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Successful Small Business Owners Know That Education and Training Are Investments Not Costs
| Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith |
Article Overview: To be competitive in the global market arena requires training and development of your greatest resource – Your People. If you are curious as to how to leverage those discretionary or budgeted funds so that your actions are sustainable, then take a new approach
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Free Download - How to Craft an Engaging Message That Highlights What You Do to Increase Sales By Leanne Hoagland-Smith |
Successful Small Business Owners Know That Education and Training Are Investments Not Costs
Training is not new to small businesses or to the Fortune 1000 corporations. Employees must be trained to learn specific skill sets within their job functions as well as policies and procedures. This is especially true in today’s technology driven 24/7 business world.
During the last 100 years, training has been viewed by some as the "necessary" evil cost. The prevailing belief was "We gotta to train them." And when sales plummeted or companies merged, the leadership's or management's belief was to cut the training budgets as well as the human resource department. Now does this really make sense?
If your people are the key to overcoming current challenges, then why cut their resources when you are experiencing significant issues. This is the time more than ever to invest (key word here is invest) in YOUR people. And successful small business owners understand that training and development are investments, not costs.
Slashing the training budget is in many cases a reaction to a symptom instead of the real much larger problem or problems. That problem or those problems may include the following:
1.Inability to define the desired results HINT: If you can't define the desired results that you want from the training, then why do the training? This is now a management problem, not a training problem.
2. No Strategic Plan HINT: If there is no strategic plan (who does what by when), the you and your people are on some one else's plan and the problem is poor planning, not training.
3. Outdated Strategic Plan HINT: If you haven’t revisited your plan within the last 30 days, then the problem is not training, but again poor planning and poor execution.
4. Poor Communication HINT: If 100% of your people cannot tell you what the top 3 goals of the organization are for the current year, you have a communication problem not a training problem.
5. Inconsistent Leadership HINT: If your actions are not consistently focused on the end results and your behaviors are not demonstrating the shared common values, then you have a leadership problem, not a training problem.
Now is the time for you to use your leadership skills to assess what the real problems that you are facing and not just the symptoms. Look to training as an investment in your people and therefore in your organization. For without those most advanced systems (your people) in your business, you wouldn't be able to conduct business, would you?
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About the Author: Leanne Hoagland-Smith RSS for Leanne's articles - Visit Leanne's website Her book, Be the Red Jacket is a no-nonsense and quick read to help discover potential gaps that may be keeping you from your goal to increase sales. The forward is by Evan Carmichael of EvanCarmichael.com Remember if you think you cannot or you think you can either way you are right. (Henry Ford). Sales Coaching Tip: Change your thoughts; improve your results. Click here to visit Leanne's website   Leadership Assessment Leadership Audit For Business Business Building Check List |
Related Forum Posts
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women
4. Pitch Like A Girl
5. Workplace Warrior
6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer
7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery
8. She Wins, You Win
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15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success
16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded
17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful
18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business
22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker
23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business
24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises
25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy
26. The Promotable Woman
27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it
28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home
29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
7 words or less for Structogram
- Some "7 words or less" (more or less) for Structogram for your comments:
Training to get your message across(6)
Secrets to get your message across (6)
Training so people will listen to you (7)
Helping you get your message across (6)
Training to learn to get your message across (8)
Communications training for yourself and your team (7)
A ton of Great Women
- You might want to profile Teresa Cascioli of LakePort Brewery. She has an amazing story! I met her at at the celebratory luncheon for the Profit/Chatelaine Top 100 Women Business Owners. The Top 100 list is also a great resource for inspirational stories of Women Entrepreneurs.
These maybe the coldest franchises out there:
- Here are the worst 15 performing franchises in regards to having the highest Small Business Administration (SBA) loan failure rates. The list is dotted with sub sandwich shops, fitness centers and car shops.
WORST FRANCHISE LOAN FAILURES Failure %
1 OBEE'S SOUP SALAD SUBS 55.56%
2 LADY OF AMERICA 41.94%
3 COUNTRY CLUTTER (BED & BREAKFAST) 41.18%
4 COPY CLUB 36.36%
5 ALL TUNE AND LUBE 35.71%
6 PICKERMAN'S 35.71%
7 PHILLY CONNECTION 35.59%
8 ROLY POLY ROLLED SANDWICHES 34.78%
9 COTTMAN TRANSMISSION 34.48%
10 HAIR COLOR EXPRESS 33.33%
11 LEE MYLES AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSIONS 33.33%
12 GODFATHER'S PIZZA 33.33%
13 SMOOTHIE FACTORY 33.33%
14 BLIMPIE 31.39%
15 GOLF U.S.A. (RETAIL GOLF EQUIP.) 30.77%
Source: Small Business Administration, SBA Loan Performance Within Franchise Code for the Period of FY 2001 - 2005
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