Staff training is one of the most under-utilised growth tactics for businesses. When faced with a business crisis like the pandemic, many will seek to throw money into marketing, sales or advertising. These tactics obviously have value, but there’s a case for improving your core resources over expanding relentlessly.
Productivity and output are the major things to consider when it comes to your team. It’s quality over quantity, every time.
For example, hiring a team of 10 staff to make telemarketing calls all day might produce results, but you could be just as productive with half of that number, if your staff are trained correctly.
Staff training empowers your team to understand their role even better. They’ll gain a passionate understanding of the most effective and efficient techniques.
Staff training could easily be the single biggest asset to your business growth journey in 2021. Let’s review the multitudes of benefits:
Staff Training Will Save Your Business Money
Staff training is an investment (although training staff with an apprenticeship could be more affordable than you think), but that doesn’t mean it won’t save you money in the long run. Training one member of staff to an expert level is more affordable than most people realise. Especially when you compare the benefits versus other types of investments. Paying for wages for new hires, or recruitment costs and commissions, can quickly add up. Not to mention, staff who are not trained can feel less valued and are more likely to leave the business. This can mean you’re in an endless cycle of rehiring!
Not only that, many businesses neglect to consider how often staff errors and mistakes cause wastage. Staff who are better trained understand how to manage their workload efficiently and carefully, meaning they make less errors. Even if you only reduce your staff errors by 10%, it can be a massive cost saving to your business!
Likewise staff with more training are more adept at following and understanding health and safety measures. This means your company can save money by not paying out for expensive claims and clean ups.
Training Leads to Staff Retention
With the risks being so high at the moment, it’s wise to ensure your current staff are feeling valued and motivated to work hard. Surveys repeatedly prove that money is not the defining factor when it comes to staff retention. Staff more often value benefits and job perks such as professional development. After all, most people are in a job because they’re passionate about it and want to progress in their careers.
The old saying goes, employees don’t leave bad companies they leave bad bosses! The truth is, staff don’t really have a desire to start fresh somewhere new every 3 years. They just often lose hope that there’s any room in the company for them to develop. Staff training can help your team gain new qualifications, and you should make sure to celebrate those achievements too!
Having staff stay on board for longer means less initial training, less teaching people about the company from the ground up, and less disruption for customers.
Staff Training Leads to Better Sales Conversions
Let’s revisit our example of telemarketing staff. A telemarketer’s role is to convert a call into a lead or a sale. If one member of staff making 100 calls a day results in no conversions, why should 10 staff making 1000 calls a day provide any more results?
However, if you had one expertly trained telemarketer, who knew the benefits of:
- Speaking in a polite, professional and friendly tone.
- Offering exceptional customer service.
- Understanding the customer journey.
- Using persuasive language to combat objections.
- Explaining the product in a clear and concise way that highlights the benefits tailored to the customer’s needs.
Then clearly, that one telemarketer may convert more calls per day than a team of ten.
Staff Training Leads To Higher Customer Satisfaction
Many business owners have recognised that during a crisis, it’s all about retaining your current customers. In fact, studies have shown that it’s much easier to get an existing customer to up their spend than it is to gain a new customer. Smart businesses understand this, and know that upskilling staff is one of the few proven formulas for growing spend in your current customer base.
Training your staff to be experts at what they do is an excellent way to delight your customers. Someone who is well trained in customer service may be the difference between a customer visiting you once, and a customer gaining fierce loyalty to your brand. A well-trained warehouse picker might be the difference between your clients getting an accurate fulfilment, or repeatedly receiving small but disruptive errors with their orders.
Having excellent staff skills is the foundation for customer retention!
Gain Higher Productivity with Staff Training
As business owners we often spend a lot of money on self-help books and planners, so that we can be as efficient and as productive as possible. That said, many of us often forget to apply those same principles to our staff. During apprenticeship training (did you know you can upskill your current staff with apprenticeships? You can learn more here.), your staff will learn how to manage their time in the most effective way. They’ll become adept at planning their own schedules, and at problem solving too. This means they’ll always be conducting their day in the most methodical and orderly fashion.
Self-management is an excellent skill for staff to have whether they’re a warehouse operative or a customer services manager. Just imagine what those small increments of saved time can equate to in financial value over a month or a year. Imagine what they could amount to over your whole workforce!
If you’re interested in staff training, but you don’t know where to start, we’re here to help. Contact us and we’ll arrange a no-obligation discussion with you. We’ll take a look at your business’s current challenges and goals, and design a bespoke training program for your team. Need training for new starters? We can help with that too, plus there’s plenty of apprenticeship incentives available for new hires!
Call us today on 01244 678100 or request a call back here.
