Employee Training Secrets

The success of sales training programs relies on the way techniques are taught just as much as the techniques themselves.

Great techniques that are poorly taught do not produce good results.  How many of you have tried different sales training solutions only to see little or no increase in sales?  For those that saw an increase, how long did that increase last for?  Were you able to replicate the same results in all future salespeople or did you “get lucky” with a few?

When sales training is built properly, every graduate is 100% proficient at sales and is error-free.

That means he is a master closer.  That he loses no sales that could’ve otherwise been recovered.  He sustains an outrageously high closing rate.  You may be wondering how that’s possible and that it takes years of experience.  Experience does play a role, but effective training includes an apprenticeship wherein the closer-in-training sees firsthand how to apply the data he’s learned.

When sales training is built properly, the time-to-proficiency is reduced by at least 7 times.

Interminable “on-the-job learning periods” are caused by poor upfront training.  When everything is taught correctly to begin with, the on-the-job training period is drastically reduced.

We can build this training for you.  Our sales training not only makes your best better, it then “clones” them, bringing everyone up to their standards.

A recent case study of a client of ours revealed that 95% of our graduates increased their sales and the average increase was 171%.  Who else wants those kind of results?

Our sales training program will…

• Increase your sales.
• Decrease your turnover.
• Increase staff morale.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

There are an innumerable amount of employee training techniques out there such as courses, workshops, games (even video games!), “on-the-job” programs and more.  New techniques are invented every day in the hopes of improving the transfer of skills and knowledge, of better engaging trainees, of making training more rapid and so on.  There are two fundamental tools that are missing from almost all training, however, and the lack of these is often are the sole cause of many training troubles (miscomprehension, slow progress, disinterest in training and more).

These tools are keyword clearing and drilling.

Keyword clearing is teaching the trainee the definition of every specialized term he will hear and use on the job.  Why is this so important?  If an employee doesn’t understand the words he’s hearing and using, he’ll have a very superficial and often distorted understanding of the job and even industry.  He will have confusions, will feel unconfident and withdrawn from the area or job.  His ability to do it will suffer.

Drilling is doing repetitive exercises in order to practice some aspect of the job or to learn key data.  Drilling is one of the cornerstones of our training programs and its importance can’t be overstated.

There is an art to creating drills. Many jobs are too complex to simply tell someone to “go ahead and drill it.” You must break it down into all its actions and then craft drills around the content. Depending on the scope of the job, this could mean anywhere from 10 to 100 different drills. This is something we are specialists in. We have extensively piloted many types of drills and have found the most effective methods. These methods are universally applicable to any activity and we are experts at customizing them to fit any needs.

So, if you want to see immediate gains in your employee training, you must incorporate keyword clearing and drilling.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

The most common cause of employee turnover is probably not what you think.

Many different reasons have been given for employee turnover:  personality issues, an unchallenging work environment, insufficient employee pay and benefits, poor management, work stress and more.  Yes, these issues can lead to turnover, but you’ll rarely find the most important one identified:  no or poor employee training.

No or poor employee training has more organizational symptoms than you could imagine, and they are all costing you a lot of money.

Your employee turnover rate is directly affected by your training. Why is that? Well, according to a study done by the ASTD in 2003, 41% of employees at companies with poor training planned on leaving within a year vs. 12% planned departures at companies with excellent training.

But why does employee training have such a significant effect on turnover rates? Well, bad training leaves an employee with inadequate knowledge and skills to do the job. He feels uncertain and confused. Management slams him for his incompetence. He’ll either work it out as he goes or he won’t, and he’ll give up.

This is particularly true with traditionally high-turnover jobs such as sales and customer service. Second-rate employee training in these areas will blow your human error and turnover costs out the roof.

This has been conclusively proven through countless studies. How much money do fumbling salespeople and customer service representatives cost you? You have to pay them for their time and then you suffer from their mistakes–lost sales, wasted opportunities, unnecessary escalations, lost customers and so on.

Simply having “employee training” Is not enough. You need to have employee training that works, and unfortunately most training techniques don’t work.

This statement might seem arrogant, but it’s true. We have worked with small businesses that have one person trying to assemble training programs and global corporations with an entire team of training researchers and managers, and the problem has always been identical:  their training falls short of the expectations.  Simply put, it doesn’t work.

What does that mean, though? The programs “don’t work.” It’s very simple. They’re slow, they don’t teach all the essential data, they don’t result in 100% proficiency and they aren’t generally liked by the staff. What they do result in is a work force that is confused and unstable, that needs a lot of on-the-job training and that makes a lot of mistakes…factors that waste substantial amounts of money.

The real cost of poor or no employee training–the cost of incompetence, inefficiency and human error–is disturbing.

You aren’t alone in your training and employee retention woes. To be honest, the employee training industry is full of costly, impracticable “solutions” that give little to no ROI.

At Accelerated Training Solutions, we are different. I know, everybody says that, but listen to this. We didn’t just concoct a new training method and say it’s the best. We took every training system we could find, trashed the obviously unworkable parts and started testing the rest. We did this for two years and we discovered the key training elements that work. We use only those elements when making our training programs and, what do you know, our programs work!

And best of all, they’re brutally simple. Ingenious, but simple. Einstein once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This is very applicable to employee training. We know that one of the most important parts of building workable training programs is the ability to make the complex simple and understandable. We have become experts at this and have a range of training tools that we use to accomplish this. One of the best tools is drilling.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

For most, employee training is a headache.  It costs too much and has little Return on Investment.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

The three biggest problems that all employee training methods try to solve are 1)  the employee’s inability to understand the training materials, 2) insufficient data retention and 3) inability to apply the materials on the job.  Perfectly mapped procedures are useless if employees can’t understand, retain and apply them.

Truly fixing those problems seems like a pipe dream to most employee trainers.

Now, there are many tips and tricks out there addressing these problems–learning games, adult learning tools, memory tricks (mnemonics), diagramming and sketching and more.

The vast majority of these techniques are a waste of time and fail to address the fundamental reasons why the employee can’t understand, retain and apply the materials.

In our experience with training literally thousands of employees, we’ve found that there are five fundamental reasons why employee training is such a pain.

Reason #1:

When’s the last time you looked up a word’s meaning in a dictionary?  Misunderstanding words leads to misunderstanding sentences, which leads to misunderstanding paragraphs, which leads to misunderstanding pages, and so goes chapters and even entire literature pieces.

If you can’t define a word as it’s used, you don’t understand it.  If you don’t understand words, you won’t understand the material.  Thus, your comprehension and retention will suffer.

Some employee training methods say that should you not understand a sentence, simply re-read it over and over and if you still don’t understand it, don’t worry about it.  This is ridiculous, and let me show you why.  Look at the following sentence.

As crepuscle approached, bands of orange and purple diffused the sunlight.

Chances are you didn’t understand the sentence.  If not, try reading it five times.  Did that help?  Probably not.  You may have tried to come to some logical conclusion as to what “crepuscle” might have to do with bands of orange and purple and sunlight, but your conclusion may be wrong.

Let’s use a simpler method and define the words “crepuscle” and “diffuse.”

“Crepuscle” is the time directly after sunset; the partial darkness between day and night.  To “diffuse” means to spread or scatter widely or thinly.

Does the sentence now make sense?  Yes, now you see that all it’s saying is when the sun sets, the sunlight is less intense and the sky turns orange and purple.

Now, imagine if you misunderstood 30% of the sentences on a page.  Could you say you really understand the content on that page?  What if 30% of the pages you read were like this?  Have you really comprehended what you have read?

The other four reasons are just as simple and I want to share them with you.  Enter your name and e-mail address below and we’ll e-mail you our free eBook on employee training.  In it, you will learn…

• The five fundamental reasons why employee training fails and what you can do about it.
• The three most important tools you must use when building training programs.
• How to determine which area to build training for first and where to go from there.
• Third-party reviews of contemporary training methods.
• And more…

We take your privacy very seriously and would never share your information with any third parties.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Job productivity is a concern of every executive, manager and employee.  Every employee produces a product for which he is paid, and increasing productivity means increasing the volume or quality of the products produced.  Now, a product is defined as something valuable that has exchange value outside of the activity (is worth money, for example).  Value outside the activity is a key phrase and it means just that:  is the thing produced valuable to someone else?  Will anyone give you money or goodwill for it?  If no, it’s not a product.

The concept of producing a product is brutally simple yet commonly overlooked or misunderstood.  In the course of training thousands of people on our programs, we’ve found that very few people actually understand this simple fact:  they are not paid for their time, their presence at the office, their title or anything else except for producing a product.

What is the product of any job?  It is the thing produced that has value outside the activity.  The product of a salesperson is a product or service honestly sold at a viable price to a new or existing client.  The product of a customer service representative is a satisfied, loyal customer who has no complaints.  The product of a janitor is clean premises.  The product of a CEO is a viable, expanding organization.

Every organization and post should have clearly defined products.

What is the product of your organization?  What does it ultimately produce that is valuable to people outside of it?  Does every post in your organization have a clearly defined product for which money is paid?

Here’s your exercise for today:

Go to the employees giving you the most trouble and ask them what they produce.  You are guaranteed to receive some wild answers.

Then take a look at some of the various posts in your organization and ask, What does this post produce that contributes to the overall product of this organization? If the post doesn’t pass that simple test, it needs to be restructured.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Why is it so hard to “clone” your top salespeople?

The number one thing most business owners want to immediately improve is their sales.  Many have tried the standard methods–courses, seminars, daily advices and so on–but haven’t seen the increase they wished for.  Most finally come to the conclusion that some people “Just have it” and others don’t.  This is not true.

Salesmanship is an acquired skill.  When taught correctly, anybody can learn to be an excellent salesperson–a Master Closer.

Making Master Closers boils down to the information you teach and how you teach it.

Let’s take the information first.  There is an endless amount of sales tips, tricks and tools out there, however, there is also a common core of knowledge and tools that are fundamental, classic and practical.  While learning every workable tool and piece of knowledge is a lofty goal, truly understanding the material of the core alone can greately increase one’s sales.

Now let’s talk about how to teach it.  The first major barrier to understanding occurs in the transfer of the knowledge, whether by reading or listening.  This barrier is a combination of 1) misunderstood words and concepts that are left unclarified, 2) too steep of a learning curve and 3) a superficial, theoretical approach without sufficient examples of exactly how it applies to the products or services being sold.

The second major barrier to understanding is the lack of drilling exercises that allow the employee to learn through repitition not only the tools and techniques, but the data of senior importance.

In closing, when the right knowledge is taught correctly, those two barriers are eliminated and the result is an employee who can quickly learn and apply the technology of sales and whose production earns him the title of Master Closer.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Fortunately, business expansion doesn’t depend upon luck or fate.  There is a surefire way to expand your business.  What does it take to turn a business into a machine that has steadily rising statistics? Sure, some weeks will be better than others, but how do you guarantee that, at the end of the year, your business will have expanded in size, income and influence? And then how do you do it year after year like clockwork?

Well, a machine only runs as well as its parts, right? If half the spark plugs are dead, the engine won’t run correctly. If a belt is slipping, performance will suffer. Even if the parts are all running fine, the quality of them affects performance. State-of-the-art, precision parts will outperform old, lower-quality equivalents.

Let’s apply this analogy to an organization. An organization produces something for which it gets money and goodwill, and in order to do that, all its “parts” must be operating correctly. Each employee does a job that is a “part” contributing to the final “job,” the overall product. If the organization’s parts are faulty, the machine needs constant repair; that is to say, if the employees aren’t 100% proficient at their jobs or aren’t hard-working, all kinds of unnecessary problems will arise and just keeping the show on the road–the machine running–will be tough enough.

So, the first step in improving the machine is creating 100% proficient employees who are dedicated and hard working. Some organizations have achieved this to some degree; they have a relatively small, competent and hard-working staff who do produce well. These organizations are usually doing fine, but they still have trouble expanding. Why?

Well, if you want to build a bigger machine, you have to add parts, right? When an organization goes to expand, it adds staff. If it doesn’t have an effective system to train these new hires to 100% proficiency, many of them will end up being “dead spark plugs.” Expansion then becomes very costly, and therefore slow.

Some organizations produce so much that these costs can go unnoticed. But only for so long. As CEOs are always looking how to increase profits, these malfunctioning areas get picked up and the problem is the same as in any other organization:  how do you fix the broken parts?

It has been said that every employee should produce five times his pay for smooth expansion to occur. For that to be a reality, every employee must be 100% proficient. Employee training is the only road to 100% proficiency.

Don’t take my word for it though. I want to show you, in detail, our training method and if its workability, and dare I say ingenuity, isn’t immediately obvious to you, then that’s my loss.

Enter your name and email address below and we will e-mail you our free eBook on employee training. This eBook will show you exactly why our unbelievable training system is changing the face of employee training and we will give you tools that you can immediately use to increase your productivity and reduce your turnover.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Welcome to Employee Training Secrets.  Here we will post daily tips and tricks on employee training.  Check back soon!