5 ways to know if your staff is prepared for your next product launch

Approaching the end of the year, the retail world shifts its attention to the initiatives that drive a significant part of the industry’s annual revenue. 

We’re talking product launches, seasonal promotions (the holidays are coming), even operational shifts to set the business up for success in the new year, like protocol changes and updated processes. 

As these key events take place, retailers need to ask one question: Is my retail staff prepared? 

After all, your associates are crucial to the success of these product launches. If they’re not prepared, armed with the right information and know the promo inside and out, your organization risks losing precious revenue—not to mention delivering a poor customer experience. 

But here’s the challenge: when your workforce numbers in the thousands and is spread across the country or beyond, how can you know if everyone is prepared and ensure every location is prepared to execute consistently? What’s the metric that measures workforce readiness? 

Digital communication to the rescue! With the right retail communication strategy in place, you’ll be able to identify and support at-risk employees or locations well before your product launch—and even learn the cause, whether it’s missing information or ineffective communication.

Ready to set your next product launch up for success? Here are five questions you can ask to confirm if your team is prepared for your next product launch:

1. Am I sharing enough information?

There’s no way your retail staff will be prepared if they don’t have access to the right information. This might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at how often this step is missed and crucial information is left unshared. To help with knowledge retention, keep your internal communications bite-sized—but also keep larger resources like handbooks and launch assets on hand in an easy-to-access hub. 

This is also where the right technology comes into play. In our recent research, frontline teams requested more technology that solves meaningful problems, like AI and emerging tech, to help them do their jobs better. A digital learning and enablement platform that can be accessed from their devices ensures every associate has the right information at the right times, which is the secret sauce of a successful product launch. 

2. Am I testing their knowledge retention?

Sure, you can monitor your workforce metrics to see if your associates are reading your communications. But there’s a big difference between reading information and retaining it. 

The forgetting curve tells us workers are likely to forget up to 70% of new information within 24 hours. That’s why it’s so important to avoid overload by reiterating information in bite-sized pieces—and focus on assessing employee knowledge continuously. 

3. Am I reinforcing tasks?

Ah, operational consistency. A crucial part of any successful product launch. A tried-and-tested way to ensure that your workforce is sticking to your SOPs and keeping execution as consistent as possible is to reinforce tasks on an ongoing basis. In fact, this repeated recall of information can improve knowledge retention by up to 80 percent.

This could be done at each location during pre-shift huddles, or scaled up to the full organization using a central task management system. 

4. Am I pulse-checking their confidence? 

Employee pulse checks aren’t just for employee engagement. You can use these quick surveys to ask your retail staff how confident they are about upcoming product launches, new promos or other company-wide initiatives. 

This is a great way to uncover concerns at the associate level that have gone completely unnoticed at head office.

5. Am I gathering feedback?

Another way to know if your staff is prepared is to gather upward feedback. This will not only identify problems before the product launch, it will also unearth those untapped ideas and insights your retail staff is holding on to that could improve the process. 

Fostering a feedback culture is crucial at any time, but when you’re gearing up for a product launch, you need to be especially open to hearing concerns, ideas and best practices that can boost efficiency at scale—and remove any unnecessary barriers that could hinder a successful product launch. 

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Asking yourself any of these five questions is a great way to check in on the effectiveness of your retail staff, the level of workforce readiness you’ve achieved and the operational consistency of your organization as a whole. But answering all of these questions when you’re gearing up for a product launch is a fantastic way to know exactly how prepared your workforce is—and what you need to do to set everyone up for success.