No question about it, business sucks right now. But just because business is slow doesn’t mean team members who are still working as well as your furloughed staff can’t use this downtime to enhance their sales and technical skills, and industry knowledge.
A few weeks ago, we published a Business as Unusual column about how Shore Business Solutions in Farmingdale, NJ is using this time for employee’s continuing education. Every day, Shore employees take advantage of online sessions on various topics offered by in-house team leaders and the company’s OEM partners such as Sharp and Kyocera.
“My motto is train, train, train, and when you think you’ve trained enough, train some more,” said Danielle Wolowitz, director of business operations.
That’s a great philosophy that more dealers should embrace during this time. Anecdotally, one would assume they are just from the overwhelming amount of continuing education opportunities available to them. Lately, I have been interviewing top leadership of the “Big Six” OEMs for a June feature on how their companies are coping during the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone I spoke with so far has referenced their educational initiatives.
But the OEMs are not the only ones. Our friends at ACDI have been hosting sessions for their dealers as have our friends at GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation and Collabrance. These sessions, which run from 30 minutes to 60 minutes are a goldmine of industry knowledge.
Indeed, something seems to be scheduled for almost every week across all segments of the imaging industry, if not every day, that fits squarely under the heading of “Continuing Education.” For example, this Thursday, May 14 at 11 am EDT, TIAA Bank is presenting an interactive webinar on how to engage and support employees during crisis. The webinar is hosted by Supplier Diversity and features Sean Woodroffe, chief human resources officer at TIAA.
The focus is on:
- Important items to consider in today’s environment
- Key components of a remote work guide
- Activities for engaging associates in meaningful ways
- How to help employees manage during an information overload environment
- Key activities for current and future challenges
- To register -212-231-3875
- Access code: 598 966 188
- Password: 5WEB14inar2020*
- WebEx
ACDI is doing its part to make learning fun and this Thursday, Mar 14 at 3:30 CDT it is hosting a PaperCut Sales Trivia Happy Hour. As with most industry happy hours, it is BYOB. And don’t forget to bring your PaperCut sales knowledge too.
As we hear about more dealers who are leveraging their IT departments more than ever, here’s a webcast scheduled for Thursday, May 14 from noon to 1 p.m. CDT sponsored by Collabrance, a GreatAmerica Company, on mergers and acquisitions that sounds interesting:
“Getting New Customers Wholesale: How to Safely Acquire Competitors in Tough Economic Times”
BTA has a number of members-only sales webinars on their calendar, including “Jump Start Your Sales Performance After COVID-19” presented by Wayne Outlaw of The Outlaw Group on May 14 at 4 p.m. and “The Five Key Sales Trends Post COVID-19” presented by Troy Harrison of Troy Harrison and Associates on March 21 at 4 p.m.
Also, mark your calendar now for Thursday, May 21 at 2:30 p.m. EDT for the first of two webinars The Cannata Report is hosting featuring members of our Dealer Advisory Board on “Dealer Survival Tactics in a COVID-19 World.”
This is the time to stay in touch with the customer, whether it is a channel partner or end-user customer even if that customer is harder to connect with than ever before. Webinars and other online educational sessions seem to be the way to do it these days. Each week we will continue to highlight some of those webinars in our Business as Unusual series.
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