How many times has this happened to you? You walk into a store, supply house, department store or any business for that matter and ask the first employee you see where an item is located that you were pretty sure they carried. The response is often like a deer in headlights. That look told you all you needed to know. You silently say to yourself “This person is clueless. Why doesn’t this company hire people that know what they are doing or at least train them?”
If you really need the item, you may ask someone else or perhaps you begin the quest of trying to find it yourself. If the item isn’t found relatively quickly you will likely feel frustrated and leave the store thinking, “That was a wasted trip.” What’s the likelihood of your returning to that store again…for any need? Bingo! An untrained employee equals lost sales and perhaps a lost customer forever.
How many sales are lost simply because the employees were not properly trained? New employees need to go through what is known as an “Onboarding” process. This is a process of training new employees on the ins and outs of products and services that the organization offers. It may even include a list of simple questions customers often ask. How many new employees walk through the front door with a detailed understanding of what the company does, or how it operates? The bottom line, they need to be trained.
It’s not just for people on the floor that meet customers face-to-face. It includes all employees, from the person who answers the phone to the stock clerk or accountant. Many of these new employees may have worked in a totally different industry for the past 10-15 years. Familiarizing new employees with the company’s products and services is vital for long-term employment as well as the overall long-term profitability of the company. Having a formal orientation program (onboarding process) is critical. Uninformed employees not only lose customers and sales, but untrained employees get frustrated and therefore produce high turnover.
The term onboarding is broad. It incorporates an overview of literally all areas of the business providing an overall understanding of how one area affects another.
In addition to the needed broad overview, there is another, more specific, area that needs to be explored especially within the HVAC industry. That area is parts! Grandy & Associates has offered an online, instructor led, “parts” program for years. For the first time the program is being presented as an online, on demand, program called HVAC Onboarding Parts Edition On Demand. That allows individuals to take the course any day, any time, without interfering with their work hours.
This course consists of 28 lessons ranging from 4-25 minutes. It is specifically designed for HVAC Distributors to provide new personnel with a solid grasp of foundational HVAC terms and principles. These include understanding major and minor system components – the parts and pieces that work together to make a comfort system function; OEM Parts vs Aftermarket; and identifying the parts, what they do, and where they are located on the equipment.
This virtual class is presented on-demand which makes viewing simple on a computer, phone, or tablet. Two quizzes are incorporated to solidify the knowledge. The program even requires the employee to pass the course with a score of 80% or better. The full class (all 28 lessons) is only $250. The user will have 60 days to complete the course. Like all Grandy materials, it comes with a 100% money-back guarantee if the product does not meet your expectations.
Whether they are working at the service counter, answering the phone, or working anywhere else in the distributor location, this class will be a springboard to a successful career in HVAC. Enroll Today! Help those new employees blend into the team as soon as possible.
Written By
Tom Grandy
Company Founder
Tom Grandy