Mastering Contractor Training: Essential Tactics

When we start getting into the training side of it, we've been through a majority of the blueprint already. We have our processes, our systems, the sales, the marketing. We have all these different things ready to go.

Right? Yeah. While you were missing, we talked about the candy that is marketing and sales. That's what everybody wants.

Yeah, well, and that is true. I mean, that's the sexy girl in the room that everybody's going after. But it's all the other things that you have to have lined up before you get to that point to make it actually function the way that it's supposed to. But when you bring a new hire on, from a training perspective, how long do you need to train somebody before you're like, they are proficient in what they are able to do, or you put somebody within your company in a new position? Like, what does that process look like of training them?

I think you really need to think about how good of a trainer are you, what tools do you have available, how much do they do on their own, how much are you doing in a classroom? What supports that training? Do you know how to train, which is one thing, and do you know how to coach, which is a very different thing. You can think of training as kind of like teaching. You're teaching somebody how to do something where coaching is a little more refining, perfecting, advising to get the most or optimize that thing that you learned from your trainer. I think the thing that all of us as contractors, home service contractors, especially high ticket home service contractors, should be very aware of is observing the outside world. So the outside world, if you look at the best organizations, they have a culture that's dedicated towards training. This idea that, hey, before anybody goes and interacts with one of our customers or with a tool that we're using or functions inside of our system, they're going to get some training to do whatever it is we're asking them to do. Well. And if you look from a sales perspective, some of the largest organizations I've ever seen, they will train somebody for 30 days before they ever get to the point of actually going and meeting somebody that they've spent money on to get an opportunity through marketing, because they look at that money as dollars. Like I set this thing on fire. If I put somebody trained in front of them and they're willing to take on that risk of the investment to train somebody because it makes their bet. Because whenever you're risking, you're betting that something turns out well, it makes your bet more likely to actually happen. Well, does that make Sense. Yep. So one of the inherent issues with home service contractors is there's not much of a dedication to training in a general sense. I know there are some contractors out there that really do put an effort into it, but for the most part, smaller contractors, really under 5 million, even 10 million or so. There's some training, but it's mostly verbal. Maybe a couple days, up to a week. And then it's kind of figure it out on your own. There's this concept of ride along training, which. Ride along training is a translation of verbal information and observation, which is the, I would argue, the worst way to learn something because it's not reinforced unless you're constantly going with that person and then they're reinforcing what it was you actually learned. You just watched and observed that something happened and you can't connect the dots of why it happened. Okay. I think that's something that if we as contractors decided that we were going to maybe approach things a little bit differently and have a training program, have a strategy behind our training that was aligned with our sales process, aligned with our brand and our marketing part of our culture, we would find that that gamble that we make with training would pay off exponentially with our team in a couple of different ways. Number one, they'd be more successful with our clients out in the field. They would instantly be in a position to start making money because they're having success. We would have less turnover because they are confident and competent in what they do. But we tend to be a little short sighted. We want them to get out there right away. I hired you. Go make some money right away. How do you see that, Nathan?

Well, there has to be a substrate that you're training to. So oftentimes they're just assigning tasks. Especially if you're not talking about sales and you're talking about support staff, admin production. You're like, I need somebody to do this thing. And so you assign them a task to do and then you go, this is how you do it. And then away you go, end of training. End of training.

Right.

Push these buttons, you know. But ultimately, and this kind of feeds back to the concept of processes. It's really difficult to train people efficiently and quickly if we don't have an underlying flow to everything that we do so that they can actually memorize a rhythm. So, you know, like when you're, when you're training people to play music, right, we learn the pattern. Like if you're playing piano, there's a pattern to how you do those things. If you have no pattern inside your business, it makes it very difficult for somebody to be able to adapt to things that are coming their way because they don't have a thing they follow.

And if you don't know what it sounds like in the end, so.

So we got to have. We got to have that underlying flow and rhythm to the way that we do things. So that has to be established first. And you have. You have a foundation that you're going to be teaching them. Where in this whole song do you come in and do you come out? Where do you step in? Where do you step out? And then what is that rhythm? How long should that thing take? And then, oh, by the way, I also have this stuff written out for you. So after I'm done teaching you how to do these things, you have a guide to follow to remind you about the things that I just showed you how to do. There you go, right? Something you can go back to. So even though I might be training something, somebody how to generate an estimate or how to knock on a door, or I might be training somebody how to process an order to get it into production, they actually have something they can follow and a flow to what they're doing. And then when they have to do it again, there's the same flow. And then there's. So that repetition comes from your processes as well as the reinforcement of that training. And you actually have material to build into a manual. So if you're getting as advanced as creating a manual that somebody gets to keep and constantly go back to, we have the materials to put into that manual. Step one, step two, step three, and you even have potentially a schedule that you can use to train those people. Like, you want to create a pipeline as a salesperson. Well, here's how we go out and generate leads. We're not going to worry about dealing with the next phase until we've generated a lead. In the meantime, we're also setting you up for some paychecks in the future by doing that.

I think that's one of the mistakes that when somebody does decide, hey, I'm gonna start training my people, they try to train them on everything all at once and do it in two or three.

Oh, by the way. And then, oh, by the way. Oh, but don't forget this thing. Oh, but don't forget that thing. Because they have to constantly keep going back. Oh, yeah, I'm trying to train them on this thing, but I forgot to tell them these things that happened before you get to this thing. Imagine trying to learn that way.

Well, it makes logical sense because we're trying to get them to this end result.

We want somebody to be able to perform Shakespeare, but they can't read.

Exactly. But I can get why we go there. Because we want an end result. And so I would think it would be wise that if I'm training somebody, they need to understand the end result, like what that's going to look like in the end. But for now, this is what we need to train on. We need to train on how to generate a lead. Let's accomplish that first. Now that we've been able to do that, let's train on how to get somebody to agree to an inspection or an appointment, or how to do our next step in our ordering process, or how to not just invoice somebody, but how to follow up with that invoice and possibly even make a phone call and some of the other things and what that sounds like a script and those type of things. But we try to teach the whole symphony. We don't even know how to play the instrument yet. To use your analogy, I would challenge people that when they're building a training program, I would look at what's the quick start aspect? Like, what can I teach somebody really quickly they would have success with right away, usually within two to three days, that they could go out and experience some success. And then over the next 30 days, what do they need to learn to be 50 to 70% proficient, and then this continuing education aspect of things to get them to full expert level mastery over usually as much as a year or longer with the idea that we're never ever going to stop training. We can always get better. We've never perfected anything that we do. One of the best things that I ever learned along the way was the importance of personal growth being a lifetime pursuit, not a time limited pursuit. Like you don't learn personal growth over this amount of time you're done. It is a constant striving. And it was the single biggest piece of advice I got that has to do with any kind of perceived success that I may have had. I don't necessarily see myself as uber successful, but whatever success I've had has everything to do with every day I'm trying to learn something to get a little bit better at what I do. So I think the first thing we have to get across whenever we're training people is this mindset that training never stops. Training is consistent. It's a discipline. It's something that we put time and effort into, and by doing so, we Increase our chances of success much faster than learning it as you go type of attitude.

Well, you can't be, you can't be too satisfied with good results. So you train somebody to do something and they get to about 70%, maybe 60% proficiency. And you're like, oh, sweet. Like this person is actually doing this thing pretty good. And then it's possible to get okay with that, to become kind of like, oh, 60% is okay and seen benefit, right? And then that's where you end up to see plateaus. You see plateaus because somebody sees benefit. They become satisfied with that level of benefit and then they move on to something else. And then eventually that thing kind of stagnates. So when you see somebody become, starting to become proficient, they're gaining momentum towards mastery. You can't stop there. You got to continue to practice, continue to improve, continue to try harder and, and then. But I also do believe at some point too, you do have to go, okay, like you've got this, you know, keep doing that. Because, man, when you hit the heat of battle, we may not have. It's like it's go time with what we got, you know, because sometimes you do, it's time to press the flesh. And I can't take a whole lot of time to pause in the middle. We got to make hay. And then, and then you hit those lull cycles. That's when we train, right? Like they're not doing like Major league baseball isn't doing spring training in August.

It'S the wrap up. But they continue to practice throughout the season. It's not like they stop, they practice. And I see that a lot with contractors, that their form of training becomes necessitated by a lack of performance. Something's not going right. We're gonna have training this week, but as long as things are good enough, we stick with it. So that complacency and complacency, to me, like you said, first sign of stagnation, stagnation leads to death and we lose people. This concept of a sales meeting needs to change. I think, I think that we should really look at that as an opportunity for practice. This is where we're gonna come and practice at what we do to get better. Even if guys are not training on their own or actively training at that point in time, at least once a week, at least, that we should be giving information, ensuring that they're mastering the information that we're giving them, reinforcing what they've learned. Because a lot of times we'll learn something and we'll get kind of comfortable with it, and we'll start to shorten it up a little bit. We are not getting quite the results, so we've got to reinforce some of those nuances of what it is that we're learning. The other thing I would challenge as a coach, leading that training is creating. The concept of training doesn't stop here. If any of you have played sports, maybe you played an instrument, you've been involved in anything in your life that was competitive. Maybe you're an academic decathlon. I don't care what it is. Most people have been involved in something that was competitive. The ones that excel are the ones that are practicing outside of standard practice. I got to show up for two hours for practice every day. Cool. That's what I got to do. But the ones that excel truly become exceptional, Achieve the top first chair in band, the debate leader, the top dog in sales, the quarterback, the shortstop, the point guard, and basketball. Those are the ones that went, yeah, practice is cool, but I'm gonna go shoot 500 shots. I'm gonna go practice my dribbling drills. I'm gonna go hit the batting cage. I'm going to play this symphony by myself, my parts all the time. And they're going to practice on their own. And when you can get that mindset put into your sales team, man, it is magic. What can happen.

Well, I mean, even Larry Bird after practice, which, say he had to make 100 three pointers before he went home. Yeah, this was after practice. Ain't no telling how many actually shot, but he had to make 100 before he went home.

Baseball was a passion for me, and I would take 500 cuts at strikes only, and I must make solid contact with 200 of those balls. That's a.400 batting average. Or I had to continue until I could. And I'd had days where I had bloody palms and blisters and all kinds of stuff, but that was outside of practice. I was like, hey, practice is over. Now. I'm going to go and do this. Having that mentality and teaching that, encouraging that getting that mindset in your sales team or whatever other team, like your production team, practicing what they do outside of work itself, your administrative team practicing what the. How can I make this thing that I do more efficient, better, cleaner, allows for us to be higher performing, which allows for us to lower overhead, increase production, and become more profitable ultimately as a company.

Yep.

Nathan, you said something interesting when we were at lunch earlier that if you can. If you can get a training or sales training, put Together and implemented. You can put together any other training inside of your company. So my question is. And maybe I butchered that, but that's.

Why.

I mean, I think that's a valid question. Why is that?

Building a sustainable and successful sales team is literally one of the most difficult things you can do inside your business. There's very few things that are harder to do than that. Hiring sales guys, by itself, not particularly difficult. Getting out in the field and closing a few deals, not particularly difficult. But training people who do not need constant oversight or pushing, and people who are continually successful day after day and week over week within a period of time, that doesn't. That doesn't cause turnover.

Okay.

Because with sales, you have a limited window. With most people before they. It's not that they don't want to work for you anymore. They can't. Yeah, they've gone two weeks without a paycheck. They've gone three weeks without a paycheck. Maybe they get to four and they're like, I simply can't do this anymore.

Mama says we gotta pay the bills.

Yeah.

Gotta pay those bills. So building the. Not only effective salespeople, but consistently effective and longevity sales, one of the most difficult things you can do inside your business. So the reason why building a sales training program that's effective, okay. And sustainable is kind of a linchpin to the rest of your training, is that if you can do that to training people, whether they're, you know, like a greenie right. Right out the gate, maybe yesterday they were washing cars, and now we're trying to teach them how to make sales because they just have that that we want. If you can do that, then you can train your people to do just about anything.

Fair enough. And you really want to think about what that looks like. You mentioned a key point in training and in sales. We talk about what we call time to money. How much time does it take me to teach this person the first component of what they need to have success and thus earned income? And so if you apply that same thought process to somebody in production or marketing or administration, they have to have success right away, too. If they're not having success in what they're doing, like you said, a week, two weeks, a month, they're like, man, I'm not doing well at this. And they know it. Even though they might be earning a paycheck, they're not feeling fulfillment in their work. You have to set that up. So what is the thing that they've got to do first that gives them success?

Well, Think about it. How long, how long can you hold on to somebody who isn't getting paid? So you have a little bit more time with admin and production folks because they are getting paid, but if you can get somebody effective who isn't getting paid. Now, a lot of, a lot of you guys probably offer training money. In other words, you'll pay somebody to hang out while they're getting trained. Generally it's, it's really, it's not enough to live on typically. And so, but if you can get somebody effective inside of a window where they're not really, probably able to pay their bills really well, but you can get them up and running that fast. Whereas production and admin, they're probably either making a salary or they making hourly kind of regardless of how effective they are for a period of time.

For a period of time. That's why we say the sales thing. If you can, if you can learn how to build that thing so that somebody can earn the money to feel success, you can build any other training because those people have more time. Although I do believe they have to have some success fairly quickly for them to continue to want to learn, to want to be a part of what you do. Structuring a sales training, what does that look like? Like, how do you put one of those together?

It should have a schedule. There's nothing more frustrating from a new HIREE standpoint than feeling like the people who hired you don't know what they're doing. And without structure, it feels like they don't know what they're doing when you get hired and they go, well, okay, so today we're going to talk about how to put a lead in the CRM. And you're like, did you just make that up? Like, was that part of the plan to begin with?

Or even better, ride along with me. You'll learn.

Yeah, yeah, you'll figure this out, you know, and like you'll instantly lose a little bit of respect by the person who just hired you. And on top of that, like we've talked about, I think we've mentioned before, what was the book was Powerful Moments. I think that makes the statement that a massive, an overwhelming number of people will know within their first day whether or not they will be at this job for a while or it's just a stepping stone.

To be specific, it's 90% of people decide to quit the job they just took within the first 24 hours. So it's a job, not a career.

You've got 24 hours worth of a first impression for this person and you have no plan on how to train them. You just sit down and go, alright, here, watch what I do now. Which is already haphazard. And they go, they don't really know what they're doing here.

Well, this connects back to what we talked about in leadership. So if you're watching any of these videos or catching these short little snippets, going back to our leadership video, we said we had to engage people in a vision, then the next thing we need to do is educate them. If we don't follow through with that piece that we said we were going to do, we lose them.

So you need to have, you need to have a plan on what they have to learn, when they need to learn it, and a schedule to implement that thing. And it helps to have some expectations set for them. Because if I say to a new hire, I expect you to be able to do this, whatever that thing is within a week, you're also making a commitment to them that you are going to help them be able to do that. And you walk into a program where somebody already has that all laid out and you're like, great. You walk into a program where they have no idea what they're doing and it's clear from the outset you're already thinking, did I make a mistake here?

Yeah, I think whenever a great coach starts doing training, first off, like you said, there's a schedule to it. But that schedule looks something along the lines of the very first thing I'm going to do in my coaching is I'm going to connect the value of what we're going to be doing over these next three days, a week, 30 days, whatever they are, to what the ultimate result is going to be, that we're going to accomplish this thing, this is what we're trying to do. And connect that dot real quick about that up front. And then probably the next thing I'm going to do is they're going to coach and teach on the actual culture of the business. They're going to talk about that first. Like, this is who we are, this is what we're about, this is why we do what we do. This is our mission, this is the things that we're trying to accomplish that benefit you and allow you to achieve your goals in life and give you the skills to reach your potential while you're here. Because if you don't set that foundational side of your training first before you actually get into the, the content of the training, it's hard for them to connect the skills and effort that they're applying to, the why they're doing it, and the benefit to them.

Well, you have to think of your new employees the same way you think about a new customer. You have to think about them the same way. Because if we all get a little buyer's remorse sometimes, especially when we make a big purchase, we go, oof, should I have spent that amount of money on that thing with that person? Now imagine somebody just made a career move with your business, and so they need to, they need to connect as quickly as possible. They need to feel that belonging. Right. If you're the person in charge of training them, okay, consider yourself production after the sales guy closed a deal. So the customer loves the sales guy, otherwise they probably wouldn't have hired your company in the first place. They sales guy is now handing them off to the rest of the team to get the work done. And then they don't hear from production for two weeks. They don't know what the next steps are or the next steps that were promised to them aren't being done. So all the promises by the person who did your recruiting and hiring now have to be fulfilled by the next person in line. And so those two people need to be in line. And then that new hire has to begin to feel that the promises that were made to them are being fulfilled.

A lot of times it's the same person.

And sometimes it's the same person.

Same person that's the coach, the trainer, and everything else that's doing the hiring. Especially smaller organizations, it could be the owner bringing somebody new on and training them, or they might have a sales manager, a little bit bigger organization that if we don't follow through right away with what it was we said we were going to do, the trust is broken. And once you break trust, it's hard to get it back. Hard to get that respect back. So there should be a plan. Like that very first day, for example, in my contracting business, that very first day when they showed up, there was something special going on immediately. First off, everybody in the company, from me as the owner, to our leaders as managers, to the support staff and production to the other sales reps that were in there. Whoever was training, it didn't matter. Sales, administration, production, everybody knew who that new person or new people were because we would train multiple people at one time. Everybody had to be there. Like when they showed up, hey, welcome to team. I've heard a lot about you. You're going to be a great part of what this. And you get that belonging Aspect first, like, wow, they took this serious. That wasn't just something that he told me in the interview, it was real. And then they walked into the training room, their name was on the board. We had a gift sitting in their seat. Yeah, like, well, and it does, it relates to recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and we're going to talk more about that in that video. But that's how that training starts, is they start to belong. Then you're coaching them on why you do what you do. Then you start to get into the things that they do in the order in which they do them. So first thing we're going to do is this. And so if you are a company that's a retail company, relies on leads and stuff like that, well, first interaction on an appointment, what does that look like? What's the script? Let's practice it, let's role play it, let's walk those steps through. If you're more of a company that the people coming in for you are canvassers. Okay, what does a door knock look like and how does that go? And we practice that until we have that down first before we start to move on to the other things so that they can have success. Hey, have you heard that there's a social network just for you? Well, if you haven't, you're going to. It's the Contractor Collective. It's a purpose driven social network that we built just for you. So you have a community that's just like you, sharing information to make us all better. No negativity, no distraction. If you're anything like me, you hate social media because of all the distraction and ads and all the other garbage algorithm telling you what you want. This allows you to create your own algorithm to follow the people you want to follow and get the feed that you want to have. There's also all kinds of other training content groups to join. Fun stuff to do as a community of contractors without the distraction of traditional social media. If that sounds like a good thing for you, go to the Play Store, go to the App Store, download the app and join today or join right below. In the description there's a link. Invite all your friends and we'll see you inside. Contractor Collective. And so when designing a training program, think about the things that have to be done in the order in which they need to be done and then at least becoming confident in them. Maybe not mastery, but confident or competent in them first so you can get some confidence. Because if you don't get this piece first, that piece way down here doesn't make any sense. So just in order, okay, we gotta train on that first, this second, that third, that fourth, that fifth, to where they have their first success. Okay, this first thing, that success is to get an appointment. All right, let's go practice that together first. Get competent in it so we have confidence in it. Then when we go and actually meet somebody out in the wide world out there, it's not new to you. You feel comfortable. You feel like, hey, I got this with the hardest situation could possibly be. I got it with the people that all know what I'm supposed to say. That person on the door that I'm going to go talk to has no idea what I'm supposed do to. To say, so I should be good. And you have this comfort to go out there and do it. But if the other way around, you're going, hey, come listen to me while you go and do your door knock. You have a lot of experience and walk through that process. That guy listening, while it is valuable and he's gaining some experience from listening to it, he can't connect why you're saying what you're saying to the result that you're well.

And not just that.

If that person that's training them isn't getting consistent ongoing training, then he could be for he or she could be forgetting some very important steps that need to be taken. That because they're just comfortable. Right. We talked about that at Top Rep before. You know, once you get good, you quit training and you get lazy.

You also forget. That's the problem too, is that sometimes you will do things instinctually. And maybe that instinct is something that's been grown and that's something that you worked on. And you do things out of sheer habit from drills and time and effort and experience that you don't even think to tell that person about. So when they're on a ride along and you're talking to prospects and the person with you goes, man, that sure was easy. That guy really connected with that person very quickly. And the experienced guy doesn't even think about all the things that they do naturally now. So they don't even think to tell the new recruit, hey, on the way to the door, I noticed this. I saw this thing. And then when I saw them, I watched the way that their face either lit up or went down. And then I tailored my greeting for them to match the things that I already knew about them just by walking to the door and by seeing the way that their body language was. And then I was able to connect quickly. The recruit only saw what seemed to them to be like a perfect interaction. Yeah, but we didn't. But because. Because we've just been doing this so long. Your experienced guy has. He doesn't even think to say that to that person.

He saw the result of years worth of practice.

And so the training program needs to have those things written down. So you might think that it's silly. You might think it's silly to put into your training program to pay attention to the house. You might think that that's silly. But to the new recruit, they don't realize. They don't realize. Like, when I was really little, my dad used to. Used to call people by their first name. And I thought my dad knew everybody when I was little and we would go to the grocery store and my dad would say, thank you for your help, Hank. I used to go, how does do you know him? My dad, being my dad, would always go, of course I know Hank. I've known Hank for years. Right. I kid you not. It took me a while as a little kid to realize they're wearing a name tag. My dad never said, oh, he's wearing a name tag right now. That's just my dad being my dad. But experienced salespeople, production managers, superintendents, admin, do that all the time. They're reading name tags, and they're not telling the new person that they're reading a name tag.

I do that as well. Like when I go to the grocery store or something like that. If they got a name tag on, I try to call them by their first name. And Alex is like, same thing.

She's like, how do you know them? I was like, it's right there.

And I take that one step further because my grandfather, much like your dad, was intentional about knowing somebody's name.