Retail and POS Resources

We at himatix.com do not provide on site training or direct phone support to end users. We do, however have extensive experience providing support services on our products, providing comprehensive second tier support to third parties and resellers. It is these third parties and resellers who provide us with direct feedback so we can provide continual improvements to our support services.

With sufficient investment in time and effort, you can implement SELLmatix in house, without outside consultants and support people, using the documentation contained on this site.

Professional trainers and consultants, however, can save much more than they charge, because they have already gone through the learning curve, have installed the system in other businesses and so they will not make some of the mistakes that those with less experience make, so ensuring a smoother and successful implementation of SELLmatix at your site.

In addition they can dramatically reduce the time taken to implement a system, because they know the steps to take and the order in which they should be taken for maximum efficiency.

The quality of training and support services varies, some being better than others. The same support staff can work extremely effectively with some clients, while other clients can take four or five times as long to accomplish the same result. Clearly, there are some client factors which determine how quickly the end user picks up the use of a system, and how much they benefit from that system. These client factors determine directly how much it costs to assist in getting the client to their objective.

This document details some of the differences between end user customers that learn quickly at low cost and maximum efficiency, and those customers that learn slowly, at far higher expense, and with far less optimal results. These are factors which you can control, and they are based on both our own experience, and the feedback from other support people.

Some of the points covered here, you may consider rather direct or indeed rude and impolite, and certainly that they do not apply to you. However please read our observations and comments based on our experience as our only objective is to ensure you have as easy and smooth implementation of SELLmatix as possible.

Interestingly enough, the key factors which make a difference are not related to education levels or experience, and there are a number of very simple steps that end users can take during training that would make their training many times more effective and productive.

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Your Cost
In your retail shop, your product is the merchandise that you sell to customers. The people providing you with training are also in business, and the product they sell is their time and experience.

If a customer was to come into your store, purchase a drink, and then take it outside and pour it down the drain without even tasting it, you may think it a little unusual, but it is not really your problem.

The product you are purchasing from the trainer is his or her time. If you want to pour that product down the drain by wasting their time, that is your right, but you need to be aware of the cost.

Trainers and support staff, by their nature want to help, and will go out of their way to assist. But when those efforts are squandered and wasted, it wears thin very quickly.

Willingness by trainers and support staff to make up time wasted by the customer at no cost is an indication of inexperienced support or training staff that have not been doing that type of work for any length of time.

Errors and Mistakes
The second reason why your training sessions are important is that the material covered in your training sessions will help you avoid making mistakes and errors that will need to be corrected later. If you fail to pick up on what is taught, extra mistakes will be made and you will have to spend time fixing these errors, or else pay someone else to correct things.

People forced to put in hours of extra work because they missed something that was covered in their training sessions often pay closer attention in future. Whether you learn this the easy way, right from the beginning, or the hard way, by spending hours correcting needless mistakes, is entirely under your control.

Implementation Speed and Return on Investment
When you made the decision to implement a new POS system, you did so in anticipation of certain benefits to you and your business. By the time that training occurs, the expenses have been incurred, the decisions made and the equipment installed.

All that remains is for you to realise the benefits that you sought, and for that to occur you need to learn to make use of the system. The quicker you learn the faster you realise a return on your investment.

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The purpose of training on a system such as SELLmatix, is to enable you to use the system in order to achieve the results you are seeking. While a certain amount of theoretical knowledge and explanation is necessary so that you can understand what you are doing, and why you are doing it, the training must be focused on the practical.

There are a number of key factors which are very important to keep in mind during the training process. These include:-

One thing builds on another, and the training needs to follow a logical sequence. In order for you to be able to perform "D", you may need to be able to perform "C", and to do that you may need to be able to do "B". And so forth.
Wherever possible, your trainer will try to give you a roadmap of the points to be covered so that you can get a picture of how things fit together. Don't keep harping on point "D" and talking about it, if your trainer has explained that Points "A", "B" and "C" need to be mastered first.
Be open to new ideas and different ways of doing things. The reason why you are installing a new system is that there are improvements that can be made. You are not getting a custom system crafted specifically for your needs, and it is very unlikely that you could afford such a system.
Instead you are installing a system that incorporates best practice by a wide range of similar businesses to yours. While there may be some things which are implemented in a different manner to the way you have been doing things, chances are that many of these represent improvements over your previous practice, provided that you approach these with an open mind.
On any site, there needs to be one key person (the 'super user') who manages and administers the system, and who acts as the contact point for staff using the system who have questions about the operation of the system and how it is to be implemented and used on the site.
Since management disciplines vary widely from site to site, the super user should be the only point of contact for staff, and if the super user is unable to resolve an issue, then and only then, should the super user seek further technical support.
If people other than the super user contact technical support, inevitably a situation arises where different people are asking for different contradictory things, and this has a major damaging effect on cost, performance and efficiency.
The super user needs to:-
- Have a much more detailed knowledge of the system than other staff members, and be able to train and assist staff.
- Be a trusted staff member that is familiar with the disciplines which management wishes to see implemented on the site.
- Learn how to configure the system so that it runs as desired by management.
- Be able to train and support staff members that will use the system.
- Be a first contact point when problems arise, so that they can resolve routine issues without incurring the expense and delay of contacting outside support staff.
The objective of SELLmatix training is to teach the super user these skills.
The degree to which something is remembered depends on three factors.
- Frequency. If you do the same thing 20 times every day, you will remember it.
- Recency. You normally remember things that happened yesterday far more clearly than things that happened 20 years ago.
- Intensity. If you have ever suffered major injuries in an accident, then you are likely to remember the accident, even though it happened a long time ago, because it was an intense experience.
It would be rather sad if you found learning to use a Point of Sale system an intense experience. If you want to remember what you have been taught, then you will need to rely on frequency and recency.
In other words, if you are shown how to do something during SELLmatix training, and then you don't get around to trying to use it for a week, then you are not going to remember, and you have wasted the training session and the costs involved. Be prepared to pay out more money to be trained on the same thing again.

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There are a range of practical steps which can be taken in order to achieve the best return from a training session, but the areas where most people fail are the simple, obvious things that should not need to be said. But these basic mistakes are made so often that they do need to be said.

Be prepared. Have the equipment ready, run up and tested, ready to go. Have the room or work area to be used booked, cleared and available. This will indicate to the trainer your level of commitment and willingness to learn.
Perceptive trainers will observe this kind of behavior, and factor it into their estimates for further work with the client. People who are unprepared take longer to teach.
Be punctual, and ensure that everyone else is punctual. There will often be more than two people at a meeting or training session. If 4 people are kept waiting for one individual, then each minute lost is not one minute lost, it is four minutes because four people are waiting.
Persistent lateness is normally the result of inability to manage time, or the playing of power games. Perceptive trainers do notice this type of behavior, and while they will rarely comment, once again, they do take it into consideration in their cost and time estimates.
Eliminate interruptions. Have all phone calls held. Turn off mobile phones. Put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. If one person takes an interruption, the cost of every person's time is wasted while the interruption is handled. If an interruption does occur, then it should be handled quickly and firmly without getting into a long discussion.
Once again, perceptive trainers know the importance of eliminating interruptions, and where this is a problem they make adjustments to their time estimates and pricing in order to compensate.
Concentrate and practice active listening. Think about what is being discussed.
Don't try to hijack the agenda. The trainer has reasons for covering the subject in the order they use, and that is ultimately to your benefit.
But if you don't understand what is being said, then you should interrupt and say "I don't understand what you just said, could you please explain it again". And you should ask questions if things are not clear.
Take notes, practice and review. After 48 hours, people typically remember:-
- 5-10% of what they hear.
- 10-20% of what they hear and see.
- 30-40% of what they hear, see and write down. And
- 80-90% of what they hear, see, write down and use
Make this work in your favor by listening, watching, taking notes, and, more than anything else, putting the material taught to use as soon as possible after the training session, and most certainly within 24 hours.
Do the follow-up "homework". SELLmatix trainers will usually teach a particular technique, and then leave you to complete a set of tasks prior to the next training session. The purpose of this assignment is not to give you something to do. Instead it reinforces the technique that has been shown and because this work needs to be complete prior to moving on to the next topic to be covered.
If this work is not completed when the next training session commences, then it may not be possible to cover the next topic properly, and the next session may need to be postponed. That effectively means that an additional training session will be required.
If something happens so that you will not be ready for a scheduled training session, or will be unable to attend, you need to change the appointment well in advance so that the support people can reschedule their time.
If your trainer or support person finds out that you will be unable or unready for the session an hour before, that is too late, and they should charge you for that session.
Similarly, if they arrive at your site and you are not there, you should expect to be charged. The product they sell is their time, and it is a limited resource. If you take their time, they are entitled to be compensated whether or not you make use of the time you have bought.

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If you decide to use third party trainers and support staff to assist with SELLmatix instead of working your way through it yourself, then chances are that you require this assistance because you do not have the skills in house, or, because you want priority service so that you can speed up the process. In either case, the chances are that you will need further assistance at some time in the future.

The workload of training and support organisations varies widely. Sometimes there is almost nothing to do. At other times, switchboards become jammed, and response time can stretch to days. We have seen cases in some companies where due to changes in tax laws and the need to make modifications to accommodate those changes, support staff have had to work 72 hours straight. The response you receive may well vary according to the circumstances.

While this can be very frustrating for customers, it is useful to think about things from the point of view of the person on the other end of the phone providing that support. Imagine them sitting at their desk with a list of 26 customers who need help. They have to call all of the customers, but they have a choice about the order in which to make those calls.

On that list, are clients who pay promptly, and clients who drag out their payments as far as they can. There are clients who are "on the ball" and fast to deal with, as well as customers who, will put the support person on hold while they do something else. There are clients who can have something explained once, and clients where they have to go through the same time 4-5 times before they understand.

Think for a moment, about the order in which you would make those calls if you were providing that support.

While few support people will admit it, reality is that when the pressure is on, issues from customers which can be dealt with quickly and efficiently are dealt with first. Issues which take longer to resolve with customers that are slower to pick things up are dealt with last. And the rest go in the middle.

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