Guiding Our Future Traders

Many aspects of market trading are placed under extreme pressure by our current retail revolution and recruiting new traders at QVM is certainly a key aspect. Are we maximising the potential of this important feed of new talent? Are we truly being the important business incubator we claim to be?

Many of us will remember our early days as traders and the lessons that needed to be learnt before we became self supporting. For some of us the entry into market trading was quite easy - buoyant business and multiple business opportunities eased the transition. But things have changed and retailing is going through tough times.

As an evolving market we rely on new blood, not just to replace departing traders, but to bring innovation and new life into a market that is expected to keep up with changing consumer demands and respond to intense competition from outside. New traders are a key to our future and so recent management efforts to attract new blood are encouraging. The implementation of a 4 week trial licence is a great idea. But do we need to do more?

Leaving new traders to their own devices has merit. There is nothing like the cold hard

reality of facing your customers to find out if a retailing concept is going to work. Some concepts will work, some will fail, but it is those that could benefit from a little expert advice that we need to identify and develop. Introducing that advice from the first week of a new trader’s test would seem to make a lot of sense. There is plenty of expertise in our management team but some advice needs to come from experienced traders.

Two experienced traders were recently talking about a new casual trader who was struggling to get customer interest. This trader had a great product that showed significant skills in production but he hadn't bridged the gap of encouraging customers to pull out their wallets. He didn't have enough stock and the products he had on display didn't have a price point suitable for a public market. These two limitations were immediately obvious to experienced traders and they were able to come up with some useful advice.

Establishing a mentoring role for experienced market traders could be very helpful in developing the new trader pool at QVM. How we set that up as part of a sustainable formalised system has yet to be determined. Simply hand-balling the problem to Trader Representatives is not the answer. A professional incubation process requires resourcing whether that be direct from management or through a professional traders organisation. Not every new casual is going to make it, but given the stakes, and the cost of recruiting, we need to make the most of every opportunity.

Have Your Say - click here.

COMMENTS:
17/01/2016 22:25:14 future traders "If we are considering ourselves as an incubator for new traders or fledgeling new businesses then we need to develop a program to ensure they have every chance of becoming a successful long term trader.
If Management deem these traders, product & business model worthy of a stall then they should be given every opportunity and the appropriate support in order to thrive and become the future of the market." Thank you for your comments on supporting new traders - Ed.

18/01/2016 09:50:53 guiding future traders "Some of the day seminars organised by Management and conducted by Small Business Victoria could play a major roll in nurturing or guiding some of the newer traders .
They run work shops on such topics as GettingStarted, Marketing / branding ,cash flow ,Marketing Basics and Going Online just to name a few.
Perhaps there could be an incentive program setup to encourage all traders to try some of these courses witch are free to attend but can help traders become stronger business people especially with our renewal process looming .
Even if will think we know it all we can still learn something new and improve."
Thank you for your comments - learning is indeed an ongoing process. - Ed.