isn't clear or look up answers on their own time if something comes up during the day (like an unexpected complaint from a customer).
You can do this easily with the top sales training apps, which include tasks among their learning modules. This means for every learning article you publish; you can add a task to maximise their learning. This could be something like;
Greet five customers today.
Use the customer's name three times in your conversation.
Offer ten bra fittings today.
Your manager can watch to see if they complete the task and mark their learning assignment as complete once they’ve done it.
Download our sales enablement guide to increase sales in your lingerie store
Encourage positive learning behaviours
When creating a training plan for your lingerie business, it can be easy to forget about the key people within that plan, and that’s your employees. You can’t keep throwing training their way and expecting them to engage with it if they’re getting nothing back.
A great way to create a positive cycle of learning is to reward those who are continuously learning to the best of their ability. Use a sales training app which includes rewards and recognition so you can easily make your employees feel valued and recognised for their hard work.
Keep track of important information updates
When you work in the lingerie industry, your busiest times of the year are Valentine's Day and Christmas. You’ve got so much to prepare and organise, and keeping your staff in the loop can feel overwhelming and sometimes impossible.
You’ve got seasonal offers that you need everyone to be aware of, but you’re still hearing the same question ‘what are those offers again?’ How can you fix it to stop having to repeat yourself over and over again?
Use acknowledgements. This is a feature which ensures every sales associate is clear on the important updates that they need to know. It works by having a button at the bottom of every digital article which says, ‘I have read and understood this article’. This means you’ll have digital confirmation of who has and hasn’t updated themselves on your need-to-know information. And you can use notifications to alert those associates who aren’t up to date.
So the next time your Christmas sales come around, you can breathe a sigh of relief that all employees are up to date on what you need them to know.
Train and retrain
Training is an integral part of any business, including lingerie companies. Your employees' knowledge and skills affect the quality of their work, which directly affects your company's bottom line.
A well-trained workforce isn’t just a nice thing to have; it's essential for business success. Did you know companies that offer comprehensive training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalised training? That’s why companies like Victoria’s Secret invest heavily in their training initiatives because they know the outcomes they can achieve.
But training is not just about improving your current employees; it's also about maintaining an environment where new hires can thrive quickly once they join your lingerie brand. Having a personalised sales training platform which can train new starters from the moment they say yes makes it easy to get new staff up to speed and ready to sell.
Most importantly, it’s all about your employees
When training employees in the lingerie industry, never forget the most important part of your training strategy, and that’s your employees.
If you’re interested in using a sales training app which puts employees at the forefront. Try Ocasta Engage. It’s a sales training app designed for B2C sales staff, giving them everything they need to sell efficiently every single day.
Try it for free for 60 days to see how it transforms your customer experience and increases sales in your lingerie store.
Get tips and advice to improve sales in your B2C business
Join our fortnightly newsletter for industry insights to help you succeed with your sales.
