10 Creative Training Ideas You Can Use NOW!

I know - you're cutting budgets. Now is NOT the time to stop investing in your team members. They need training and communication more than ever! Invest properly and it will actually increase your business and here are some creative suggestions.

1. Do a reverse meeting - asking your team to come up with new ways to bring business into the office.

2. Research all the free meetings that are going on in town and give your team options on who will attend them to represent your company. ALL team members should have the skills to represent you and pick up leads.

3. Rotate team members as guests to your luncheon meetings - it allows them to meet your clients and also helps double your marketing time while you're at your Rotary, or other club meetings.

4. Re-interview each team member and ask why they're working with your company, what their career goals are, what other talents they can contribute to advance the company, and what other associations they may belong to.

5. Make sure you're cross training your team - allow them to know a little bit about each department and what each team member does for the company. This will bring a renewed respect for every job that gets done!

6. Do a needs assessment survey to find out what type of training they're lacking - sales, communication, time management, leadership, technology, etc.

7. Instead of investing thousands of dollars to send one person for a training course - bring the training in-house for everyone. For example, I've created 4 weekly sessions for one company for what they were paying to send 1 out of the office. We created a level playing field to show that everyone was valuable instead of that 1 hand picked member.

8. Create a resource library of books and articles to send around to everyone. Why not take one of those books and make it a topic of interest at your weekly meetings. Rotate leadership roles and ask each week how that information can impact your bottom line.

9. Ask what your team members are reading to see if it would be a good book to add to your list.

10. Do brown bag lunch meetings - IF you ARE sending someone out for training or to a conference, have them summarize those events. One always learns more when they have to reiterate what they've learned to others.

It's important that you keep your team networking with others. This will allow them to hear about other opportunities that can benefit the company. You need to use each team members talents to keep your business running strong and competitively in todays tough marketplace!