The Learning Curve

Have you ever been tasked with training someone new only to realize the incredible amount of nuance you’ve picked up over the years? All the little things that someone told you once that you’ve collected as knowledge that helped you along the way are suddenly coming up with your trainee and it kind of just hits you. How the hell am I going to find time to teach this person every little thing? And what about the next five new hires? I don’t have the time for this.

It doesn’t matter how young or old your company is; it’s time to change that. Training for every single role is just like onboarding a customer- it can make or break whether they stay with you. And if you don’t want me to get all mushy on you about humans and their needs, fine- churn is expensive and best to be avoided. And if a portion of that can be alleviated by providing resources with an upfront investment, why not do it?

I have been in sales for many years. I have worked in places where my CRM was a spreadsheet. I have worked in places where the training was a directory and a phone. I have worked in places where getting a coaching meant you weren’t performing. I have sat in front of a computer clicking through hours of corporate training and compliance videos and then shot out of a cannon to sell to customers. I’ve done it all. And those experiences are exactly what drives the constant improvement to what I offer my team.

At first, creating a system to onboard, educate, and coach people is overwhelming and exhausting. Often, leaders look to outside vendors and find that they fall short because of the complexity of our industry. The thing is, our people need us to put together programs that may not be perfect, but always get better.

It may start with an outside vendor that creates a custom training for your business that becomes standardized over years of partnership. I did that- it worked. It may start with gathering feedback from existing staff about what would have helped them the most in their early days to learn the job better and faster and then prioritizing. It may start with creating a mentor program to help guide new hires through their ramp up period without feeling isolated. But if you are busy or low on budget, it may start even smaller than that.

When it occurs to you that something you have just done or said might be helpful to someone new, Write down the tidbits or record them in a voice note. Make a library of helpful knowledge as it comes up. Record your highest performing sales rep’s presentations and save the best practices as video clips. Make cases studies about when experienced procurement personnel saved a boat load of money when volatility hit and how they did it. Put the voice memos, paragraphs, videos, and case studies in a shared drive until you can find time to formalize them into a formatted resource. The point is, put the knowledge somewhere.

And please, don’t forget to create space in your calendar for your people. I know, I know- you’re too busy for more meetings. Me too! But having a regular cadence with the people on your team will drive dialogue. How they are performing is the result of something else, and it’s you job to find out what that something is. Create trust. Pursue communication. Ask questions. Gain understanding. Not only will this type of coaching throttle your workforce toward cohesion and success, but it will also provide you with insight into more ways to write down the solutions you found for others in the future.

Some of you may think that your secret sauce is the key to being valuable. But I have a secret for you- it isn’t. Creating a new generation of winners as a result of sharing your success is the key. Being a leader (even if your title isn’t manager, director, VP etc.) that moves the middle and drives change is the key. If you think your company will take your winning recipe and toss you to the side like Plankton would- run because that sounds toxic and no Krabby Patty is worth the stress.

Save yourself time by pointing people to resources you’ve created. Save your company money by investing in the spread of pertinent and helpful information that will retain employees. Make more money by empowering your staff to win more consistently. Don’t leave room for error- no one can afford too much of it in today’s climate. Feeling fired up? Good- get to work.

This blog was originally published by Meatingplace.com on 7/19/2022. You can access it here.