Note: This is the fourth and final in a series of blog posts based on Business HindSite’s “How Training Improves Your Bottom Line” presented by David Crary and Ruth King. To watch the entire show, click here.
Training and the benefits of training don’t usually happen overnight. Some results will happen fairly quickly, while others may take time. You, as the business owner, must determine what makes a training successful for your business.
To monitor your results, you first need to decide what you would like to get out of the training. This will allow you to have a way to compare what you want versus what really happened, and if the training was successful or not.
Each business should have goals and bottom lines they would like to reach, and the training is how they get to that level. If you know what you want to achieve, this will make monitoring the training a whole lot easier, instead of just going into it thinking a certain training session seems like something you “should” do.
Do you need those automatic, concrete results? Things such as one more service call a day scheduled or a new customer signed up each week?
Or are softer results acceptable? Things such as techs learning a better way to approach and serve customers? Or the office staff learning a more efficient way to schedule and dispatch with their field service software?
You must remember results will also vary between each individual field service business. Just because someone needed 20 sales to make the training worthwhile does not mean you need that same number. Yes, it would be nice, but have reasonable expectations from the training, even if the results start off small at first.
Finally, ask the employees how they felt it went. You will most likely run across a few grumps and grinds about having to learn something new or sitting in a classroom, but really try to get past the initial annoyance to change.
How much did your team retain? Ask them about their training and what was discussed. Then find out if they liked it. If they were not impressed with the training, ask them what could have made it better? Do they need a different trainer? A different form of training? Perhaps they do better by watching webinars. Was the information too far over their head? Or not challenging enough? These are all things that should be asked so you can evaluate what the next training session should entail.
The key thing to remember and know is that not all results will be instantaneous. It could take three, six, nine months down the road before you realize the training was beneficial. Perhaps you saved a customer by having your team learn to provide excellent customer service or gained a new customer by providing a service a competitor does not. Just remember to take all of the factors into account and don’t be discouraged if your company doesn’t grow or become more efficient the next day.