Most leaders are stressed out when their staff doesn’t understand how to do their job properly. Here are 5 training areas most business people need to focus on to ensure that their team is confident and capable.
1. Customer Service: We take it for granted that when we hire people to take care of our customers that they understand what customer service really means. Often times the people we hire are looking for a job to pay the bills and customer service jobs are often entry level jobs that enable them to make ends meet and put food in the fridge. Unfortunately, many of these people have never been trained in what it means to look after customers. If you want your customers to be happy and continue to experience the level of service that you delivered when you first started taking care of them, you probably should either spend time training them yourself or engage someone to do that for you.
2. Time Management: We assume wrongly that our staff know how to manage their time. However, if we were to consider how much time is wasted because your staff aren’t blocking time, or using techniques to limit interruptions and get work done in a timely manner, you might decide you want to teach them how to manage their time efficiently. Simple time management training on a lunch and learn can take your team to another level and help you get more projects done on time and on budget.
3. Your Systems: We are so busy as leaders that we forget that when we hire a new staff that they need to be onboarded properly to ensure that they know our systems. Failure to do this results in staff that are frustrated and move on to other jobs because they feel that they aren’t capable. Unfortunately, it's not that the people are incapable, it's that we haven’t trained them in our systems. It might be simple things that are involved in doing their job on a daily basis. It could be the software that you are using for running your projects or your POS. It might be something as simple as scheduling or finding products. When we fail to train and onboard properly, we set ourselves and our new hires up for failure. If we introduce new systems into our organization we need ongoing training on those systems to ensure everyone is up to speed.
4. Sales Training: So many companies hire sales staff and expect them to be professional without properly investing in them. A few years ago, we had a company hire us to reduce the turnover in their sales department. We helped them develop some processes for hiring and training their staff that enabled them to have less turnovers and more success. Sales training is more than just telling your staff what your products do. Good sales training engages these learning professionals and helps them understand what it takes on a daily basis to ensure their long-term success. Sales training should be seen as an investment that will give long lasting financial returns. If it doesn’t, there is something wrong with the training.
5. Accounts Receivable Collections: Recently we had a client that came to us as they were stressed because they had $1 million dollars in accounts receivables. It's fine to do business and grow your sales but unless you are collecting payments, you are going to have a problem. We helped this company develop a process to enable them to cut that number in half in 3 months. By training their staff to follow a process each and every month, not only did the company reduce their risk and put more money in the bank, their customers appreciated knowing where they stood. Email dave@pivotleader.com if you would like a copy of an A/R system.
If you want your staff and your business to be successful, it's imperative that you train your people well. A smooth business is one that runs without you in exactly the same manner as it would run when you are there. For this to happen, your staff need to know what to do and how to do it. Training people to the level where they are confident and capable ensures that you reduce your stress and your staff are happy to work for you. What staff training do you need to focus on to reduce your stress levels?
Dave Fuller, MBA is an Award-Winning Business Coach and the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Your team stressing you out? Email dave@pivotleader.com
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