Home Pro Heroes 5/6/2024

Trivia Question❓

What is the main advantage of hiring a professional home service provider compared to DIY (do-it-yourself) projects?

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter

One of the most impactful trainings that you can do with your team is what we refer to at The Blue Collar Success Group® as situational training. What does that actually mean for your team and your business?  Let me break it down:

What is situational training? First and foremost, situational training is simply creating or reenacting likely situations that technicians may encounter in the home. In other words, skill practice. The goal is to present several likely (and some unlikely) scenarios to technicians to see how they handle them.  The Trainer then breaks down what was done correctly and what should be handled differently, opening up dialog for further learning.

What’s its purpose? Situational training has a positive impact on team members (and your customer) in a variety of ways.  Technicians are going to be more equipped to handle a wider variety of situations than they've ever handled before, giving them almost real-time, real-life experience. It also helps skill-up your call takers and salespeople on the kind of information that helps advance a call.

What are the steps to conducting situational training?  The first step in situational training is learning how to create a home profile.  The home profile includes both basic and specific information about the structure and conditions that the tech will be working in.  The Blue Collar Success Group® offers free downloads of home profile forms for each trade (plumbing, electrical, and HVAC).  Those can be accessed here (I will input link to funnel).

Once the home profile is complete, the Trainer then initiates role-playing through various scenarios that they will likely encounter, based on the hypothetical issue and home information.  Note: This can have the same result when situational training is done with call takers or dispatchers. The only variable would be that their job would determine how they act and react in that situation.

What results can you expect? Overall, situational training will elevate the confidence and effectiveness of team members by increasing their skills.  It also instills confidence in your customer that they have selected a professional,  effective company, thus helping to build lasting client relationships. 

How do you conduct situational training?

Depending on your team, you can either conduct situational training in small groups (to allow them to work together) or work with them individually. Either way, you're going to facilitate this the same way.

Start by assigning someone to create the home profile and allow approximately 10 minutes to write it up. If you feel more or less time is needed, that’s your call.  However, you’ll want to put a cap on the time and have that be consistent with each participant.

After that, you're going to ask questions that engage the individual or group with regard to the hypothetical situation. We ask for more than one option each time so that we know the participant is thinking things through.  A good training tip is to ask the person answering the questions to stand up during their responses to ensure focus.  And we mean the whole time they are responding so that the Trainer doesn’t lose that connection with them.  If your team would not be comfortable coming to the front of the room, it is just as effective for them to stand by their seat.

Another suggestion (if all parties are wiling) is to video the entire session.  The value in this is not only to use the class to help train future participants, but also to allow the on camera to see how they appear when talking to customers.  That aspect alone can work wonders in technician performance.

The bottom line is this; any company’s goal is to serve their client at the highest level. By finding out how good your team is at assessing a situation, communicating that situation to the customer, and ultimately resolving the situation, the Trainer can now take steps to ensure the ultimate client experience.  With that, you have a greater potential of seeing your average tickets and close rates increase.  More importantly, the investment that training provides will have a positive effect on your team and overall company culture. 

💡 Answer to Trivia Question:

Professional expertise, quality assurance, and time-saving convenience.

See You Wednesday!

The Home Pro Heros Team