Creating the Ultimate Sales Team

For anyone looking to open or improve their own retail store.

This workshop is for any store owner who wants to offer better customer service, empower sales associates with expertise and give shoppers confidence and trust in sales staff, merchandise and overall shopping experience.

Who should attend: Anyone looking to open their own retail store as well as current retailers looking to provide a better and more knowledgeable experience and service to their customers and greater selling confidence to their sales staff.

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1. Salesperson/Customer Interaction

• Proper salesperson etiquette
• Proper ways to greet a customer and develop relatedness.

2. Assessing Your Customer

• Communicating with your customer: How to find out everything you need to know about a customer’s lifestyle & Personal Style in 5 minutes or less.
• Physical Characteristics: How to assess a client’s physical characteristics without taking a measurement or making a customer uncomfortable.
• Dressing Solutions for EVERY body issue in 4 or less steps.
• How to Choose the most flattering Prints, Patterns, Textures and Color Combinations for your customer

3. Color

• Color Basics
• Color Psychology
• How to use color to build an outfit and wardrobe.

4. Shopping

• How to shop with your customers.
• Navigating a store with your customer
• Store Layout: Capsule Merchandising and Selling
• Selling fit and fashion to your customers

5. Dressing Room Navigation

• Dressing Room Tips and Etiquette to increase sales and confidence from your customer.
• Managing the flow of merchandise to ensure more gets bought and less gets left behind.
• Working with the customer’s budget: How to make suggestions and edits in selections so that the customer becomes a return shopper.

6. Wardrobe Building

• How to build and sell encapsulated wardrobes to increase sales.
• The importance of accessorizing an outfit.
• Accessorizing 101: Balance points and jewelry size and scale.

7. Special Occasion Selling

• Selling for Travel.
• Selling for Formal Occasions.
• Selling for Professional Occasions .

View list of upcoming workshop dates

About Bridgette Raes:

In her 19 years in fashion, Bridgette Raes has worked in just about every area of the industry. While attaining her fashion design degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she worked as a sales associate for a small specialty store boutique which sold bridal gowns and mink coats. Bridgette graduated and spent the next decade designing every type and clothing price point and product, ranging from Wal-Mart to more upscale specialty store labels like Barry Bricken and mainstream brands like Talbot’s. In 2002, she decided that her expertise would be put to better use if, rather than designing clothes for women, she instead showed clients how to wear them. Bridgette went back to FIT to do her image consulting training and started Bridgette Raes Style Group, a New York City based image and style consulting company for women.

The goal of Bridgette Raes Style Group has always been to provide more than just a makeover. Bridgette believes in educating her clients so that they can make better and more knowledgeable wardrobe and shopping choices. Additionally, encompassing the psychological aspects of a style transformation, Bridgette’s client work isn’t just changing someone’s style but also changing a client’s outlook and approach to life so that they are better able to attain goals and live powerful, more productive lives. Bridgette is known for her “laughing with you, not at you” sensibility, ruthless compassion and real-life “we’re all in it together” approach.

In addition to her private client practice, Bridgette is the author of the book, Style Rx: Dressing the Body You Have to Create the Body You Want (Perigee/Penguin 2008). In an effort to make the book relatable to the “everyday woman”, Style Rx: Dressing the Body You Have to Create the Body You Want includes over 250 photos of real women with real bodies, not professional models.

Bridgette’s expert opinion on shopping and wardrobe selection has been featured many times in Real Simple Magazine, Woman's World Magazine, First For Women Magazine, AOL’s Stylelist.com, MSN.com, iVillage.com, and more. She has been an expert on Glamour Sizing for media outlets including The Boston Globe and Good Morning America. Bridgette’s media experience as an expert on fashion, beauty and lifestyle also includes over 70 television appearances which include CNN, The Daily Buzz as well as a plethora of local networks from coast to coast. She also writes a down-to-earth monthly blog for MyFashionPlate.com with advice for the real woman on how to wear the current trends. She has written for Shefinds.com and her budget-conscious style articles are frequently seen TheSavvyLife.com.

Starting in 2010, Bridgette’s newest venture will be taking her nearly two decades of well-rounded experience full circle and returning to the fashion industry, where she will provide sales training and expertise to retailers worldwide through her seminars and consultation.

When Bridgette is actually home, and not traveling, speaking or ripping apart a client’s closet, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, real estate professional Frank Mazzola.