Training on Demand

Author : T.J. Schier
If you have read Tom Peters' latest book, Re-imagine!, you know minor improvements are not going to set your business apart in the future. In fact, if you don't get out on the edge, you might not even survive. Forget being 1 percent better than the competition at 100 different things - be great and unique to crush the competition.Think back five or 10 years ago. Who would have predicted people would pay $4 for a cup of coffee? Fast-casual? Full-service restaurants offering carry-out? Salads and low-carb meals as a large portion of quick-serve restaurant menus? People paying $2 for "breath strips"? Consider that last one. The company didn't try to make their mouthwash 1 percent better than the competition—they created a new market for their product.The key is the employees. You can't treat them like mushrooms (in the dark and fed manure). Take a new approach—use new methods and incentives to add shelf-life to the effectiveness.As I wrote last month, my high school let us skip finals if we had a C average or better and one or no absences the second semester. In an effort to help people graduate more quickly (and try to keep tuition down), colleges have come up with some interesting ideas to solve some of their issues:Take more than 12 hours in a semester and pay no additional cost for the extra hours. An industrious student could take 15 or 18 hours and pay the same tuition as those taking 12 hours (and graduate more quickly).Maintain a B average or better and receive a discount on your tuition. Colleges are rewarding things that should already be occurring (but in reality aren't). Will these incentives change everyone's behavior? No, but it will impact those with the potential to get done more quickly and less expensively. These are out-on-the-edge ideas to try to solve their problems.
What about the education of our workforce? Today's kids, our employees, think DVD—random access to any portion of a movie, with plenty of bonus material. VHS? Boring, static, and not controlled by the user. Is your training program T.O.D. (Training on Demand)—access to what is needed right now? Here are some ideas to help get out on the edge…of success:Think like Pokemon. Kids today use silly cards to learn how to play a game. Companies from Carvel Ice Cream to McAlister's Deli use color cards with specs, recipes, and presentation standards within an employee's reach. Why? Quick-reference while assisting guests or preparing products, as well as being able to quiz employees during lulls in the business. Constant reinforcement breeds habits. Good habits breed success. Easy to create and inexpensive, but effective.Screen-capture software to create narrated, full-motion help files for POS and management back-office functions. Most people won't read a manual to figure out how to use software (and forget things taught to them long ago if not used daily). Paper is 2-D and we live and learn in a 3-D world. Place these help files on the register or the back-office PC. Cashier or manager can't remember how to do a particular function? Open the file, hear and see how it's done. Problem solved by T.O.D.Move your videos to DVD. Chains from Hard Rock Café to Chick-fil-A have made the move. It's still essentially video, but it allows you to break up a video into short two- to three-minute segments. Watch the short video clip then practice the skill. Return to watch the next section, practice, and so on.Create incentive systems and contests to encourage on-going learning and development as well as rewards for desired behaviors like suggestive selling or following recipes. Works for colleges and will work for you.Learn from others. Companies such as Disney, Hard Rock Café, and Zingerman's Deli all offer classes to learn how they create their culture and service programs. Can't go see them? Why not create a series of roundtable discussions amongst your employees and/or other locations (for instance, the ones leading your company in sales, service levels, retention, or profits)? The answers are there; they're just waiting to be discovered.
Mazes are solved quickly by starting at the end and working backwards. Take the same approach to your training and service. What do you want it to look like? Start from that point and work towards where you are today. If you start where you currently are, you'll make plenty of mistakes, backtrack frequently, and take a long time to get where you want.T.J. Schier is service professional, consultant and speaker with over 20 years experience in operations and training. Founder and president of Incentivize Solutions and podTraining, T.J. has helped numerous clients enhance their service and training programs and spoken to tens of thousands of managers, franchisees and operators in various fields. Visit http://IncentivizeSolutions.com/ for more info motivating today's employees, training today's generation and delivering outstanding guest service; or http://podTraining.us/, a unique new system and the foundation of 'i-learning' - using the device of today's generation, the iPod - to train your workforce.
Category : Business:Sales-Training