New Year Mobility or Software Rollout? How to Get a GREAT Training Team

Why settle for good when you can have GREAT?  It's simple to assemble an outstanding team.  Just follow these four simple steps.

Step One:  Watch someone in REAL action.  The little "How to Make a Bentley from a Dollar Bill" videos are nice, but real videos on real topics are better.  Remember that the material is going to be, to a certain degree, foreign to your new users.  It may seem complex and confusing.  Can the trainer take something foreign, complex and confusing and make it make sense to you?  If so, you have found someone who can become the foundation of your great team. 

Allow me to suggest www.https://series7specialists.com/Series_65_66.html  Pick a video.  Any video.  If you go to a password protected page, use the username project and the password MyTeam.  I suggest this because the license prep material covered here is...well...everything we want to see in a test.  Foreign.  Complex.  Confusing.  And while we're at it, throw in BORING.  One major curriculum provider actually apologized in the foreword for how terminally boring the material is.  If I can keep your interest in THIS, just think of what I can do for your new users on something they are going to be using to make a living.

Step Two:  ASK FOR NAMES.  Excellent trainers take pride in their work, and love to be surrounded by other excellent trainers.  Excellent trainers want a Train the Trainer (TTT) that goes quickly, smoothly and makes productive use of their time.  Having a team of excellent trainers facilitates this goal.  Excellent trainers know, or can find out, who else is available, and will always refer other top tier trainers.  Excellent trainers will never subvert their own teams by recommending "warm bodies" who will bring the performance level of the team down.

Implementation trainers' resumes look different.  Trying to use resumes for an implementation team requires totally counter-intuitive thinking.   We all look  like job hoppers.  We bounce from industry to industry.  We work with this group and that, CRMs today, accounting software yesterday and mobile job activity apps the day before.  The BEST trainers can do that because we all do two things extremely well:  We learn.  We teach.  We have found that the hardest part isn't your app or software or device or even your policies and procedures.  The hardest part of any project is getting to the point where trainees ask, "And how long have you been with our company?"  It always - always - happens to the best trainers.

Within two hours, I can get you at least a half dozen names.  Give me a couple of days and I can help you assemble an average size team.  Add in second generation referrals and you can put together a pretty good sized team in a hurry.

Step Three:  Remember that your trainers are an investment rather than an expense.  The work is hard, the travel is often grueling, and there is stress associated with finding "the next project."  The reasons excellent trainers put up with this are

• We love the work.  After the worst day imaginable, top trainers can't wait to do it again.
• We get paid for what we do.  When the pay and travel policies are fair, we respond favorably. 

If your team is staffed with so-so trainers, you may or may not get your money's worth.  But if you have a top level team, your ROI explodes because of high user acceptance, accurate use of the tools and effective change management for the transition.

Step Four:  Pull the Trigger.  When you find someone who has demonstrated skills, or has been recommended by a top 10% trainer, and the investment parameters are right, why wait?  Make the commitment on the spot.

By waiting, you obviously risk the possibility that the best people will find other engagements.  Top trainers are always looking, and will often have multiple possible projects working.  You may lose your best asset by waiting.

But the worst thing that can happen is that, by trying to sift through hundreds of names to get THE absolutely, positively, no doubt about it BEST group, you will probably bypass the best and settle for average. 

At one time, I did a lot of judging for high school speech and debate events.  In a group of six or seven competitors, I had to decide, and decide quickly.  When there was an excellent performance, that person got first place, and kept first place until someone did better than s/he had done.  But even with this method, by the end of the performances, I had trouble remembering the details that would distinguish third from fourth from fifth place.  The top performers stood out.  I recognized quality and rewarded it as it happened.  Before I learned that trick, I often allowed mediocre performers to creep up into higher rankings.  Don't let memory decay result in mediocre team creep.  Pull the trigger when you see a top performer.

I hope these pointers have helped.  If you follow these steps, you will get one additional benefit:  Chemistry.  When top level trainers get together, the synergy is incredible.  I want your next project to have that synergy.

And I would love to be a key player in that synergistic team.  Call me at 918-812-8613, or email [email protected].