Trade Sales Supervisor Review

I supervise the Trade Desk team in a busy builder's merchants. My responsibilities include: - Quoting and selling building materials for delivery. - Operating checkouts when required. - Organising the delivery of goods to site. - Sourcing stock to fulfil customer orders. - Dealing with customer enquires. - Resolving customer complaints. - Managing other sales persons and ensuring the desk runs smoothly. - Other ad hoc branch tasks, from IT work to merchandising and stock movement.

The course has led me to consider the way I look at customer interactions in a different light. In particular, I am far more conscious of the image of the company I present to customers in my service. During the apprenticeship I was promoted to Trade Sales Supervisor and have had the opportunity to develop my team leading skills.

I found many aspects of the programme incredibly frustrating. Days in Zoom calls felt mostly wasted as we dragged out content that could take a morning to take a full day. Interactions between the trainer and students were also often very awkward as an agenda of example giving was pushed so heavily that learners were asked to provide examples of concepts we had only just learned about without being given a prior example from the trainer. This resulted in long silences when the room was asked for examples as learners were not sure what the trainer was expecting to hear. The trainer seemed happy to sit in these prolonged silences and seemed annoyed when the learners couldn't produce an example of something we only had a concept of, especially as we could produce ample examples after we'd been given one in precedence. There was also many cases of the trainer 'pulling rank' and asserting that he was correct in cases of disagreement, even when the entire group agreed to the contrary. In one particular example, a learner was forced to re-do an assessment at a later date after they misunderstood when they had to ask questions to a candidate during a presentation. Instead of simply prompting the learner to ask questions, the trainer terminated the assessment and berated the learner for ruining the candidates presentation and forced the candidate to re present the entire thing. When challenged by another member of the group, the trainer simply removed them from the call to a side room to quell any opposing opinion. In another, I had informed the trainer in advance that I was on leave for a session and we agreed a rescheduling. On the day I was on leave, the trainer called both me and my store multiple times asking where I was and then admonished me for not telling him even when I reminded him we had already made arrangements, he denied the conversation had taken place.

Some leniency must be laid down due to the impact of COVID on the viability of classroom learning during the course. However, as mentioned previously we had several full day sessions that really should have been a morning or contained far more information. The pacing was very slow throughout. Again leniency could be laid down due to this programme being in its first year, however in many cases content was not really related to Selco. The programme was sold as being specific to the business but learners were often straying far from relevancy for our industry and more towards high street retail.

I was given the time to perform out of hours learning tasks where required in most cases, as the course continued I think some members of the business grew tired of dealing with the trainer and that caused some friction in the relationship. Overall though the support was fairly good when sought out but I'm sure experience will vary massively between branches.

We were always assured that we could attain help from the trainer at any time and this mostly proved to be true, often the answer to your question would be an answer to an entirely different question, however with enough re-asking of your question you may get a useful answer.

At the very least it helped spark an interest in performing better from myself and a few of the topics discussed were useful. For me this was mostly in the first quarter of the course as it seemed to meander more and more and lose it's way the further we went.

We do not have any extra-curricular activities at our work apart from the Christmas party in December. there have been attempts pre-COVID to start a football league amoungst local branches, however this has been put on indefinite hold. I think we would benefit from a second social gather every year, perhaps in summer to help build team relationships and relax tensions.

Yes

I have had a good experience working at Selco and grown alot as an individual. I receive a decent rate of pay and good bonuses and enjoy the professional yet casual attitude we have day to day. I have build very good working relationships with other staff members and management at my branch and feel part of the team.

Be honest about your basic skills and how you can help the business. Be approachable and have a relaxed yet professional demeanor. We value you having your head screwed on and being easy to converse with over specific technical skills. Obviously knowledge of building trade matters will always help in any application.