A business has both internal and external customers (employees
and clients), says Gaynor. It's basic math: Please both groups,
and sales go up. And his employees often need a pat on the back:
"Salespeople, in general, ride emotional roller coasters. They
frequently run into rejection," says Tony Alessandra, author
of The Sales Manager's Idea-a-Day Guide: 250
Ways to Manage and Motivate a Winning Sales Team--Every Selling Day
of the Year (Dartnell).
But it's hard to enjoy your job-and thrive in it--if your
brain matter is hardening. Hence Learning to Learn, a five-week,
three-hour-a-week required course for all employees. They learn how
to retain information, and everybody is assigned to read
newspapers, magazines and two books: Tuesdays With Morrie (Doubleday) and
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone (Scholastic Trade).
"The average person forgets 50 percent of what they listen
to [within] the next day," Gaynor says. "They forget 90
percent of what they listened to within a week. And within a month,
it's virtually forgotten altogether." Scary stuff, when
your sales meetings are packed with information. But Gaynor remains
enthusiastic that TNG can overcome the stubborn memory by giving
reading a critical role in the learning process. In fact, it was a
book--Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Work (Random
House)--that inspired Gaynor to make his company "a
learning-based organization."
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The book has since become the company bible. The main theme in
Inner Game is this, says Gallwey: "The potential of
human beings to learn from their work experience is not fully taken
advantage of. To do this requires acknowledging the way in which
individuals, teams and corporate culture can interfere with the
worker's learning and potential expression of
excellence."
| "Salespeople, in general, ride emotional roller
coasters. They frequently run into rejection." |
That is a philosophy Gaynor takes to heart. New employees attend
an intense three-week seminar, where they study the workplace
culture, the complicated computer system and specific sales
tactics. Common stuff, of course. Most successful companies offer
training.
But then Gaynor's employees take Learning to Learn, and some
time later, they move into Learning to Learn: Level Two. Mann, an
instructor, explains: "We go into a more in-depth
understanding of the principles of The Inner Game of Work,
such as mobility, focus, redefining work, thinking like a CEO and
coaching for managers."
When employees reach Level Three, they study personal and
professional development. And Level Three, Mann says, "will
never end."
Impressive? Or a waste of time and money? "It is an
investment," argues Alessandra. "For instance, IBM has
found that for every dollar they invest in training, they get $25
in return. Of course, if you're looking to save money, training
is one of the first things an entrepreneur will cut."
Indeed, several months after implementing TNG's learning
programs, Gaynor saw customer satisfaction rise to 90 percent.
Turnover virtually stopped. And Knight talks of one training
success story regarding a woman who had never touched a computer
before coming to TNG. "For two weeks, she cried every
day," he says. But he stuck with her and had her spend an
extra week in training.
Says Gaynor, "She ended up being the first to do $1 million
in sales. She's still the sales leader on the floor."
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