3 Strategies to Boost Workshop Success in a Tough Business Environment – Part 2
Welcome to part two of the ‘3 Strategies to Boost Workshop Success in a Challenging Business Environment’.
In part one we spoke about retention as the first strategy. You can find that article here. So, on to the second strategy.
- Don’t Just Train Your People
Hands up who has never been to a training course? The reason I see no hands when I ask this question is that everyone has been to some sort of training at some time in their life. And THAT is awesome! But training alone is not enough anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, training is still very important and very necessary – I personally have delivered face to face training to over 11,000 people in my career so far. But please, take some insight from someone who knows training; training alone can’t meet the needs of a modern, highly skilled and highly technical workplace, and here’s why:
There are three key areas that make for a good technician, or service advisor, or manager etc. – Attitude, Ability, and Experience. Training directly targets ability (their skills and knowledge), but has only a limited impact on Attitude and Experience. (see here for details) It is my experience that only coaching can effectively transfer experience and develop attitude.
After 19 years of ‘training’ people, I believe that coaching/mentoring needs to become the new default, the new ‘training’. Rather than offering training to develop your people as the ‘go to’ solution, coaching needs to be that solution, because targeting ability alone isn’t enough anymore. Your staff (and especially technicians) also need the right attitude and meaningful experience (insight) to be successful. Only coaching (and mentoring) supported by training can achieve that.
While new to automotive workshops, innovative business owners find having a good workshop coach/mentor for their technical team – someone who is good technically and good with people – is a very effective way to influence team attitude and behavior and upskill your team’s ability and experience at the same time.
If you intend to transition from trying to keeping up, to adapting and thriving in the tsunami of change that is happening and will continue to happen in the automotive industry, perhaps it time you offered your team more than just ‘training’?
If you aren’t sure about how a workshop coach could work for your team and even integrate into your retention strategy, we would love to have a chat with you and offer some insights on how that may help. You can contact us here
We wrap up this series here in Part 3
SERVICE DEPARTMENT SUCCESS, TECHNICIAN RETENTION, WORKSHOP SUCCESS
