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  • Take Time to Train
    By Tom Crouser - Tuesday June 15, 2010
    Why does it take us so long to train someone? I think I found the answer. Visited a print shop last week where workers weren’t trained. In talking with the owner about how to get them trained, I think I stumbled onto something profound. The reason it takes us so long to train is we don’t train; we wait for enough different jobs to come through so we can show them how to handle each one. In short, that’s not training; that’s waiting for them to gain experience. What’s the difference? Training is teaching vocational or practical skills so the trainee gains the knowledge, skill, and competence to perform. Experience is figuring stuff out in the heat of battle. Which is better? Both are necessary, but we...

  • Watch Sales to Increase Sales
    By Tom Crouser - Tuesday May 18, 2010
    By Tom Crouser So simple it is deceptive, so basic we don't do it, yet it has increased sales in shop after shop. The old Army bromide said, "Things that get done are what the Commander looks at." That's true with your total sales as well. Sales go up when the team measures where they are in relation to the goal today; not tomorrow nor at the end of the month, but today, while we still have a chance to do something about it. And it doesn't do any good to just know total sales; total sales have to be related to the budget and goal. But if you are like most shops, you simply measure your progress by comparing this month's total with this month last year or last month. That's a waste, for things have changed. You could have reduced...

  • Mistakes Drive Me Nuts!
    By Tom Crouser - Friday May 7, 2010
    Mistakes Drive Me Nuts!!!!! I just can't handle them! In one of our Chicago training sessions last week, a business owner asked, "Do you have any incentives that could be used for production?" Well, yes we do. (BTW this is a combination of a couple events similar in nature that we ran into last week so this doesn't follow either one exactly, but you will get the point.) I asked, "What are you trying to achieve?" To boil it all down - the owner said errors drove him crazy. "I just go ballistic when they happen!" He continued, "I call everyone in and we go over it to see what happened." I didn't get the sense that this was done in a spirit of quality improvement; rather it seemed to me like the boss was throwing a tantrum and everyone else...

  • Most of Us Don't Want More Sales
    By Tom Crouser - Tuesday April 6, 2010
    Morning world! Want to throw you in on a discussion I was having with some business owners and it's about why most of us don't want more sales. Here we go… Allow me to add a thought. Most of us DON’T WANT MORE SALES. Sure, we’d like more sales, but we don’t need it. WHY? If we really needed it, we’d be doing something about it. You hit on the great disconnect that I have been working on the past few months. Selling does not appear to me to be personally meaningful to many business owners. It’s like weather. Love to have nice weather, but hey, it’s snowing and we deal the hand we are dealt eh? Actually, we do MORE about weather – like shovel the snow than we do about selling. But...

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