Many consulting firms offer training, whether it be on target marketing, selling, rainmaking, relationship building, cross-selling, client service planning, or enhancing client service. We create learning experiences that facilitate intelligent professionals learning from clients and from other participants. Just semantics? Not at all! Through years of experience, we know that most professionals hate training. Yet to survive in the rapidly changing world, most have acquired a knack for learning. We tap into this knack for learning, and stay as far away from what they hate (training) as we can.
You be the judge. If you were given responsibility for improving the golf scores of your partners, would you send a mediocre golfer to a “train the trainer” school so that after three days he (or she) would then assume responsibility for training all the other partners to play better golf. This may be a great way to improve the capabilities of the trainer. But, it is a terrible way to improve the skills of those who will be leaning from someone who is not technically proficient, nor experienced in facilitating learning. Yet, this is probably the most common approach to training professionals. Clearly, many firms gain comfort imitating the actions of their competitors!
How about this alternative? You take someone who was a great football player—and never played golf—and you bring him in to teach golf. Probably the second most common method of training.
Or how about this one. Take your best golfer and assign him the responsibility for training. Maybe next year he (or she) will stop playing golf long enough to share his (or her) knowledge. And let’s hope that he (or she) really knows what makes them successful. Probably the third most common method of training.
And then when the training doesn’t meet the expected results (or are you going to believe that training results can’t be measured), just order more training on the assumption that your colleagues must not be getting it.
If you are serious about improving the skills of your partners in areas such as selling and client service, let us show you how we would build a customized learning experience that your colleagues will truly enjoy. Equally important, let us show you how to create measurable improvement in results. Not only will we stake our reputation on this, we will be pleased to stake our compensation on it! Let us show you how we will link our compensation to your results. And because we will be your competitive advantage, we will provide you with market exclusivity. Your choices couldn’t be more clear. Follow the crowd, or join the leaders. For a confidential discussion of how a customized learning experience will improve the results of your firm, contact us.
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