What can you do to better teach your woodshop employees? 4 tips

Employees are a crucial part of any organization. Training and development should be as important to senior management and CEOs as bringing more customers/sales. In the words of Steve Jobs, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” To stay competitive, however, each employee must continuously improve their skills to be a productive part of their team. A well-trained workforce will look after the customers and take the organisation to new heights.

 

Increasing the Effectiveness of Training

 

Training offered to the employees won’t always be fruitful. The organization must look for ways to imprint what was taught during the training into the trainees’ memory for them to use it in practice when needed. Here are four actions that you, as an employer, can do to increase the effectiveness of your employee skills training:

 

1. Use Micro-Learning

 

Employees can be unintentionally forgetful of what they have learned in past training sessions. The goal behind micro-learning is to increase retention of training materials. It requires organisations to divide training into smaller pieces and actionable items. This method makes it easy for them to assimilate and apply the new knowledge and skills. For example, at our company Kitply Industries, we do one hour Lunch and Learns on every Monday and teach staff one small aspect of our business.

 

2. Make it Available

 

Make the training accessible at all times on different platforms. Many corporate trainers keep things to themselves but if employees have access to the training whenever and wherever they want, they will be more comfortable with implementing what they are learning. We are living in a world where people are always connected to their mobile devices and having training data there will boost their confidence to take advantage of it. For example, we use an online training platform called Thinkific to store all our corporate training.

 

3. Make it Memorable

 

The more memorable a training session is, the more people will accept it and follow its teachings. Making connections and using case studies from real life will help them stick to the content in question. Some organisations have their own mobile games to remind their sales force to reinforce recent training material. We often give small handouts for staff to make the learning memorable.

 

4. Measure Growth

 

Measuring the growth of employees by tracking what results they produce after the training session/s also helps you to review the overall training system of your organisation. At Kitply, we quiz our staff after every training session to check for comprehension and often repeat training after a few weeks/months.

 

Use Feedback

 

It is also essential to get feedback from your employees about company training efforts. Learning sessions can be made more engaging by incorporating feedback as employees may feel more value aligned with the training when they know their input considered seriously.

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Author Ankit Sharma is owner of Kitply, a successful wood products business in Vancouver, British Columbia. He's also a 2019 Wood Industry 40 Under 40 honoree. Check out his blog here.

 

from https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/management/what-can-you-do-better-teach-your-woodshop-employees-4-tips

40 Under 40 winner: Consider these 5 costs when pricing

A poorly estimated job may damage your company’s reputation when you have to re-quote the customer. It can also negatively impact your bottom line if the cost of the project is not accurately reflected.

 

Consider these FIVE costs before determining the price for your next project:

 

Material Costs: Usually up to 25% of the total costs. Includes the cost of wood and hardware such as hinges, accessories, fasteners, mechanical parts, etc.

Labour Costs: Hourly production labor wages multiplied by the total number of hours it may take to complete the job. This can make up to 50% of the total project costs.

Overhead Costs: Includes the rental and utilities of equipment, tools, glue, sandpaper, shop, finishing material and more. Overhead is usually 15% of your material and labor cost.

Selling Costs:  Selling costs are used to cover the cost of sales and admin staff, time spent, plus commissions or bonuses.

Profit Costs: Yes, you heard right – add profit as an expense. Once you’ve calculated the accurate manufacturing cost for your product, set your sell price markup as an expense. For example, a $1,000 project at 20% margin should be $1,250 - not $1,200.

 

from https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/red-book/best-practices-guide/40-under-40-winner-consider-these-5-costs-when-pricing

Closing a cabinet job sale: What you should be doing

Grant Cardone is one of the great salespeople out there, he has got a lot of content about how to sell more effectively.

 

Cardone says that “closing is for sitting.”

 

You should be sitting down when closing because the negotiations are over. If your customers ever stand up during the closing phase, you should stay seated all the time. To stand during this phase is to signify that something has changed, and you don’t want to go backwards at this point. You’re so close to the bottom of the funnel and converting them into a sale so it’s time to sit down and close the deal.

 

PREPARING TO CLOSE

 

In the past we have talked about how to create inbound leads vs outbound leads. We’ve talked about why you need to create a sales process for your leads and have laid out the ways to plan for the future. By this time you’ve got consistent leads pouring into your funnel and you’re working on sales qualified leads as they move down toward the bottom and become a sale. So now we have to close that customer.

 

This is the fun part of the job where all of the work pays off.

 

At the bottom of the funnel, we have been staying in constant contact with our customers, possibly close to a daily basis, getting everything exactly as they want it for their first quote. A line that I use all the time to help close is “give me a chance on one, and I’ll earn the rest.” It’s such a great line because it takes the seriousness out of the situation. The customer can justify it to themselves by saying “okay, we’ll just try this guy on one job and we limit the problems that could occur.”

 

This gives the customer a way out and gives you a way in without them feeling like they’re betting their whole business on your services.

 

At this point in the funnel we need to stop selling so much, and sit down to login a customer. We are now transitioning from a focus on the things that we can offer, to focusing on negotiating the close of this deal. This means getting the terms of business down on paper so we can progress on starting the project.

 

Another great thing to ask when you know you’re at the closing phase is “do you have everything that you need to make a decision?”

 

This is a way of drawing a line in the sand which signifies that you’re done selling and you’re going to be moving into the closing phase. It puts the onus on the business owner by asking if they’ve heard everything that they need to make a decision or do they need to stay in the funnel for a little while longer so that you can learn more about each other.

 

Generally the answer to that question is “yes, I believe that I’ve heard everything I need to make a decision.”

 

This means we’re in closing time.

 

CLOSING THE DEAL

 

When you’re in closing time you need to have all your docks, all your contracts, your quotes, drawings, and anything else which needs to be approved, finished and in the order that they will go in. These things should be stapled, in a binder, and done so that when you’re sitting at the table, the only thing that happens is you hand them the documents to be signed. Put some effort into having all your ducks in a row before you sit down at the closing table.

 

Don’t delay. Don’t let a customer delay you as you’re moving into the closing stage. It doesn’t matter if they’re busy today or can’t make it to the office tomorrow. You should go to them and do whatever it takes to get your documents in front of them to close because this is a vital point in the process where you have got to convert them into a customer. At this point, you have spent too much time and too much effort to lose this customer because of something trivial like a scheduling conflict.

 

If a customer starts to delay after they’ve moved into the closing phase and they start to backtrack, take just a couple short seconds and have a few points in your pocket ready to remind them why they got to the closing phase and want to business with you in the first place. In other words, there were some key points about what you do as a business which locked the customer in and made them want to do business with you.

 

Going into your closing meeting, you have to know what those two points are so that you can rehash those and get them back into the closing mindset. One key thing to mention is that you can’t rely on yourself to remember these points in the heat of closing while you’re at the table because you may get thrown off guard by them trying to back out. So before you go, have them written out or memorized, and bring those two specific points to the table which make them really want to commit to business with you.

 

After you reel the customer back in, continue right into the closing phase and finish the deal. Once you’re closed, you’re done selling. They are now your partner and you move into the ‘doing’ phase of the sales process which is delivering on everything that you promised and going above and beyond to make that customer yours for life and not just one job.

 

Feel free to leave a comment about your sales process! I’d love to hear how you do it or how we have helped you streamline your process!

from https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/red-book/best-practices-guide/closing-cabinet-job-sale-what-you-should-be-doing