FIRST IMPRESSIONS

No matter about the rights or wrongs of my following statement......it is a fact that you are judged by others after only a few fleeting seconds of visual contact.

The same is true of both a person to person encounter, and also of the first time a customer is seeing your business. For this reason alone it is of vital importance that you keep your signage, entrance ways and reception area in immaculate condition.
Also true to ensure that the personnel on the front desk or near a business entrance are the best you have and looking fabulous all the time.

All too often, I walk into a business and see deliveries still waiting to be moved, or signage damaged and not fixed, bulbs missing in light fittings. Small details which indicate that nobody cares.

Look at your business with first impressions in mind.

WE ALL SERVE

Everyone is in service.
It is not just the hospitality people or retail workers. A dentist is there to serve, as is a surgeon, a street sweeper and the school teacher.
There is no end either in opportunities WHEN you can serve, it can be done at home with your children. It can be in the street to a stranger, and it can be done in the community or for your country.

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.- Martin Luther King

One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary people. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary person.
- Elbert Hubbard

TUNED IN TRAINING

If your training sessions are in front of a whiteboard, or include lots of paper handouts, then you need a rethink.

Many of your staff have grown up in the internet age and are not used to reading lots of script or holding their attention on one thing for too long.

Try and tune in to their new way of learning, make a few 3 minute training videos or find existing ones which you can fit into your training needs. Play them in brief sessions, not half day training periods like the 'old' days. Show them onsite, before their work times in small groups, or let them view them on a laptop in their own time. Keep it flexible.
Drip feed this training with add on pieces of information or short quiz sessions and role plays.

The old training methods will not improve todays work force so move with the times or the new breed of employees will take their attention (and skills) elsewhere.