How Mentoring Can Boost Your Business

Benefits for Your Business

Retailers who mentor or have mentoring programs for their employees position their business as a trustworthy information source. Some retailers get deemed as the local community hunting experts and people from the surrounding area turn to them for reliable knowledge. Mentoring also helps a retail business become relevant, cherished and appreciated. Helping others tends to create loyal customers who return year after year for equipment, service and support.

Providing a mentoring service also helps retailers meet new people, increase their community awareness and relevancy, and build new or current partnerships with like-minded people and organizations. Those perks tend to have future benefits, as people and partners recommend the business and provide feedback to help more people get involved.

Many manufacturers create peer-mentored hunt programs to build workplace camaraderie, increase employee satisfaction and help employees see the products they make and promote in action. Using the manufactured products during mentored hunts also helps create product familiarity and loyalty, which increases sales. Manufacturers can also teach newcomers about the company’s role in conservation through its federal excise tax contributions so the mentees can see — and feel connected to — the bigger picture.

Plus, both retailers and manufacturers can share their mentoring experiences and story with media and press folks to gain additional exposure for their business. The mentor-and-mentee angle provides a unique story for journalists that might inspire other people to reach out if they’re interested or prompt current hunters to mentor someone new. Work with the press to communicate that mentoring helps make hunting more accessible, approachable and relevant. Then, ask them to plug your business as the first stop for anyone interested in archery or hunting.

Industry Benefits

Hunters are vital to conservation because they contribute funds to wildlife and habitat restoration projects every time they purchase a hunting license or piece of archery equipment. Mentoring newcomers helps increase participation numbers, and more hunters means more funding and support for conservation.

Hunters also help wildlife agencies control game populations that affect the environment. For example, large elk and deer populations can overbrowse the landscape and cause crop damage, and they can be more susceptible to disease and starvation. Hunting is a safe, sustainable way to manage wildlife populations.

Additionally, mentors usually educate others about the benefits of hunting and the contributions hunting provides. The more knowledge and understanding people have about hunting, the more relatable hunters can be, which improves the public’s perception of hunters and hunting.