What kind of business do you have? What do you do? You might answer, “We’re a remodeling company. We remodel homes.” My next question is, “What is your real business? And what does it need to become?”
When I first started in the industry, if you asked me that question, I would have said, “We are a remodeling company.” If you’d asked me again seven years ago, I would have said, “We’re a sales and marketing company that happens to be in home improvement.”
But if you ask me today, I’d say, first and foremost, we’re a training organization. We’re in the business of training and developing people, talent, and capabilities throughout our company and whoever it touches. We teach the customer why they should do business with us. We teach our team how to grow inside an organization. We teach people how to learn a craft. We’re a training organization.
RELATED: Does Encouragement Really Matter?
The Right Mindset
So, let’s take that idea a step further. If we’re a training organization, what must we be excellent at doing? There are a lot of answers to that question, but a central one is hiring. A training organization hires people that want to be developed. If they’re already on your team and they’re not interested in development, they’re probably never going to make it.
There are a lot of ways to write a recruitment ad and conduct an interview, but here’s a simple thing I’ve used that’s been successful: If somebody’s coming in for a marketing or sales role, we’ll send them a two-sentence script before the interview and ask them to memorize it.
If somebody’s coming in for a marketing or sales role, we’ll send them a two-sentence script before the interview and ask them to memorize it.
Here’s the thing: I don’t even care if people flop it. But if they didn’t take three minutes to try to memorize this script, there is no way they’re going to learn the entire training model of our business. We simply won’t hire them. Probably a third of the people we interview don’t learn the two sentences.
A Change of Focus
Becoming a training organization comes with a lot of questions. What are we teaching? What is the cadence of our teaching? How do we know that what we taught them stuck? What do I, as a business owner, need to know? What do our managers need to keep learning?
That’s why having a learning mindset is one of the key behaviors of a great manager. They have to be constantly learning so that they can teach. These ideals change the dynamics of the business.
In some of these old-school companies, the salespeople don’t interact with each other because they’re concerned about sharing their secrets and they want all the leads for themselves. But in a training organization, everybody’s involved. It’s a collaborative group. The idea is that you want to help train and develop the person standing next to you so they can realize their full potential. That’s what a training organization does.
RELATED: Investing In Your Team Creates a Quantifiable ROI
Add new comment
Related Stories
The Accountability Chart: Better Than an Org Chart
An accountability chart is useful, efficient, and frees up a company leader by providing greater autonomy
Remodeler Tech Stacks 4 Ways
See the approaches and philosophies other remodelers follow in their businesses for better efficiency, growth, and profit
On the Horizon?
A significant percentage of single-family homes sold today are purchased by investment firms as rental properties. What does this mean for remodelers in the future?
Avoiding Growing Pains in Your Business
Four remodelers with impressive growth shared expert advice at The Pinnacle Experience. Here's what they said
The 5 Most Dangerous Practices for 2024
Common mistakes contractors must avoid to stay out of legal trouble
Getting Your Team to Speak the Same Language
Most mistakes can be traced to poor communication. Here’s how RIKB Design Build strives to end that
Today’s Consumer is Your Biggest Competitor
Understanding the real competitor allows you to sharpen the correct skills
How to Create Urgency with the Reverse Timeline Technique
On this episode of Remodeling Mastery, host and industry advisor Mark Richardson walks you through how to close more sales by utilizing a reverse timeline
7 Don'ts for Remodelers to Remember in Today's Market
The only sure thing about the current environment is that it will change. Here are some guidelines to help ride the wave of uncertainty
Leading with Vulnerability
An unexpected bump in the road changed how this remodeler looks at life and leadership