Like most product manufacturers, New Balance relies on the in-store sales associates that sell their product to drive brand awareness and turn shoppers into return customers. “We need to make sure our associates and customers have all the right information and really understand the technology that is aligned with our products, and the benefits,” said John Hogan, Sales Planning and Training Coordinator at New Balance in a recent interview with Retail TouchPoints.

To help make sure this happened, New Balance partnered with Experticity in 2008, a partnership that continues today with the sole purpose of building New Balance brand advocates. With the 3point5.com platform, New Balance can ensure sales associates are trained on key products sold in stores and then rewarded with product discounts. New Balance also carefully analyzes the data to see how many sales associates are participating and completing the training and if they end up purchasing a pair of shoes or other products.

They also offer other incentive programs to make sure each store associate has the most recent training out there. “For a few of our product launches, we’ve made it mandatory that a retail store have at least one sales associate trained on that product prior to it arriving in-store,” Hogan said. “If an associate completes all training for one product, they can buy the shoe at a discounted price.”

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