CBA Connect Q&A

CBA's Curtis Riskey, strategic solutions executive, and Eric Grimm, business development manager, answer questions about CBA Connect:

 

What are some of the ways CBA Connect will save retailers time and money?

Eric Grimm : A challenge common to all retailers is staff turnover. It is time-consuming to bring a new employee up-to-speed in terms of procedures and product knowledge. CBA Connect will provide a time-effective and cost-effective way to train new employees, helping them understand the unique history and mission of the store, as well as store policies, programs and procedures. CBA Connect provides this training in a way that is convenient, efficient and powerful using its multi-media interface to engage students and track their progress. This saves busy store owners/managers actual training time so they can focus on working with frontliners to apply what they’ve learned.


How will CBA Connect help retailers make money?
Curtis Riskey: We sell best what we know best. Christian Retail Channel research indicates that a trained staff, compared to non-trained staff can generate a 25% increase in sales. Traffic converts into sales when our frontliners know about the product, and can take the customer to the product. As a specialty retailer in a new retail environment, we have to effectively fulfill this specialty part of retail.


Eric Grimm: When a sales associate can communicate product features and back-story as well as personal passion, it generates sales. Retail doesn’t survive by doing transactions; it survives through relationships. Selling is a relational experience, and frontliners who can engage in conversation with a customer on any product in any moment make the sales force a competitive force. This is what can differentiate Christian retail stores from their competition so we can win with the consumer.


What are the day-to-day ways CBA Connect will impact a typical store?
Curtis Riskey: Most Christian Retail stores have not had a comprehensive way to teach complete selling skills from delivering a proper greeting to closing the sale. CBA Connect’s comprehensive training library will not only boost permanent staff capabilities but also offer training for any new hires or for temporary seasonal help, directions on POS systems, and schooling on other skills that improve store productivity and effectiveness.


Additionally, it will create a central source for product information. A common frustration for frontliners is the need to go to numerous places to find product information to help a customer. Instead of finding and visiting many supplier web sites or searching through a filing cabinet of catalogs, CBA Connect will enable retailers to quickly and easily find Christian products using a robust search tool. Then with a few more clicks, that frontliner will be able to access content-rich information about products.


Our goal is to make CBA Connect the one place to find all pertinent product information. We anticipate that the breadth of product information by CBA member suppliers will grow exponentially over 2009 and 2010 as more and more suppliers make their catalog information available via CBA Connect.


How does CBA Connect serve suppliers?
Eric Grimm: Suppliers spend a great deal of money and creative effort on developing a message or “hook” for a particular product to set it apart. They deliver that to a sales force who retain a percentage of the information, who deliver it to buyers who retain a percentage of the information, who then may or may not communicate that product uniqueness to the frontliners, who actually talk to customers. Using CBA Connect, the supplier’s product message is delivered consistently all the way down the chain. This enables suppliers to deliver product introduction information in a compelling way directly to frontliners, building excitement about the product as well as providing needed information. This will help to create passionate, well-informed frontliners who are able to talk to customers about products in compelling and convincing ways.


CBA Connect not only takes the supplier’s carefully crafted presentation directly to the frontliner, it also gives the supplier the ability to track who has viewed the presentation and how much time they spent on it. We have never had this kind of alignment within our industry as it relates to frontliners and product. I’m excited to see what the Christian Retail Channel can accomplish when we are all pulling in the same direction.


Suppliers we’ve talked to also get very excited about using the platform to train their sales reps—especially outside sales reps who represent a number of companies. Using CBA Connect, suppliers can create multimedia sales presentations that can be delivered through the platform in the context of sales-rep interaction with buyers, maintaining message consistency and impact.


Would you say that CBA Connect is more for the retailer or more for the supplier?

Curtis Riskey: Usually in our industry, we’ve assumed that if something was good for the supplier, then the retailer must be being bypassed. But this tool is not only a win-win for suppliers and retailers, it is win-win-win, because the consumer wins too as they come into a Christian Retail store and are served by well-trained, and well-informed frontliners who are passionately knowledgeable about the products they are selling.


What is the most important message you want to convey to retailers about CBA Connect?
Curtis Riskey: We’re convinced that CBA Connect will equip Christian retail to accentuate the unique strengths a specialty retailer ought to have. In specialty retail, every frontliner should be able to talk about every product—its content, purpose, and advantage. Until now, that has been an unrealistic goal. But CBA Connect makes that goal not only attainable, but measurable.


No one expects the person working in Barnes and Noble, and certainly not in Wal-Mart, to have any understanding of, or passion for a particular book or CD. But they do expect that from Christian Retail. The most effective way for us to compete with other channels is for our people to know more about the product and the heart of the author or artist than any of our competitors. We believe CBA Connect can have an enormous impact on improving the quality of our interactions with our customers, which will undoubtedly increase our sales and change the whole paradigm.


What is the most important message you want to convey to suppliers about CBA Connect?
Eric Grimm: We know that suppliers have viewed the Christian Retail Channel as inefficient to do business with because there are so many buyers in so many stores. They have had to use a shotgun approach to getting product information out to a myriad of stores, and had no way to track what really sticks. Through CBA Connect, we’ve taken a shotgun and turned it into a rifle that will deliver product information directly to the target with immediacy, consistency, and accountability.


How can a retailer explore and then get started using CBA Connect?
Curtis Riskey: To get started, just contact CBA Member Services. Or order online from our secure registration and payment center. Our goal is to help the entire industry take full advantage of CBA Connect—from our smallest stores to the largest chains. Sliding-scale licenses adjust to the needs and requirements of all store types and sizes. Licenses are available for $11 per month or less based on quantity purchased. Valued CBA-Members receive a $4 discount per license, per month. To inquire about further pricing discounts available based on quantity, please email CBA at info@cbaonline.org.