Do You Know Why Your Training Strategy is Failing?

Have you ever sent your people to training, and they don’t seem to learn anything? You are not alone. This seems to happen to companies more often than not.

No wonder it is challenging for you as a small business owner to have a warm fuzzy feeling about investing in training your people.

A friend of mine has a tag line he uses when an owner asks him the following.

“What if I train my people, and they leave my company?”

His response is, “What if you don’t train them and they stay?”

Training works, let me rephrase that. The right method of training works. The accurate content and materials in training are also a part of the equation.

What is the fundamental flaw with most training?

The fundamental flaw in most training is the same flaw that exists in the way most companies handle their marketing insofar as they view both as an event instead of a process.

Bringing in consultants, coaches, or trainers to do a one-off event is viewed by staff as ‘time away from the job’, and it’s not taken seriously.

Even with refresher courses, your staff, when they are bunched together in a room with presenters, will not retain the content.

If anyone told you could get in great shape in two days, what would you say? You would say that it would be impossible. And you would be right. Nothing is going to change in two days for anything.

Event training is just a band-aide for something more severe in your company.

Why is training done this way?

There are two parties to blame, much like our government. The first party to blame is the small business owner. They want to skimp on the investment. They want to apply a band-aide instead of doing the surgery to fix the real problem.

The second party to blame is the company delivering the training. They are often too comfortable providing event training because it’s easier to sell and it pays them good money.

The one-off event training is merely a band-aide and for the same investment, you’ll get a better ROI by choosing a more thorough training schedule with course modules that are rolled out over time.

Training roadblocks

The biggest roadblocks that you will run into as a small business owner are a time, effort, and money.

To engage in effective training takes a commitment of time. That means time to engage in training consistently. You can’t get your training like in The Matrix, or in a pill?.yet. That means you need to take time to learn new skills and reinforce skills you already have consistently.

You have to put in effort into your training to actually apply what you’re learning. I can deliver you the most awesome content in the world with my training, but if you never apply it, your practice will fail.

The best training is expensive, and typically it’s well worth it. Now take that statement with a grain of salt. I would always recommend talking to some current o previous clients of the company you are looking to hire. That way, you can learn what they experienced from working with the company.

The bottom line is you need to make consistent training a mainstay in your budget, just like you would for marketing.

When you address all three of these roadblocks, your training strategy will be more effective.

Summary of your new training strategy

Your first move is to figure where you are now, and then where you want to be in the next 12, 36, or 60 months. Then you can decide what training you need to engage in to achieve your goals.

Make your training strategy a weekly habit. Even if you could invest 30-60 minutes each week, you would be miles ahead of your competition.

And speaking of your competition. When your products and services appear to be very similar, it’s your people that will make the difference for you.

If your people have better training than your competitors, you will win more often in the game of business.

Don’t hope they are better, engage in training that will make them better. The majority of your people won’t like exercise but stick with it. The results from an effective training strategy are well worth the effort.