The retail landscape is forever changing, with competition from online sellers taking bigger chunks out of a brick-and-mortar retailer’s pocket every year. Gun shops have an advantage, though, in that there will always be plenty of window shoppers who want to handle the merchandise before they make a purchase decision. Good sales associates can turn a window shopper into a buyer.

How do they accomplish this? It’s simple: Employees who are intimately familiar with a product category will sell more of that product. In fact, 84 percent of sales associates say that extensive knowledge and personal experience helps them make better product recommendations to customers. Even if your sales associates aren’t avid hunters or shooters, knowing the products and being able to advise shoppers on what fits their needs will open the door to selling and upselling. Knowledgeable employees also establish your store as a source of trusted advice, which keeps customers coming back — and the employees benefit, too, by excelling at their work and earning more commissions.

The trouble is, educating employees is a time-consuming and sometimes expensive process. It is often difficult to keep the information up to date with the latest products and brands. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? If knowledgeable sales associates create better buying experiences, why are there not more free resources that help your staff not only stay up to date, but also get rewarded for growing their level of expertise? 

And answering that question is how ExpertVoice got its start. CEO Tom Stockham founded ExpertVoice more than 15 years ago after witnessing the incredible impact his brother, a well-known mountain biker, had on the purchasing decisions of other bikers. A lightbulb went off about the power that knowledgeable and credible experts can have for a brand. Tom started a business that would reward individuals who were truly knowledgeable about products and could directly influence buying decisions. Over time, ExpertVoice has grown into a network of more than one million individuals and 500+ brands across several industries. This kind of network gives your employees access to immense amounts of expertise on a variety of brands that you have on your shelves. 

ExpertVoice powers its services by partnering directly with some of the largest brands in the hunting industry — names like Browning, Vortex Optics, ScentLok and more — to create online education and rewards programs that will help familiarize your employees with products and brands. The training is free for retailers to use, and it offers inside access to brands to keep sales associates up to date with the latest and greatest. There are built-in rewards and incentive programs for employees who use this insider knowledge to sell more product, as well as discounts offered. An employee who takes advantage of this discount gains hands-on experience with the product as he or she uses it, further empowering them with knowledge they can pass on to the customer.

Access to this brand and product education is freely available on ExpertVoice’s public website, with a login. Much of it is provided in the form of videos, with an online quiz to follow. In many cases, after the employee watches the video and passes the quiz, they unlock a discount — up to 60 percent off in some cases. The blocks of content come in various lengths, but most can be completed in 15 to 30 minutes. It’s available on-demand and rewards employees who want to take their own initiative to build their product expertise.

Encouraging your sales associates to take advantage of this product education is a win-win: they benefit personally by gaining access to product discounts and by improving their ability to sell more product, and you as a retailer benefit from increased sales and a higher general level of knowledge among your employees. Need proof? Burris Optics’ partnership with ExpertVoice allowed them to identify and improve the way pro and retail hunting experts recommend their brand. The research conducted with experts before and after they engaged with the brand’s content on ExpertVoice provided Burris Optics with key insights into expert recommendation behavior, increased brand sentiment by 34 percent and drove more than $150,000 in sales. For high-end outdoor clothing company Arc’teryx, in the first six months of 2019, REI locations with associates engaged on ExpertVoice sold $1.4 million more in Arc’teryx product than those without engaged experts. That’s $7,800 more per location, monthly.

There’s no doubt that giving your employees access to product education — and by extension, hands-on product experience via the discounts unlocked — will increase the number of sales they make. To take advantage of this free-for-the-taking education from ExpertVoice, visit www.expertvoice.com/huntingretailer and get started.