Operation Meerkat

Operation Meerkat is a training manual for keeping it simple

Hiring of new staff or franchisees and marketing

Training new staff or franchisees regardless of experience

Don’t blame the mountain (sales)

Building the foundation (sales and/or installers)

Stale bread (sales and/or installers)

Keep igniting the mind (sales)

Salesperson needs to be able to present to staff about

whatever subject they like

Seal the lips (sales)

Covering the windows

The above is an overview of how to pick the right person and train that person to achieve the best from them.

The best part is you don’t have to start at the beginning to instruct someone who is new to the company. If a person comes from a background in roller blinds, then just ask them questions about roller blinds to ensure they understand the sample blinds and shutters way.

I have come up with a test for each product to keep consistency.

For training to be successful it needs to be repeated each time without change and the trainer needs to be in control throughout the training.

1. Part of the interviewing stage is to send the trainee with a rep, but they meet the rep at the customer’s house. Once done he/she rings the office and we go over the appointment. Ask basic questions of the trainee. The trainee doesn’t ask questions of the customer, he/she only answers any question directed at him/her by the customer.

2. Once hired they are given the introduction booklet. Start date and time etc.

DAY ONE

In office

Intro to the position and the training, confirm all paperwork is correct. Give a company overview. Exits and toilets locations. Meet office staff and their role. One hour

Five min break

Go over the training for the rest of the day and the week

Such as now we are going to learn about roller blinds (pic of roller blind or have sample)

Measuring, Fabric selection, Colour, Style, Mounting and Controls

Benefits and features of roller blinds. This should take no more than 2 hours if done correctly.

Have lunch 30-45 mins

After lunch go over the morning session by asking questions and see what they have retained and take them to the showroom to be sure they understand

If necessary, go over some or all of it again before moving on to the next product, which may be venetians or curtains etc.

Have break 5/10 mins

Ask questions again and complete a short quiz

Tell them that tomorrow they will need to explain what they learnt today and let them have the manual on the roller blinds etc

Let them go home early, don’t cram too much in otherwise they will forget

The above was a general outline for training

It gives the new staff the complete big picture of what is expected of them each day, so they know what to look forward to.

Be specific about what constitutes the standard level of performance.

The standard of performance should be a set number or figure. It could be a percentage of correct actions, a speed of task performance or another, measurable metric of performance. In any case, this number should be clearly identified in the objective.

Make your objectives as concise as possible.

Keep your objective to one sentence. This keeps your objectives concise and easily understandable. Any longer or more complicated tasks can be broken into multiple, smaller tasks. Any long, complicated tasks will be more difficult to teach and quantify.

Use the SMART method

Specific: State exactly what the learner should know how to deal with specific objectives. All objectives should be clearly defined and not subject to debate or interpretation.
Measurable: Observe and quantify the behaviour with measurable objectives. The objectives should be consistent for each learner and subject to standard evaluation.
Attainable: Make sure the task or action is something that can actually be achieved with attainable objectives. Setting learners up for failure will result in unmet objectives and demoralised students.
Relevant: Determine that this task is important and necessary with relevant objectives. There should be nothing arbitrary or optional about the tasks written in the objectives.
Time-bound: Set achievable deadlines and management schedules with time-bound objectives. There can be no open-ended tasks in effective objectives. Set and enforce deadlines.

I can set the above for all products and break it down into small training modules

Always link each module

Repeat when necessary

Do not place new staff with other reps until they have done training in our training home. NOT A CUSTOMER’S REAL HOME. This makes it more like simulator training that pilots complete every three months.

As a trainer you want as much control as possible. When you’re in another person’s home you lose most of the control and this could set back all the good training that you have done.

The training would need to be done in products first, from Roller Blinds, Venetians, Panel Blinds, Vertical Blinds etc

The new staff will need to be signed off on each session to ensure it’s understood

All the above would be done in the office

How to sell even if you have little experience — we can still train you to be a top gun

Don’t blame the mountain or the customer if you crash

Follow the Meerkat by keeping it simple

Building the foundation or the rapport and why you need to do it always

The close — knowing when to SHUT UP ONCE YOU HAVE GIVEN THE PRICE

Stale bread is when you think you’re doing everything right but can’t get any sales — this is used to polish

Ignite the mind is about confidence no matter what the situation and most of all retesting the reps every 6 months no matter what.

Training can’t work if you are showing a bit here or a bit there, and you have three or four different people training someone three or four different ways. This just confuses the person and the training takes longer and makes the new staff member feel like they’re dumb.

I’ve worked out that if a trainee starts with little experience in sales, it won’t take more than four weeks to complete

The above is a small sample of training and how to keep it the same each time

Regards

Mark