Foundation for the Future: The 5 Most Important Affects of Training

“We started our foundation work with Service Excellence Training in 2010, and the results have been amazing!  Our techs are more comfortable communicating with homeowners, and they are held accountable for results each day.  We are so grateful to be rebuilding our foundation through training with S.E.T. each week because it has made a HUGE difference in our company.”  –Krista Moreno (Owner of Diamond Air) 

Training works to positively affect and successfully grow independent contracting companies in the industries of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical in many different facets.  A major benefit of implementing training into your company routine is the way in which it positively benefits and transforms your company’s overall culture.  Training does wonderful things for service companies and below are the 5 major areas that training affects inside of a company:

1.    Training builds confidence-

Confidence is one of the most important things that an employee can have when it comes to doing their job and doing it well.  Most employees, even if they attended schooling for a certain subject, come into a new position not being sure of the details of that company or the expectation of that company.  This creates a lower level of confidence.  This lack of confidence goes into the field with the employee and they have a harder time overcoming objections, they have difficulty answering questions, and they struggle with really building the value of the business.  When an employee is well trained and they have a very clear understand of what is expected of them then they are able to go out into the field to successfully work and flourish.

2.    Training builds belief-

Confidence and belief go hand-in-hand but confidence is slightly different than belief, in the sense that a person can be confident in something and not really be sure why they believe what they do.  When you train it’s an opportunity to answer questions, an opportunity to address concerns, and an opportunity (if you will) to lay down the value system of your company. Training is also your employees’ opportunity to check-in to see if their belief system matches with yours and if it doesn’t, it’s your opportunity to change that belief system.  A perfect example of this is when an employee was previously a “time-and-material” employee but they are now coming into your flat-rate company.  This employee is going to need a certain amount of “value adjustment” so that he can begin to believe in the way that you price.

It also builds belief in the team.  If the whole team is behind you then they will be behind you because the message is being shared as a group.  Thus it is going to be a lot easier for everyone to join together and work toward common goals.  Which leads us to the next point– establishing expectations.

3.    Training sets and establishes the expectations-

It’s impossible to expect that a person should know what they should do when it has never been clearly defined and laid out in front of them.  When you have a good training program, it not only establishes the expectation for key performance indicators; which are the results that we are looking for when it comes to sales, lead generation, and client retention.  But it also teaches employees how to get those three important factors.  It teaches them a system by which they create happy clients and a system by which they will create positive energy for the company that will result in increased sales and client retention.  So training helps set the expectation but it also shows employees how to achieve the expectation.  When you do these things, it generates the results that you’re looking for.

4.    Training generates results because people can now achieve against the expectation-

Training is, by far, the best investment that you’ll make inside of your company.  When marketing dollars are put out into the marketplace it will generate different responses; depending upon the economy, sometimes you’ll get great responses and sometimes you won’t.  However, the factor that can be a common thread inside of your business is the ability for your current employees to generate against an established set of expectations with the opportunities they receive.  Matthew Stewart, Owner of Advanced Comfort Systems, had this to say about how training helps a company team achieve more with the opportunities given to them: “My company realized $2 million in additional revenue without an increase in call volume, due to the selling techniques that Service Excellence Training instilled in my team.  What a difference!”

Training is the only way to assure that you’re going to have constant production.  When you see production go up then you can celebrate but if production happens to go down it’s not time to stop training; rather it’s time to reevaluate what you’re doing and make the proper adjustments to keep succeeding.  When we do all this, we really build the future of our company.

5.    Training literally lays the foundation upon which a future is built-

Building the future of a company depends on so many different functioning levels inside of a business; from purchasing the products that you sell, to getting the word out through marketing, to having the administrative to support the employees that are in the field.  All of these components are critical but the backbone that delivers the message and the work that makes work happen is the training that you do inside your business.  It is literally the foundation of the future that you’re going to build and if you don’t lay a proper foundation, your building and your future will never be as great as it could be.

Training inside of a company builds confidence, it builds belief, it establishes expectations, it generates results, and it lays the foundation for what your business will be built upon.  Service Excellence Training is excited to be offering classroom-training sessions on a national level this year! We would love to play a part in helping you grow your company in all the important areas from above.  To find out more or to register for our class coming up on March 19^th– 21^st in Dallas, Texas visit our S.E.T. website and explore our “classes” and “calendar” tabs.  Thank you for following our weekly posts.  Here at Service Excellence Training we turn learning into earning!  

-Resource curated by Todd Liles of Service Excellence Training.