How to get into your customer’s knickers

You know how “words of the day” are. Someone uses them, they sound cool and before you know everyone adopts them. It goes from one to the other. Like some secret in a circle game. Before you know it, no one knows what it means.

The term interlock is like that. Interlock groups in training organizations placed a catchy label on a good concept, but something got lost in translation. Recently, a senior executive asked me what the interlock group in his company’s training department does and does he really need all of those people.

I believe, though I am not sure, since I am not in the inner circle, that the role of such groups is to create a link between business units and training departments; to live with these functional groups so that they truly feel their pain and translate it into training requirements. They act as an ombudsman between business groups and the training department. As I understand it, interlock groups get into the knickers of their customers.

Knowing that my friend has never been able to figure out what his training department does in the first place, I answered that if you have to ask that question, they probably aren’t doing their job well and you may be better off without them.

Having been in the training and performance improvement world long enough, I have noticed that the pendulum swings between creating a centralized training department to optimize resources and reduce expenses and creating business units training groups to increase their alignment and responsiveness. When times and good and money is flush, companies go for smaller, more aligned, and more responsive. When money is tight, they more to the centralized model.

Neither model is perfect. One tends to not be as aligned and the other creates some duplication and waste. Centralized training departments create interlock groups in an effort to get the best of both worlds.

In my friend’s case, it didn’t work. Pick your poison.

Which training model do you feel works best and why? Have you worked with interlock groups? What has been your experience? Are you a member of an interlock group? What have you done to make it work well?

I look forward to hearing from you,

Where’s the Beef?

It is really hard to find a technician who doesn’t simply change parts, but knows how things work. A friend of mind who ran a training department for appliance mechanics called this “washerness.”

I so rarely find this that I would like to share it when I do.

A few weeks ago, my 15 year old oven stopped working. Any sane individual would have simply replaced the darn thing, though not I. After my initial investigation, it became apparent that I was looking at spending at least a grand and probably two. That’s more than a heavy duty laptop and I just won’t do it.

I called around town to find someone who would look at the oven. Everyone I called would charge at least a hundred and fifty dollar to take a look at the unit and the cost when up from there. That was ridiculous.

Out of sheer luck, I ran across Bob Colson, who answered the telephone immediately. No receptionist or voicemail for him. After taking with him for a few minutes, it was obvious that he was the real deal. He said that he would be there the next day.

Bob showed up with a helper. It could have been his son. They acted the same way. No pleasantries for these two. They went into the kitchen and immediately began taking apart the oven. Before I knew it, they were reading the wiring schematic and were pulling wires and testing connections. I tried to ask them how it was going, but they acted as if I was not in the room. It was them and the oven and the oven was not talking.

I went back into my home office and continued my work. Before I knew it, Bob had announced that he was finished and began packing up his tools. He presented me with a bill for about $60 and was ready to go on to the next call. As he was walking out the door, I asked him what was wrong. He said that is was a broken wire in the circuit box outside. I could have spent thousands on a new oven and it would still have not broiled chicken.

Thank goodness for people like Bob. No brag, just fact: pure beef, no lettuce, tomatoes, and no bun. Plain and simple, they just do a good job.

Bob thanks for being there when I needed you.

Have any of you met someone like Bob? Please tell us.

Give the Devils their Due

Salespeople are people too, but boy are they different.

Most folks will considerately sit through the most boring training sessions with no more than a quiet yawn.

But not salespeople. They'll leave the room and head for the nearest pay phone.

Since a large portion of salespeople's take-home pay is based upon commissions, they’re attending training on their time and their own dollar.

And they'll walk out if they aren't getting their money's worth.

Wouldn't you?

My advice is to give the devils their due.

Experienced sales trainers are able to beat the cell phone syndrome by designing training to fit the unique needs and temperament of salespeople.

Good Sales Training Should...

Cut to the Chase

Clearly identify who needs the product, for what, and how to convince them to buy it. No more, and no less.

Be Activity Rich

A void boring lectures. Sales- people should spend less than 25 percent of the time listening to you talk. They should spend the other 75 percent involved in role plays, games, discussions, and simulated sales presentations.

Be Benefits Oriented

Continually stress the benefits of the product or program for the salesperson (e.g., higher commissions, greater visibility, expanded account base). Remember, you need to sell them before they can sell anyone else.

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman

Technical Training Doesn’t Have to Hurt

Technical audiences are wonderful. They'll sit through just about anything. Most of the time they'll even take notes feverishly. At worst, they'll quietly nap. But let's not take advantage of a good thing.

Technical Training Can Be Fun.

We've had lots of luck with two unique types of activities:

§ Colorforms presentations

§ Technobabble role plays

Colorforms Presentations

Smaller versions of these were very popular in the 50's as a kid’s toy. They're plastic sheets that are cut and drawn to represent anything you want (e.g., elements of a flow chart, system components). These cutouts easily stick to the white boards you see in most conference or training rooms. Don't limit yourself to having only instructors use them during presentations. Also let students use them in individual or group exercises to develop their own flow charts or network diagrams. Try them. You'll add a wonderful graphic dimension to your technical courses.

Technobabble Role Plays

We use these for training both sales and support audiences who interact with customers who may be more technical than themselves. Three people are involved in each role play: a customer, a sales/support person, and an evaluator. The customers job is to trip the sales/ support person by throwing around all the "technobabble" (e.g., names, abbreviations, and acronyms) they can to throw their opponent off-base. The sales/ support person's job is to use their knowledge and job tools provided in the training to translate what the customer said and not get thrown off-track. The evaluator measures how well each is doing.

Sound interesting? This technique also works well as an afternoon pick-me-up!

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman

Training is not the Answer to Every Questions

"God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."

- Reinhold Niebuhr

It's not our job to make sure that employees are provided with challenging work in a pleasant setting and are paid a fair wage. Our job is to provide them with the skills to do their jobs and let management worry about the rest.

But It's Not Working!

Even the best-designed, thoroughly constructed, and fully multi-mediated training programs can't provide peace in the Middle East, cure global warming, or tear my twelve year old away from his computer games.

Training is not the Answer to Every Question!

Many years ago someone gave me an excellent piece of advice.

[f you are going to stay in the training field, never guarantee that you will change anybody's behavior unless you can conduct long-term psychotherapy (figure on about 10 years), convert people to a different religion (new converts will do anything) or perform frontal lobotomies. "

- Jack Asgar

No training program, as sexy as it may be, will be worth a dam unless the reason people weren't doing the "right" thing in the first place was because they didn’t know how.

An old professor of mine was fond of saying, "If they can do it when you stick a gun in their head, don't bother training!"

Few of us are fortunate enough to be able to implement this rigorous form of testing, so here are a few tip-offs that it's the work environment, not the skills of the employee, that's the culprit:

• The organization has a history of management turnover

• Deadlines are often missed

• You observe substantial duplication of effort

• Employees' roles and responsibilities are not clear cut. People wear many hats

• The flow of work appears inefficient or complex

• Personnel spend a substantial amount of time on unimportant things, like searching for information

• Equipment is often down

But Don't Just Sit There; Do Something!

There is just something in the physical and nonphysical work environment that's stopping them and someone's got to remove it.

Muster up the courage to blow the whistle. Tell your management that training will not cure the problem and call their attention to what will, such as:

• Providing better management

• Clarifying and simplifying employee roles and responsibilities

• Providing employees with the authority they need

• Upgrading equipment and information resources

• Simplifying the work flow or organizational structure

Give it a shot! You might get lucky

Copyright 2007, Joel Gendelman