Tools for Success-Why Training Makes Sense on So Many Fronts

The first article in this series listed more than 25 tactics to increase your business success, all of them based on my experience. I started with nothing and didn’t get to college, so I know you can achieve maximum success, regardless of your education. E-mail me to get the first article or any of the other articles in the series. Each of the articles after the first takes a closer look at one of the tactics.

Train, then train some more! Why? Let me share some reasons:

• You AND your employees don’t know what you don’t know. Typically, you think of training as being about how to sell, how to use the computer, or how to keep a workspace safe (compulsory boring safety videos). All of those training topics are important. You should be doing them, but you should also be thinking about how to address deeper needs. Consider these possible training topics:

 

• How to be a better manager
• How to prioritize and manage multiple projects
• Best practices for organizing electronic files
• How to read and understand financial statements
• Six productive ways to deal with difficult employees
• How to effectively deal with difficult customers.

 

All of these are relevant. I encourage my employees to find courses to take. I subscribe to e-learning sites and I share all of the course catalogs we get from training companies. I try to get employees to attend one training per month, knowing we will be lucky to get six per year. The managers who embrace the opportunity to learn improve fast. They learn to understanding financial results better and deal with employees better. Salespersons who find time for trainings learn how to sell and deal with customers better. In addition, I am often stunned at how poorly most employees are at organize their emails and data files. How do they find anything? They don’t know what they do not know!

 

• Training boosts employee morale, loyalty, productivity and self-esteem.
  • Employees always complain that they don’t have time to go to trainings, but the best ones always find time and get excited about applying newly learned skills in the workplace. When great employees like these miss time, you notice. If your business can’t run without an employee for a day, shame on you! You need to develop contingency plans and cross train so that your business runs well even without a key person or two. Make your employees keep all their certificates, and soon you will see them wanting to go to trainings. You should make sure that your employees understanding that the new skills they learn and apply to growing your business are the keys to higher wages and more opportunities. Your employees will see that you are investing in them and become more effective and more loyal.
• Even train your worst employees to save them or at least part with no regrets– Once I had a controller who told me that we might not be able to terminate a bad employee, but we could darn sure train the tar out of him. Doing so might actually save him or her from termination. Even when it does not, you can fire knowing that you did all that you could to make him or her a better employee. Other employees will see you as a boss who offers help and tries to be fair.
• Make time for professional association meetings in your industry. For recyclers, the key meetings are the annual ARA meeting, the URG meeting, and the other training conventions. Send employees. Please be open minded about the cost of training; see it as in investment, not an expense. This view of trainings was one a key that helped my operation grow to be one of the largest in the US.
• Go to association meetings and trade shows for industries other than your own. When I was in the salvage business, I attended the annual trade show for the collision and mechanical associations. Businesspeople in other industries often have solved the problem that is so pressing in your industry. Go and listen. You will be surprised at what professionals outside your industry can teach you.

 

Remember only you can make business great!

Ron Sturgeon, Mr. Mission Possible, has been a successful business owner for more than 35 years. As a small business consultant, he can deliver wisdom and advice gleaned from an enviable business career that started when he opened a VW repair business as a homeless 17-year-old and culminated in the sale of several businesses he built to Fortune 500 companies.

Ron has helped bankers, lawyers, insurance agents, restaurant owners, and body shop owners, as well as countless salvage yard owners to become more successful business people. He is an expert in helping small business owners set the right business strategies, implement pay-for- performance, and find new customers on the web.

As a consultant, Ron shares his expertise in strategic planning, capitalization, compensation, growing market share, and more in his signature plainspoken style, providing field-proven, and high-profit best practices well ahead of the business news curve. Ron is the author of nine books, including How to Salvage More Millions from Your Small Business.

To inquire about consulting or keynote speaking, contact Ron at 817-834-3625, ext. 232, rons@MrMissionPossible.com, 5940 Eden, Haltom City, TX 76117.