How much business training should you provide your team?
It depends... Are you going for the GOLD or settling for Coal?
While conducting the 10 Steps to Economical Marketing Webinar last week, I took some questions from the participants. One question in particular got my attention. The question was "Dori, you mentioned training the team and that marketing is a team effort. How much training should someone provide the team or how much time should a manager spend on training?" Unfortunately, we were almost out of time, but I was able to give her the short version. My answer was… “It all depends on the current skill level your team has. If they are doing a great job and delivering the results you are expecting, then you only need “brush up training” once every two weeks or so. If your team and your spa are not operating at the capacity you think they should be operating at, role up your sleeves and start training! You need to train as much as you can until your goals are achieved.In working with many spas, the lack of a business training plan is one of the biggest issues we frequently encounter. Here are 7 steps to improve your training efforts:
- Assign a specific person to be in charge of training
- Assess your training needs
- Develop a training curriculum
- Publish a training schedule
- Evaluate your training and measure effectiveness
- Be consistent
- Develop departmental training in writing (manual). For most spas, training is usually conducted by the brand they carry. Very rarely do we see internal business training conducted within the spa.
As many of you may know, business training is my passion... If you are looking to improve your organization’s bottom line and performance, there is only one way to achieve results and that is through training. I often use sports analogies when it comes to training subjects. Take a look at an Olympian. For example, Michael Phelps, who won 14 gold medals. How much did he train? 40 hours per week. If you want to reach excellence, you have to invest money and time in training. That is the only way to get the gold! Back to the question, "how often should you train?" As often as possible... until you reach excellence! Or until your team knows how to:
- Upgrade and maximize the volume per guest
- Ask and obtain referrals
- Recommend retail products consistently
- Self market their services
- Cross market your products and services
- Increase retention rate
- Deliver a wow guest experience
- Confident about product knowledge
- Is operating at full capacity
I encourage you to set training goals for your organization and your team.