The Buck Starts Here - 1 Get the Managers on Board - 2 Get a Grip on the Schedule - 3 Content - 4 Consistency - 5 Keep the Flame Burning - 6 Do Something! - 7 Call Integrated Training Solutions - 7.5

Simply put, employee development is as important as signage, facilities, and advertising. If you believe its important to entice customers into your store or resort — and you know what it costs you to acquire each visit then it only makes sense to maximize that visit, to really make it count. That’s why you train. That’s why this matters. It’s the pay-off for all the other investments you make to attract and retain loyal guests.

So, without further ado, here are Integrated Training Solution’s Seven Keys to Effective Employee Development:

Key One: The Buck Starts Here
Whether you do sales training by design or by accident, your new employees learn by watching your veterans, your veterans learn from your managers and your managers take their cues from you. I wish I had better news for you, but once again, tag, you’re it! Training has to start at top management level. So the first thing that has to happen regardless of whatever program you adopt — is you have to put yourself through it. You should be the program’s first graduate.

Key Two: Get the Managers on Board
You can’t be everywhere at once. That’s what managers are for. Like you, they set the tone and establish the performance standards in word and deed. And unlike your seasonal employees, your managers are more or less with you year-round. Just because someone has been with you for 20 years doesn't mean they don’t need training. (A pianist doesn’t stop practicing just because they've played Carnegie Hall.)

Key Three: Get a Grip on the Schedule
Your business runs in annual cycles. You have slack periods, heavy periods and periods that are somewhere in between. During your slack periods is an ideal time to train and re-train your managers.

Everyone has to be trained in the same program you’ll never know who your stars might have been if you leave someone out, plus you want the team-building benefits of having everyone on the same page. Provide regularly scheduled training throughout the season, work from the top down in the organization and make training a condition of advancement.

Pick a day, any day, in your calm-before-the-storm period, and dive in. You can’t get wet if you never go near the pool.

Key Four: Content
Resorts wouldn’t think of sending employees out, in uniform, representing your resort if they were incompetent at their job. A retailer would let a new-hire on the floor before being trained in basic policies and procedures. This kind of training is never skipped. But, the basic customer relationship skill training is often left out or assumed. Guests seldom recognize job proficiency shortcomings, but they always notice when guest relationship skills are lacking.

Simply put, resort hospitality and retail skill training consists of understanding who your guests are, what they want from you, and how they want it delivered. What people want most of all is an experience that meets their expectations and will be delighted if the experience exceeds their expectations. Happily, these are learnable skills, and if they can be learned they can be taught. This isn’t nice-to-know information, its essential information. In this day and age, one can’t afford to leave a single customer behind.

Key Five: Consistency
Don’t be a member of the-training-craze-of-the-month club. Choose a curriculum with content and method that will develop your team’s ability and stick to it. A quick fix, then business as usual is not your goal. Delivering the best guest experience in the business is not a sideline; it is your core mission and an art.

Consider it like quality control: if your resort were a factory and was continuously putting out rejects, you’d stop the line and fix the problem. Not getting the most out of every guest interaction is a sort of invisible defect. It erodes profit potential usually without leaving a trace behind. But with training you can fix the problems in your pipeline, dam up these profit siphons and keep your business on track.

Key Six: Keep the Flame Burning
If you do nothing to keep guest relationship skills alive, they will die. Every sale is a little mini-laboratory that provides a learning opportunity. The goals for each guest interaction have to be clear, simple and communicable. There’s nothing wrong with doing little on-the-spot debriefs (after the customer is gone) to expose a missed opportunity or remind someone of a lapsed skill.

Training shouldn’t be a once-a-year event; it should be an on-going, year-long series of events. (You wouldn’t go to the gym once a year and call it good.)

Key Seven: Do Something!
We know you’re busy. It’s the nature of the business. But, if you can find the time to hire good people you should find the time to train them. (Every day we all encounter untrained people in other professions that drive us bonkers.) If you don’t bite the bullet and just do it you’ll never know how good your business can be, because lost sales opportunities don’t show up on your books.

Key Seven-and-a-half: Call Integrated Training Solutions
We offer the most comprehensive sales training program in our industry. Our much-praised Desperate Measures — Retail Sales Training is used by the top, snow-sport retailers in the US. This year we have launched a program specifically targeted to develop the skills necessary to deliver “personalized resort experiences” — Planet Hospitality — Resort Hospitality Training. We are committed to making the universe a more hospitable place (one resort at a time)!

Retail Sales Training — Integrated Training Solutions has created a number of training courses that will kick-start the learning process and assure that your in-store training materials will yield the highest continuous benefit. Have one of our staff members come to your store as a part of your training strategy.

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