by Tech Support | Sep 30, 2013 | Sales
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenge of training. Whether you are teaching a new person who’s just been placed in the job or trying to train a new behavior for an existing team member, there are many up-hill battles that need to be won in order to get the kind of productivity that you seek.
Here’s what I mean-You have several fundamental divisions.
Just one of those divisions, and I think it’s a BIG one, is language….-
LANGUAGE: The trainer knows a language that is foreign to the brand new employee. And they know it at a very high level. The trainer got to be in that position because they know the job very well.
–DIVISION: The new employee knows nothing. If you use words like POS, they probably don’t know you mean point of sale. So here’s a great example. The trainer says to the trainee, “You clock in everyday at the POS station. You’ll just swipe your card and then input your password. Make sure you don’t clock in until 5 minutes before the start of your shift.”
–TRAINING RESULT: Here’s what happens in the trainee’s mind. “What the heck is a POS? I wonder when I get this card? Swipe where? Am I supposed to already know my password? Crap, I wonder what happens if I accidentally clock in 7 minutes before my shift? What have I gotten myself into!?”
So before you’ve even begun to train the job the new employee is wondering if they can even get clocked in. The trainer must follow up this “tell” process with a “show” and then “do” action. When training, it is so important to continue to check for understanding. And don’t simply ask if they got it. No one wants to look stupid. They will say yes they understand to avoid looking dumb. When you check for understanding literally have the employee “do” what you are teaching. Confidence is built when understanding turns into successful action. And by the way, doing it wrong is a step in the right direction as long as the trainer is there to support and help the trainee get it right. I hope that made sense.
Taking the example above, a good trainer hands the new employee their employee card. She explains that this card is their ID card for the center. It is private and only to be used by the new employee. We are going to walk over to the Point of Sale-we usually just refer to it as the POS. Once you arrive at the POS the trainer can point to the “swipe” and ask the new employee to swipe their card in a single swiping motion. At this time, since it’s the first time they’ve used their card, the software is going to ask for a private password. This is a great time to let the new trainee know that their card nor their password information should ever be shared with another employee. You can talk about cash control and attendance rules and procedures. Finally it’s time to address clocking in 5 minutes prior to your shift and explain that payroll and time on the clock is carefully managed in order to balance to the profitability of the business. Clocking in earlier is only permitted in the case of management approval and could happen if the business demanded there be extra service staff and you happened to be here early.
Let the new employee go through each motion. And ask, “So share with me what you heard about anyone else using your card and the timing of clocking in?” Wait for their response and then move on to the next training initiative.
I know this might seem pretty elementary. But honestly, it’s worth the extra time. I know that for me personally when I rush something I’m trying to teach it’s always a recipe for misunderstanding. And you will have to go back and reteach which usually involves un-training the way the new employee figured out how to do whatever they were doing wrong in order to get by.
Next week I’ll talk about changing behaviors of existing employees. Fundamentally I think this is much more difficult than training new team members. What do you think?
by Tech Support | Sep 5, 2013 | Sales
So a while back my husband and I were purchasing wood floors for our house. It had been a long time coming. Who would of thought to put white carpet in a house with three boys? We had been shopping around for a few weeks and went into a local store and found some samples that we liked. The sales guy was great. He was Super patient with us especially since we had 3 boys wanting to run around and touch everything. I noticed what a great job he did connecting with us by talking about his son too. He offered to come out and take measurements and bring the samples so we could see what the carpet looked like with our furniture and walls.
We set up the appointment for him to come out and take measurements. When he came in he didn’t seem like the same happy sales guy we had met on the showroom floor. Something had changed in just a few days. He seemed like he was going through something and had a lot on his mind. We looked at the samples, he measured all the areas we were changing and seemed annoyed when asked which wood we were thinking about purchasing. He sits at our dining room table and begins to write up a quote. I put my two cents in about the floors I liked. However I let my hubby make the final buying decision.
So I started dinner and did what I needed to for the night but I could hear him talking with Aaron about the quote. Aaron is a dove (kind), probably an owl (analytic) too, so he likes to take his time and think about things. He is quite and looking at the quote; and I could tell he was processing.
Then bam…the sales guy starts going into this story about how he has a kid and needs this sale, blah blah blah. Well the eagle (direct) in me was about to make that goofball sales guy my prey! DUDE-I’m not really interested in why you need the sale! However, I knew Aaron would make a good decision and I would be okay. What really upset me was that he was making the sale about him when it should have been about us! I mean, we have a mortgage and three boys and bills we have to pay too. This was going to be a big purchase. I needed this to be all about whether or not those floors were going to make me happy not about whether or not he can send his little boy to college!
I wonder how many times when we are selling that we make the sale about us, when it should be all about the customer. We need to think about how the “sale” of birthday party is going to make Jordan the happiest kid in the world! Or how putting on an amazing group event will make the coordinator look like a hero when their Christmas party is just awesome! We need to remember it’s NEVER about us! We say the same thing in social media, it is all about the people who follow us and engage with us, what are their needs? What do they want? How is it going to benefit them?
I know you are dying to know if we bought those floors from this guy. Here’s the crazy wrinkle in this story. My kind husband, Aaron signed the contract. A few hours later we saw a news story that the company filed for bankruptcy and had several lawsuits against them because they had not delivered on flooring that had been sold! So to add fuel to the fire this guy simply lied to us about being able to even sell us flooring that we could actually have delivered and installed in our home! I knew that something was hanging over his head when he showed up at our home so completely different then thy guy we met in the store. We backed out of the deal.
