The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [26]
Ask every person in the room to give three examples of how to improve some aspect of the company or department. Do not ask people to give answers immediately. Let them work on it. Give them three minutes to think about their answers and you will get better answers. Tell them that if they come up with three things fast, they can go ahead and write more.
Then go around the room and ask every person what they wrote. Note that the leader of the workshop has the most control over the experience and the outcome. It’s important to make this a positive experience. You want people to look forward to these meetings as a time when the group will work together and each person will be listened to with respect. As people state their issues, make sure you are clear on what they are saying. Restate it in such a way that you will all remember what was said. Then write down each issue on a whiteboard or easel pad.
The meeting leader is responsible for keeping the meeting moving. After a few folks have shared duplicate ideas, say the following: “Okay, so we can get input from every one, if you have something that has already been stated, you don’t have to state it again.” You will be amazed at how every one wants to tell you every thing they wrote down even after you say that you don’t want duplicate input. Don’t be impatient. Just gently say: “Good. Those are already up here (on the whiteboard). So, folks, to keep this moving, don’t give me duplicates. Next.”
If your staff is spread out all over the country, you can still do this workshop by telephone. Keep a list of every one’s name in front of you so that you make sure to get input from every one. To make this run smoothly via telephone, you need to make sure that every one numbers each item and writes down the same statement the same way so that you can refer to them later without causing confusion. Here’s how your teleconference might go:
YOU: Okay, Kelly, give us your ideas on how we could improve this department.
KELLY: We could use well-crafted follow-up letters after we’ve interacted with a customer. I can’t believe some of the letters I’ve seen going to customers. Spelling errors, poor grammar, you name it.
YOU: Great. Everybody, write this down for number four: “Create standard follow-up letters.”
You can later return to number 4 or 5 or 8 and every one stays with you. You won’t have to read the entire statement every time you want to refer to it.
Taking Action on Workshop Ideas
As a result of your first workshop, you will have a list of things you need to work on to improve your business. In a moment I will show you how to prioritize the idea list into a master list you will use in planning future workshops. Each one of those items needs its own workshop to solve the problems or remove the obstacles. So keep the list and methodically work through each issue until you have solved the problems.
As you do these workshops, many things will surface that are easy to fix, create, or improve. But other things will surface that are worthy of sustained attention, as they are going to take time to fix. Right there on the spot, the boss can assign to-do’s for specific people to “own” and get accomplished before the next meeting. Often, larger, more cumbersome items will come up that require several people to work together. These may be things that require technology or involve different systems or levels of staff. In these cases, you need to prioritize and properly delegate.
As the workshops are creating procedures and policies to solve problems, the leader of the workshop puts out a postworkshop memo that says: “This week’s workshop solved the problem of customer ser vice inconsistencies. Here are the nine things you can do when a customer is unhappy.” That memo goes into a “procedure binder” and that becomes a training manual for new people. Each memo is a page or two and so, at the end of the year, you will have