I saw the title of this article on Twitter. Someone had posted it as their “statement” of the day. It was one of those “YES!” moments because lately I’ve been stuck on the word value … or maybe it’s been stuck on me.

In my job, I’m constantly perusing Facebook and Twitter pages, websites and newsletters, and other such things looking for ways the client, or brand, can stand out. It’s hard to stand out when we’re faced with millions of messages everyday. Every morning I get up, check my mail and delete five to ten unwanted emails from my personal account.

Sure, I signed up to receive those emails because I love the brand. But eventually I realized (at least for the ones I delete each morning) that they were missing the one key component … VALUE.

My time is too precious to take 30 seconds, open up an email, skim it (let’s be honest, we hardly read things fully anymore) and decide what to do next; times five to ten if I were to read all of those emails. It doesn’t matter how “pretty” it is, or how amazing I think the products are, if you’re not giving me something THAT day, at THAT exact moment in time – delete!

Everyone’s time is precious – especially to them. The emails I keep are emails giving value every, single time they send something out. Maybe I’m not looking to buy, but I open it because I know I’m going to come away with some nugget of information … maybe it’s a how-to, or a tip, or recipe. Whatever the case, there’s perceived value there and I seek it out continuously. These people, brands and companies have showed their worth -  it goes waaaaay beyond their brick and mortar, and I respect them for that.

The brands I follow on Facebook and Twitter do the same thing.

One of my KPIs (key performance indicators) is to watch no less than three webinars a week. I usually pick topics on social media, marketing and SEO. And man, have I gotten a tremendous amount of value out of them!

Yes, some were awful, made no sense, were disorganized and had no point or takeaway. But the smart ones gave me more value than I could imagine. I found myself with pages and pages of notes.

And guess what? I want to share that VALUE with YOU.

I took my pages and pages of webinar notes and wrote the curriculum for the Smarketing Summit, a day and a half seminar on SMART Marketing. It’s power packed more with tips, ideas and creative genius than you can imagine. I think I’m up to 35 now, and I’ll keep adding terrific tidbits from my webinar watching up until the event takes place in June.

Most of these value-add items are absolutely FREE to implement, while some have a very low cost. In any case, I know they’re valuable and I know you’ll walk away with heads buzzing from new ideas to implement at your facility. Interested? Email me for more information: brooke@trainertainment.net

In the meantime, look at your own emails, signage, phone calls, newsletters, website, tweets, posts and ask yourself this: “If I were the customer, what VALUE would I get from this?”

~ Brooke Ballard

It’s not a trick question. I know the older I get the more I realize I don’t know; and I forget stuff that I’m sure I knew at one time. Unbelievable!

I think “Everything” is a pretty great answer to the question, “What’s to Learn?” Last week Thad, our sales guy, and I attended a wonderful sales training workshop. I have been a huge fan of a process referred to as Action Selling for a long time. I read the book with that title 8 years ago; and it made a big difference in how I approached the sales process. It made sense to me then and last week I took the process to a very cool new level.  You can find the book and take an assessment to see how you line up with you own selling skills at www.actionselling.com.

Thad and I are doing 12 weeks of “Skill Drills” or follow up on the 2-day workshop, and I thought I would share this week’s homework with you. I think it is so relevant and has helped me be more laser focused on handling my own sales calls this week.

The primary job of a sales person is to gain agreement from a customer. That agreement might come in the form of agreeing to set an appointment, come to your center for a tour, give you a deposit for a birthday, review a proposal or set a time for you to demonstrate your product.

Dropping off materials and making a note to call them back is not an agreement for anything. Having a  “next step” is the only way to know where you are in the selling process.  The Action Selling folks have a GREAT definition for the agreement process.

Their verbiage says we must first set a commitment objective for every sales call. This process is necessary for incoming or outreach calls. Their definition of a commitment objective is a goal that salespeople set for themselves in order to gain an agreement from a potential customer, and moves the sales process forward.

I love that. Intuitively I know an encounter with a guest that has no “next steps” is a waste of time for them and for me. I love that I know have a better way of understanding and explaining the “next steps” process. I hope this helps.

I know I have no interesting story about the trip. We did not go to the Mall of America; we drove right past it. I’m barely a real woman, right? We did almost have a wreck in the MN traffic!

I’ll close today with a couple of questions:

When’s the last time you invested in training?

What would make you raise your hand and say, “I need help?”

I certainly had to think twice before spending the money to go to the training we went to last week. However, I know I can’t know it all. As a great training company it is one of our core beliefs that we better be great learners. I’m super pumped about our training trip last week. AND, if we can come and get your team pumped by providing great training for your team, I hope you’ll raise your hand and say, “Hey, we’ve got a lot to learn!”

Do you ever ask yourself this question? I know I do sometimes. Sometimes, I do have a clue as to how to answer that question … and other times I’m just running to catch the next plane or call and have no idea how to respond to, “WHAT AM I DOING?”

This morning I’m really thinking about the most important thing I can share with you this week and I can’t shake the thought of “What am I doing?” So here goes.  I guess this is the message for the week.

If I look strictly at business, I know that for 7 years I and others have worked diligently to grow this wacky training company I call TrainerTainment. In the last 18 months or so I think I’ve really been able to zoom in and focus on what we are doing.

Today I’m able to clearly articulate to new team members and to our existing and potential customers why we are here.  In my head I see a big circle and in the middle is what I think we believe the most.  That central belief is that “WE HELP.”  When it comes to business and probably to my life I think I have a deep-rooted vision that says my life is about helping others. It sounds so simple and it makes sense. I think most entrepreneurs want to make a difference in the world; and I think making that difference means you have to do something for someone.

OK, I’ll move on. Once I got my head wrapped around that central belief of helping others, it was easy to get clear about the values surrounding that core concept. Interestingly enough, I think those values really answer the question of how we do the things we do.

If helping is the center circle then the following 4 values surround that core. In order, those values are:

1. Fun Training
2. Serious Results
3. Relevance
4. Learning

So what all that means is, anytime we, as a company, plan to work with you, we have to be sure we are in line with what we mean to do for you. The first and most important question is can we help? If the answer is yes, then we proceed with energy, strategy, and a firm plan to win. That win must include fun training that produces serious results. We commit to remaining relevant by staying in the market place and paying close attention to what’s going on day-to-day. Finally, I believe that we can’t be a strong training company if we are not steeped in learning. Reading, attending webinars, and workshops is a key performance indicator with every core team member at TrainerTainment.

So there you are. That’s what I’m doing. Working a little or a lot, every day, on how to best serve others. If you think about what you are doing-what do you come up with? I’d love to hear from you.

TIP: I’d start with why you are doing it first!

This week I had an amazing training experience. Like most entrepreneurs, I really want to make difference. At the center of our core values at TrainerTainment we know we want to help others. It’s pretty simple and it keeps us on track when we train. With the thought of helping in mind, I received a call on my way to a training this week. The assignment was to re-coach a party team and help them bond with a new party manager.  However, this call made me rethink the situation. The new manager and another senior sales manager called to say the weekend before had been pretty tough. The new manager was in place and this young party team that I was going in to work with was pretty standoffish. It sounded like I had my work cut out for me.

I sensed a power point, fun games, and a reminder of the job they needed to do was not what everyone really needed. Fortunately, I had pre-board and air-time, along with a rush hour drive to the location. For whatever reason, I normally go to sleep during take-off and again once the plane begins to descend. Often times during this twilight nap time, I come up with article ideas, products, and fortunately, this time-just the right thing to do with this fractured team.

I called the center to let them know the traffic was going to create a bit of delay. We were due to start at 6:30 and there was no way I was going to make it before 6:45. As it turned out my tardiness turned into perfect timing.  The new manager was able to have a good conversation with the team, and helped them understand her rules and processes.  She also heard from the team about some of the issues they had been having. Everything was OK when I arrived.

It seemed to me they did not need me to stand up front so instead I just sat at the table with them.  I chose to do an exercise that seems to really help managers and team members understand what they need from each other. Now pay close attention – this is VERY sophisticated.

Step #1: I ask the managers to step out of the room.

Step #2: I ask the team members what they thought the managers needed in order to be successful in their jobs.  We went around the room with each person saying things like, “they need me to be on time, they need me to make customers happy, they need me to deliver great guest service, they need me to clean up my room.”

Step #3: I then ask the team members to write down on a piece of paper the 3 things they need in order to succeed in their job. It’s always so interesting to see these responses. Team members talk more about what they need from each other than what they need from their managers. They do need to know managers, “have their back.” They also need other team members do their fair share of the work, and I quote, “They need to perform UP and BEYOND!” I love this concept. Blue, a fantastic Party Hero in Sugarland, TX, gets credit for this wonderful slogan for excellent performance.

Step # 4: We then invited the managers back into the room and asked them to share the 3 things they needed in order to be successful in their job. These managers and most managers that I visit with all said they need communication. This opened up good conversation about what that communication looked like; and we were able to clarify simple things like appropriate timing and responses using text messaging. We also heard that it was important to the manager for the team member to understand that they could come to them for help and encouragement.

Step # 5: The team told the managers what they thought they would say.

Step # 6: The team told the managers and each other what they needed.

This proved to be an exciting conversation about where this team could take the party program. I did jump in with some of our training messages and encouraged this team to know that they were the core, literally at the center of the success or failure of this party program. All the things that they choose to do right now will determine their level of excellence.  I thought it was important to share the message that they don’t have to do the job. They chose to do the job and if this is their choice then why not do it to the best of their ability…to which they all described as UP & BEYOND!

It was incredible. These kids did not want to go home. We had been there for more than 2.5 hours with no break and everyone was leaning in wanting more. When I asked them what they got out of the evening I was completely blown away. Somehow, the situation created an environment that struck a chord with everyone in the room. They were visibly emotional with their gratitude. It meant something to them that their level of excellence in this job is indicative of the choices they’ll make in the future and a sign of how they will perform in the jobs in their future. One young woman seemed very inspired by my story of entrepreneurship and admired the business woman in me. I won’t lie, that made me feel pretty special. Another party pro said, “I get it, I’m choosing to do this. I am going to do a better job.” I tell you, I was overwhelmed.

And I’m happy to report they had an AMAZING weekend! I’m feeling pretty successful about training this week.  Thank you for giving me a forum to share.  I’ll close with my favorite thought on Success.

This is my favorite poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success

                  To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, or garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

I’m not suggesting that you might need to shoot your trainees. While that might be an effective training method, I’m not a proponent of firearms in the workplace.

Last week I went on a retreat with my CEO, Vistage Group. We had a great time; and our last activity together was skeet shooting. Now I’m not a gun person at all. I admit that I was a little frightened of the whole process well as being pretty nervous that I would not be good at it. Of course the competitor in me was ready to take bets on who could hit most clay targets.

What I found most interesting is that training new employees kept coming up for me during this entire experience. Here I am, new to skeet shooting, just like a first time new employee is to your facility. There were rules listed on the wall. In my own anxiousness to not look stupid and to try and be good at this “new job”, I started to read the rules. I had problems right away. Rule # 5 said something about leaving the chamber open when not shooting and the safety on as well. Guess what, I had NO clue as to what the chamber and the safety were.

Good news, in addition to the written rules, a trainer-facilitator-fun guy, was there to help. He was great. He qualified that there were some newbies in our group; and we (I) received some remedial training right away. You’ll be glad to know, I understand how to keep the chamber open as well as click the safety on and off!

We got great info on how to hold the gun close (my shoulder still hurts by the way), the proper stance, the houses that the clay targets would come out of, how to load and unload the gun and the most important tip to look down the barrel of the shotgun and line up the bee bee with the target (I think that’s what he said).  House 1 and 5 shot the clay targets out low and fast which meant you had to stay in front of the clay thing. That sounded, and was way too hard for me so I didn’t even try those two targets.  My strategy was to get really good at the easy ones first before I moved on. Interesting correlation to job skills don’t you think?

So I’m up first and am pretty nervous. I pick house 2 for the clay target to originate from. Our trainer even let me see what was going to happen first. House 2 and 3 were the easiest for me because the target floated up and toward me. I found it really hard to get things lined up along the barrel of the gun. It seemed to me like there were a lot of things to remember. Putting it all together was a bit complicated. Lean in so it won’t kick so hard. Hold the gun tight into your shoulder. Right before I got ready to shoot for the first time, someone shared info that they had gotten a black eye one time because they didn’t hold the gun in tight enough. So here I am, just like a new employee, overwhelmed with a bunch of things to remember at one time, a bit fearful because I’ve never done this before and here’s the kicker (pun intended!)… I missed, and I missed.. I missed again and again.

So I have a couple of choices. I can quit, bu this really just isn’t my thing. Or I can ask more questions. Or I can try to figure it out on my own so I don’t ask any stupid questions. Or I can put in my time, shoot my 25 rounds and just blow it off that I suck at this job.

I’m not much of a quitter. I like to figure stuff out. So I started messing around with the gun. I knew things weren’t lining up for me. So I got to thinking about my eye dominance. I’ve had lots a great bowling coaching; and I think that I remember that I’m left eye dominant. I start to wonder if I would be better off shooting left handed. Now I’m not left handed so the coordination of making the gun feel okay in my hands was a bit of a test but sure enough when I did that, boom-boom (I was 2 for 2).  I did that for 2 rounds (and my left and right shoulder still hurt today!).

Then I get to thinking, maybe I was looking down the barrel of that gun with my left eye when I was shooting right handed. That’s why things weren’t lining up. I switched back to my less awkward right hand, forced my left eye closed and could then line up correctly with the right eye.

Amazing. Now that I have some experience under my belt, and have the all-important (eye) piece of training that I either missed or that our trainer may have thought I would just know. The facilitator then said, “Okay, I’m going to release the targets one right after the other.” This was genius for me. Bam-Bam, I got them both. I thought maybe they were teasing me and could somehow blow those targets up in the air. But sure enough, it was me. Woo Hoo. When he put those clay targets up one right after the other I didn’t have time to think about it. I simply took the little bit of experience that I had and executed! It was awesome. I felt good. I wanted to do it again.

I couldn’t quit thinking about what a cool training lesson this was. Actually, I think there are a bunch of lessons. I could recap here but would really like your input:

• What comparisons do you see between training, job performance, first-job jitters and skeet shooting?

Hope you are having a great week! I’ll see you on the range (as soon as my shoulders heal up).

I’ve had a bit of a reading frenzy lately.  And when I read, I get reflective and interestingly enough it makes me think!

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I recently watched a video that gave me chills. It’s a teaser for the book The End of Business As Usual by Brian Solis, which is a wonderful read about the consumerism revolution we are currently experiencing.

The video shocked me because it highlights many MAJOR brands that have now closed their doors. I encourage you to watch the video and count how many brands you recognize. Then, recall how many of those brands did you interacted with, made purchases from, or recommend to friends and family.

It’s scary to see such major companies go down the drain. I found myself asking questions like, “Where did they go wrong,” and  “What the heck happened?”

WATCH THE VIDEO:

The End of Business As Usual from Brian Solis

The video sparked a brainstorming session by asking a few poignant questions:
1. Do we listen to our customers?
2. Do we truly understand them?
3. Do we create experiences, or do we simply react?

How would you answer those questions for your own place of business?

Through the advent of the Internet, social media, and the social revolution, our customers are now hyper-educated. Solis says to attract and maintain clients in this day and age you’ll:

- Have to produce better products and services

- Both listen and adapt to what your audience wants

- Provide social consumers with different types of recognition and engagement – as they are now demanding complete socialization of your business

- Implement human intelligence to allow insight into your customers beyond demographics and hunches about buying habits

- Collect data from all social points to integrate into your business and marketing plans

At the end of his book, Brian Solis makes a very keen prediction based on the questions and points above: “Only the most connected, agile, and progressive organizations will realize the potential in shifting from a reactive customer-centric approach to that of proactive, and ultimately, predictive approach. The predictive business is social, connected, and adaptive.

Are you?

 

~ Brooke Ballard

Director of Marketing & Social Media

I don’t know if you know this…but my early sales career included a very long stint with Tupperware home parties. At the tender age of 23 or 24 (I can never remember) I joined Tupperware. I was motivated by the fact that I could set my own hours. My husband is an air traffic controller and in those early days he worked a different shift every day. I had two young babies and we had one car.

Holy guacamole … I saw someone who has posted over 191,000 tweets.  And they want to follow me?!  I don’t even know what to think.  Fortunately, I have Brooke who helps me with my tweet thinking.  I love to talk, which I guess translates into tweeting in very short sentences (which I’m not particularly good at).  But my word, 191,000 tweets.  Who has the time?

How have you been doing with your social media communication? I thought it might be interesting to hear from the less professional member of my team about how I’m actually managing the social media side of our business.

We are blessed beyond measure to have Brooke’s brilliant mind pushing our efforts forward.  In all of her brilliance, she still gives me the opportunity to experience Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube on my own.  Fortunately, she covers me when I can’t figure out that people are communicating with me; and I’ve missed it completely.  Also when I forget to post regularly because I’m caught up in a new center opening or training a new sales person she makes sure our presence is known.  Don’t you wish you had a Brooke?

One thing I do handle on my own is to jump in and participate in the discussions on LinkedIn.  If there’s one thing as a business owner (or a party manager, GM, or a group sales leader) I could recommend, it would be to listen in on some of the conversations going on out there.  It’s interesting. Everyone has an opinion. Your filter will certainly impact how you read the information that’s shared.

Here are the groups I belong to; I was surprised the list was so long!

Effective and Fun Training Techniques

Family Entertainment Center

FEC Party Managers

FEC- Family Entertainment Center/Location Based Entertainment

IAAPA Family Entertainment Centers Council Community

International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions

Sales Playbook!

SalesBlogcast.com

The Business of Bowling

The Business of Remarkable Groups and Parties

The Sales Playbook Reading Club! a subgroup of Sales Playbook!

Trainer Talk

Tribal Leadership

Vistage / TEC – CEO Leadership

Some of these groups are closed and you have to be accepted into them.  Some of the groups I just receive information.  Some days, I don’t do anything with the information and some days I jump right in.  I’ve jumped in and out before.  I try to always follow my mother’s rule: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

I definitely know I am in better communication with people I would never have the opportunity to visit with because we talk in the same circles on LinkedIn.  I’ve found some amazing articles and very cool resources from those mega tweeters on Twitter.  I have a ton of fun keeping up with friends, family, and my business buddies on Facebook. I found out people care about what I say and that’s encouraging.  I am surprised sometimes at what people have to say.  I am educated.  I am inspired.  I am bored.  It’s interesting that all of these things are part of the process.  I have found great books to read because of recommendations from others.

Social Media takes time.  I don’t handle it all myself.  I can’t.  But I do believe the time I have invested has really created a “return on the conversation” that has deepened my relationships with the people we serve business-wise, and has created a trust factor that would normally take many years.  And when I have the time it is fun.

So what was my real thought for this week?  Oh right, 191,000+ tweets … hmm, you probably won’t see that from TrainerTainment, but we will be sharing our opinion as often as possible.  If there’s a conversation that you think we need to be having, please ask!  I’ll probably answer in the blog or on Facebook or LinkedIn because I won’t be limited in the amount of words I can use. But for all you short answer guys and gals – TWEET AWAY!

Rolling a 300 requires a “perfect” set of circumstances. When it comes to performances I think there are rarely perfect circumstances. We task employees to perform at the highest level. Many times there is no definition as to what high performance looks like, and rarely is there any practice or training to help an employee learn to perform at that high level.

Think about it, an athlete goes into the game after hours and hours, or even days and weeks, of training. We send our teams into the game every day with little to no training or practice and expect a winning performance.

When’s the last time you provided solid coaching for your front line employees?  Do you have on going training processes in place?  We have a monthly coaching guide that’s available for download online. You can even sign up for Xpress Training subscription site and have 24/7 online webinar coaching and more for a ridiculously low monthly fee.

Here’s the deal, your staff knows exactly what to do, right up to the time that they don’t. Why don’t you let us help you help them improve their performance?

If you sign up for Xpress Training before the end of this week I’ll send you our brand new Group Sales book for free!

Start coaching your team. Let us help and see how it affects your sales. When your team wins with outstanding performance your business wins.

Feel free to post what you do to coach your team on our blog comments below or our Facebook site. I know all of us could use any advice when it comes to developing a winning team!