Kenny Chapman tells a story about a technician who traveled to Chicago for training despite obstacles, arguing that frontline workers' desire to improve matters more than anything else. Commitment and investment in people create the culture that drives results.
Chicago (service sales success school).
June 6, 2013.
About 5:30 AM (arrived at O'Hare and then to the hotel).
Hey everybody, Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach, coming to you with this week's video version of Freedom Friday Focus. And this week we're in Chicago training our service sales success school. And I wanted to touch base on technician desire, say frontline team member desire. This could be salespeople, residential, dedicated salespeople. This could be commercial salespeople. This could be technicians that sell or technicians that set leads or whatever the scope, whatever the type of business model that you're currently executing. We need to look at this desire thing. And here I am in Chicago and we kick off the first day and we're going through and everything's going well. And I learned that one of the team members in my audience had a terrible flight to a point of got delayed, got delayed, got delayed, weather, it looks like they're going to cancel the flight. Well, he ended up making it here, came off of vacation with his family. He was on vacation, his owner wanted him to come. He already had this vacation scheduled. So now he's making a decision, cuts his vacation short, flies from his vacation area with his family to be here with us to learn and grow as a technician and a salesperson. Now with these types of things, we need to remember some commitment and desire from Frontline. We get, you know, a couple irritating people, the ones that are lazy, the ones that don't work out, we invest in them, we train them and then they leave or they go start another company or they go to work for somebody else and we get frustrated and sometimes it can kind of wear on us. I get it at Peterson, in my company, we're looking for tech right now. We could use help. We're looking too. You're not alone, all of you out there. I know all my clients are looking. We're all looking, doing the best we can to continue to move things forward and we can get a little jaded. Well, this technician that leaves vacation, flies in, all this kind of stuff happens. Well, he ends up getting here about 5:30 in the morning over to Chicago O' Hare and grabs a cab and gets over here to the hotel where we're doing the event, grabs a quick nap, gets 45 minutes of sleep and there he is, bright eyed bushytails 7am ready to rock and roll in the seminar room. I never would have known that he had this night had he not shared it with us. He was engaged, he was involved, he was helpful, he was asking questions, he was taking notes. He was very engaged because he's got desire and this whole group that we've got is showing tremendous desire and engaged and involved and this and that. And I just wanted to bring you because sometimes it does get tiresome. I know as a business owner, as a coach, as a leader in this industry, it can wear on us. But man, when you see some people that are willing to dig deep and think about it, would you. Would you cut a family vacation short and fly halfway across the country in delays and then get in at 5, something in the morning and need to be in the seminar room at 7, grab a quick little nap, be in there and go strong all day? Hmm. I don't know. Only you can answer that. But don't just develop an attitude that these people don't care and blah, blah, blah. There's some good people. They have desire. Deliver information, Invest in your people, invest in your team. Create this culture of desire and really good results happen. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach. Until we talk again, have a better than fantastic week and I'll see you next time.
