Titan Industries has come out with a novel plan to help motivate and retain their front-end sales personnel in retail stores. Its latest initiative, Face of Titan, is aimed at identifying the most talented interface between the company and the customer among the company’s customer relationship officer (CRO), the front-end salespersons.

"Factors such as motivation, rewards and training have always been key issues in the industry," said the company’s head - retailing KS Ghai. This is specially because of the sheer number of retail outlets in the country. Titan hopes to improve employee retention by 50 per cent with this initiative, Mr Ghai said.

Ultimately aimed at retaining the best employees, the contest is also geared towards upgrading the CROs’ knowledge base and motivating and rewarding them.

According to Mr Ghai, "Quality manpower is a key feature of successful retailing." The face of Titan programme was born out of the company’s strategy to provide CROs something more than just training and upgradation of skills. It focused on how Titan could delight and consistently motivate its staff so that they are "happy and enthusiastic always", said Mr Ghai.

Titan has 161 retail outlets in 100 towns across the country and around 800 CROs.