Okay, so business is going well. You’re conducting your weekly meetings like clockwork. And still…
At the back of your mind something is bothering you. Getting to work on your business and not in your business has one serious drawback – operationally, your not dealing with the issues that your staff get to work on daily. You’re not in the trenches anymore but controlling the battle from an office far away. How do you know that there are issues if you do not solve them yourself?
So one day a client phones me on my cell. He rants and raves a bit because no-one has attended to a call that was logged by him. After he throws the phone down in my ear, my Level 1 staff tell me that they’ve completed the work on his PC and they simply need to reboot to finish up. They’ve put the call on a “Waiting on Client” status after they tried to get hold of him. Apparently he was in a meeting. Mmm, something isn’t adding up. Why didn’t we follow up with Mr Unhappy? Seems like its time for a workshop!
Having regular workshops to brainstorm issues that your staff has to deal with on a daily basis is a must. In his book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”, Chet Holmes encourages his readers to have a workshop at least once per week.
This is what Chet has to say about holding regular workshops in his book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”, on page 38:
One of my clients became one of the fastest-growing companies in America, hiring 50 new people a week. Here’s a question for you: could your company hire 50 people this week and weave them seamlessly into your organization? And, before you answer, could you then hire another 50 people next week? Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or haven’t hired even your first employee, you need to have the systems in place that would make hiring 50 people every week a breeze. This makes the difference between success and failure. A company that thinks like a small company remains small. A company, even a one-person army, that thinks and acts like a big company is going to grow faster, smarter, and better. … What kind of a training program do I need in place to do that?” So, for example, as you are improving your current sales effort, document everything as you go. You will be creating a training manual for future hires-even if, like this client, you are not hiring a single additional person right now. By thinking this way, you are forced to spell out each and every step. Leave nothing, or very little, for the imagination.”
This is but one of the gems that can be found in his book. I definitely encourage you to go out and buy it as he doesn’t only talk about setting up a good sales organization but touches on all aspects of running your business more effectively.
So, here is how I conduct our workshops.
I usually spend three weeks on a problem and on week four we tackle the next issue. In weeks two and three we modify our processes and plans based on the outcomes that we experience in real-life.
First of all I ask our people to give me an example of something that we could do to improve the business. Sometimes I choose something that we need to improve on. At the top of a white board I will write down as an example:
I then get a couple of suggestions from them and ask them to vote on the most important issue. The top issue is then addressed.
“Improve communication between us and our clients”
What is the challenge? We are not keeping our clients in the loop when we solve their requests and they keep on phoning the helpdesk to find out if their issue has been resolved instead of checking on the Zendesk Portal.
How do we resolve this?
- We give them training on using the portal. We’ll document the training on the Zendesk forum and whenever a client asks about their ticket status, we’ll give them feedback and send them a link to the training on Zendesk.
- We set up triggers that email the client with every change in status or whenever the ticket is updated. We disabled this feature in Zendesk because we thought that the client would be overwhelmed with the amount of feedback received, but obviously we were wrong.
At the next meeting we will refine the process even more and get feedback from the staff to find out if our process is working.
- Ronald completed the training on the forum. The URL is http://XXXX. We sent 35 emails to clients over the past week with the new URL.
- Nadia will ask Pronto Marketing to send an email blast to all our clients with the URL explaining the entire process.
- All new clients will be trained on this at the on-boarding meeting.
On week 3 we make our final adjustments and then move on to the next issue. Sometimes new issues crop up that have to be dealt with. Although we had a vote a month ago on the most important issues that we need to fix, life happens. Be flexible on this.
Having a productive workshop is a really cool tool to help you formalize procedures and work plans in your business. It will help you deal with and provide clarity on common issues that your staff face on a daily basis. And it will help you leverage your staff properly so that you can sustain growth in your company when you take on more clients. Finally, it will show your staff that you care about them and the business.
Chet’s book is really good – get it today. It will transform the way that you do business.
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