Training Room: Focus on commitments
1 May, 2006 By: Bill Hoopes Landscape ManagementTo promise and not deliver means a downhill slide in your customer count, along with costly and permanent damage to your reputation.
It's May, the season is rolling along. Everyone, including the trainer, has plenty of work to do. But we cannot forget that effective training really is a two-step process. In addition to spring training on plant-pest relationships, operational job skills and problem solving, we must also train our crews to focus on commitments.
Far too often during the production season, management focuses on one thing — production. "Duh," you say. I've watched the same production parade for more than 20 years now, and the scenario never changes, at least not in companies that prioritize growth. We spend hours building knowledge and skills, stressing quality work and the importance of each customer. Then, as if possessed, we turn abruptly to the numbers at the exclusion of the rest of the job.
Promise and deliver
I can sense your eyeballs rolling as you read this. "Production equals dollars, equals paychecks," you say. Can't argue, it's a fact. Production does pay the bills and generate profit. But doesn't it make sense, just when it matters most, to teach your team that each of us is measured not by what we have promised but what we now deliver?
Or don't lost customers matter in your organization? If your strategy is to out-sell lost customers and job cancellations, you might as well go for it, service be damned. But if customer retention and repeat business is your aim, you need to "choke your motor" long enough to emphasize the quality of the work or service provided and the absolute necessity to meet commitments and expectations set a couple of months ago by your sales people.
To promise and not deliver means a downhill slide in your customer count, along with costly and permanent damage to your reputation. And, like management, we trainers are responsible for making a conscious effort to keep that from happening.
Your May training "Action Now" list:
- Put "meeting commitments" at the top of your agenda for next Monday's team meeting.
- Take time to point out the very real cost of lost business and a damaged reputation that can result if service commitments are not kept.
- Find an example of outstanding service and focus on it.
- Make it a point to recognize team members who go one step beyond meeting the production goal. Your focus should be on the dual nature of our work — production and customer satisfaction.
- Reward someone each week for performance that results in happy customers [can be as simple as parking in the boss' spot or tickets to a ball game].
Your people will respond to the message you send. Why not make your message, "commitments count."
If you have a success story to share, I'd love to hear it and will share it in a future column. Contact me at the e-mail address below.
The author is founder of Grass Roots Training in Delaware, OH. Contact him at
hoopes@columbus.rr.com
or visit
www.grassroots-training.com.
Please send any technical comments or questions to our webmaster.