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Imagine opening your door and finding a fully licensed, well-spoken, sales-minded roofing sales professional, job application in hand, eager to make life easy for you. Or perhaps you’ll discover a personable customer service expert who doubles as an accounting wizard and just happens to be looking for a job.
Sorry. It’s not that easy. If you want to grow your small shop, you are going to have to adopt and implement operational guidelines and systems for success. Then you’re going to have to teach those systems to your employees. Don’t count on finding a superstar on your front step. Work with the people you have. Teach them how to win.
Step one is to develop and document the systems. Step two is to teach these systems to your employees. Your job as a leader is to teach. Develop a training program. Use professionally delivered seminars to supplement your efforts, but don’t forget your own responsibilities as a trainer. If you don’t teach them how to do things your way, you will continue to do everything yourself or deal with unacceptable performance.
The key is training. And the place to start is your company meeting.
I’m going to help you. This article will teach you how to make the most of your company meetings. A meeting is a way to communicate information vital to the survival of your company, and your employees.
Have you ever thought of it that way? Or, have you thought that meetings were a waste of time? Take heart. Your meetings don’t have to turn into gripe sessions, and they don’t have to be a waste of billable hours. The weekly company meeting can be the core of your training program.
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The Weekly Company Meeting
The purpose of this meeting is to keep everyone at your company focused on one thing: sales. Do you disagree? Well, get over it. Without sales, your business is a hobby. Please come to terms with this. Good sales involve doing the right thing for your customers, at the right price, and in compliance with all laws of man and physics. Is that so hard to get behind?Your weekly meeting topics should revolve around sales. How to make sales - sales that sit well with your customers, sales that leave profits on the bottom line, sales that comply with all safety and code regulations, sales that solve your customers’ problems.
Here’s a sample agenda. Let this meeting overview serve as a general guideline, just to get you thinking about your own agenda.
Don’t have a mission statement yet? Well, get busy. Use these meetings to develop a purpose for coming to work that transcends roof installation and repair. ServiceMaster’s mission statement is: “To honor God in all we do; to help people develop; to pursue excellence; and to grow profitably.” ServiceMaster racks up more than $5 billion a year in sales, and they started out selling janitorial franchises. Their mission statement is more inspiring than, say, “To have the cleanest toilets.” Create a grand, meaningful mission statement and revisit it at every meeting.
Keys to Meaningful Meetings
Here are some tips on conducting successful meetings:The folks who show up late assume that everyone must be late … so, no big deal. They’re off the hook. The folks who show up on time lose all respect for you. They’ve been compliant, and they don’t need to listen to this lecture about tardiness. And they don’t get why you haven’t been writing people up for being late.
All policy violations should be dealt with immediately, and privately, with the offender. Even if everyone at your company is in violation of a particular policy (not likely), discuss it in private with each individual. I once had a job where we referred to the weekly meeting as the weekly beating. Ouch. Not good.
Take your role as a trainer seriously. The best book on the subject is Dan Holohan’s How To Teach Technicians Without Putting Them To Sleep. The title says it all. Stop by www.heatinghelp.com to order.