Roleplay & Practice: Keys to Effective Contractor Training

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. 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. Alright, 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 it 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 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 getting.

Well, and not just that, if that person that's training them isn't getting consistent ongoing training, then he could be, 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, and that, and maybe that instinct is something that's been 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. What seemed to them to be like a perfect interaction. Yeah, but we didn't. But 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 do. 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. You guys actually saw it at lunch today. I asked our waitress what her name was.

Who was it?

Emma. I will not forget it. She was amazing. She was a great server, right? Like, one of the things that prompted me to ask her name was that she was good at what she was doing. And people want to be recognized for the value that they have in the world. My grandfather taught me that by doing it first and me seeing it. But then I would like to think that there was a bit on my side where I went, hey, why do you do that? Why do you ask that person their name? Because I watched it for years. That's weird. And then finally I asked him, I said, hey, why do you ask somebody what their name is? He said, well, whenever you talk to somebody with their name, you're now in relationship versus a transaction. And when you're in relationship with somebody, it's a two way street. A transaction is a one way street. I thought that was brilliant. He taught me something that day that I didn't have before. We need to think about that in the way that we teach people is we need to teach the foundation of the result that we're giving.

You want to remove the guesswork as much as possible. There's plenty of think. Your people have to do plenty of thinking as it is. And if you make the assumption that they'll pick up on something, you will about 95%, 95% of the time be wrong. Just give them the information. Just give it to them. Especially if you want them to be successful. Take as much of that guesswork out of it as possible.

In other words, you need to simplify it as simple as you can. Make it so that Nathan can read the name tag.

But I can't read, so it's not going to help. So you need processes to develop a curriculum. You need a schedule that includes everything that they should know, including your company culture, your core values, everything that you're all about, so that they can continue to buy into the business. Then you need to use your process to figure out what they need to know and when. Then set it on a schedule and have a plan. And ideally, you want to have something you can give to them that they can continually refer back to, because I can tell you right now, they can only take so many notes while you're talking. Even if you Have a plan and they're going to leave something out. So take the note taking situation out of it as much as possible. So maybe they only have to jot down a little thing here, here or there, a training manual. It doesn't have to be that thick. It doesn't.

And I would challenge you as a business owner that if you're the trainer or you're going to have a trainer to invest a significant amount of time in the best ways for people to retain the information that they're learning. There's a lot of education out there about that. Google's your friend on this type of stuff. There's a lot of YouTubes, there's great books about it. But some of the pointers that I would give is, number one, we've already talked about, connect the dots to the end result, to the process that you're learning. Because the process and the discipline isn't always fun. We got to get that clear that we have this mindset that, hey, we're going to lift weights today and it's not going to be a lot of fun, but in the end, you're going to look great. It's the same like, hey, we're going to do a lot of stuff in this training that's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be new to you, it's going to be challenging, you're going to think you can't do it, but in the end, you're going to be one of the best salespeople on the face of the planet. So that's kind of thing, number one. Thing number two that you need to remember is reinforcement. Like telling somebody something one time is not enough. Having them take notes is one great way of doing some reinforcement. The other great way of doing it is bringing it back later so you taught somebody something the next day, reinforcing it a week later, reinforcing it three months down the line, reinforcing it. Having them go and reinforce it on their own to go and shoot a video of themselves giving a script on a doorknob or testing themselves. That's another great way. And this is one that I would challenge everybody to do. Whenever you're going to start a training, test them before the training starts, test them on what their knowledge currently is, what this is, and then do the training and then test them again to see the improvement in that test. And then three months later, do the test again and you'll see whether you reinforce or not by the score on that test. Because if the score goes up, you reinforced well, and you taught the mindset of practice on their own. Well, if the score goes down, they're not retaining what it was that you said that means you're not reinforcing. Well, those are some simple things that you can do to ensure that your training goes well. One of the things that is the most powerful behind understanding this concept of training is to see the results of the people that invest in training, whether that be from a sports perspective, a music perspective, or even more importantly, a competition's perspective. The largest home remodeling company out there is $1.7 billion a year. They're high ticket home service contractors. Actually, what they charge is more than any other contractor that I've ever seen out there. They have two major factors that generate that result. And really three, they have a very visionary leader that knows what he wants in the end and how he's going to get there. Two is they've created an amazing culture, a culture of competition, reward, gamification, that kind of stuff. And they have an absolute dedication to training. And that training is so good that you could either call it brainwashing or belief, whichever one you want, that they believe 100%, without a doubt, that what they're charging for what they do is justifiable because that training is so amazing. So if you can observe that from the outside world that, hey, somebody else is doing it, and this is how they got there. Why in the world wouldn't you. Why in the world wouldn't you dedicate at minimum one time a week of training after you've done your initial training? Yeah, and ideally an hour every day.