As the industry leader, the World Gold Council (WGC) continues to demonstrate its commitment towards stimulating and sustaining the demand for gold. It recognizes the importance of organizing trade training seminars across the region to upgrade the sales and visual merchandizing skills of the retailer's staff. Training experts were recruited by the WGC to hold extensive full day sessions to hone the sales and visual merchandizing skills of the gold jewelers' sales teams. The first training seminars started in the UAE and were attended by 100 salesmen from the key trade in the country. Representatives of the trade body Dubai Gold & Jewelly Group and staff of major retailers such as Damas, L'azurde, Joyalukkas, Atlas, Sky Jewellers, Popley, Samra, Malabar Gold, Al Mandoos and Liali among others showed appreciation for the Council's initiative as they recognize the importance of such training. With two seminars being scheduled for each city including Dubai, Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Cairo and Istanbul, the program focuses on improving retail displays and selling techniques. The training program was also aimed at communication skills during the sales process. The two-fold objective of this training was to upgrade the visual merchandising and selling skills through training programs and improve the retail customer service attitude and persuasive communication. Anan Fakhreddin, managing director, Middle East and Turkey, said: “As the industry leader, the World Gold Council initiates activities that facilitates a healthy gold industry that leads in sustaining and growing gold demand. Driven by research, the World Gold Council recognized the necessity to upgrade the retail customer services and communication skills of the trade in order to achieve the utmost customer satisfaction at the retail level. Our role is to assist our regional trade partners in conducting such workshops that produce measurable results and fit their business needs.” The training sessions in Dubai had an impressive turnout from the UAE retailers. Participants felt that the training workshops helped them achieve a paradigm shift and approach their job more positively despite tough market conditions. They also showed enthusiasm in going back to their stores and implementing the sales and visual merchandising skills in their day-to-day dealings. They also expressed their desire for holding more of such workshops to help them succeed in this industry. Following the successful response in Dubai, the trade training programs scheduled across the Middle East and Turkey are already receiving huge interest from traders in other regions requesting to participate. Traders in the gold industry recognized and appreciated the WGC initiative and have promised to maintain regular development programs to sustain a healthy and growing gold industry in the region.
