October 24, 2023 • 33 mins
Today's episode highlights the challenges and potential solutions for training sales staff in the toughest category we face : lighting & fan technical expertise. We explore the importance of effective training, discussing the balance between overwhelming information and insufficient training and how we can optimize this for maximum effectiveness.
The episode takes a deep look at the difficulties of training salespeople in specialty businesses like showrooms. It's a delicate balancing act of providing enough information without drowning the trainees. I share some strategies to better position your sales team to provide expert advice and how to equip them with the right resources. As we navigate the challenges, we'll also talk about the importance of staff feeling confident enough to engage customers with new or challenging topics, thereby maintaining trust and providing a superior customer experience.
Many thanks to this week's sponsor Lights America for their unwavering support of Lighting with Lisa and the entire lighting industry. Be sure to listen to the episode for their special offer for new and existing customers!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello and welcome fellow lighting nerds and
friends to another episode ofLighting with Lisa, the podcast
this week sponsored by LightsAmerica.
I'm super excited for thissponsor.
I'm going to have more detailsabout the benefits of working
with Lights America and theirexclusive offer for Lighting
(00:28):
with Lisa listeners, whether youare a new or current customer,
which is extra fun, so staytuned for that coming up.
Just a little housekeeping atthe very top of the episode.
If you're not already a memberof the Fixture Finder group on
Facebook and you are a showroomlistener to this podcast or a
(00:52):
manufacturer's rep, if you'retrying to find a product for a
customer, it's a super usefulresource, so be sure to join up
to that group.
The link is in the podcastnotes and also there is a
residential lighting job board,also on Facebook.
It's kind of small right now,but the more of us that join and
(01:15):
can share potentialopportunities, the more it'll
grow and also for futureLighting with Lisa podcast
content.
I am putting a message out toy'all to reach out to me via my
email address.
It will also be linked in theshow notes, but it's Lisa at
lightingwithlisacom and I wouldlove to hear from manufacturers,
(01:39):
reps, manufacturers, showroomowners and managers, anybody
that has a passion about theindustry, with a particular win
that they want to share.
Now I'm not talking like a job,like hey, we got this job,
we're really excited about it.
I mean a program you'veimplemented, a business decision
(02:03):
you've made that you would loveto share out to the industry as
a potential for good, asuccessful operation, something
that you would just really loveto shine a light on.
Please reach out to me via theemail address and I can either
interview you or we can air itas a podcast.
(02:25):
Or, if you just want to talk tome off the podcast and I'll re
transcribe it, can.
You can either be identified orI can keep you anonymous.
It really doesn't matter.
Whatever works best for you.
I just think sharing stories ofsuccess in the industry is
super inspirational.
It's motivational.
(02:46):
I know it helps me rethink mybusiness hearing about what
others have done.
Even if somebody is successfulin an area of the business that
isn't like a core strength forme, it definitely gives me a
reason to rethink things ormaybe potentially restructure
some areas of my own business,just knowing what can work for
(03:08):
other businesses.
So if you're interested at allor just have a story to tell and
want to send me an email aboutit again, it can be as anonymous
as you want it to be.
I would love to discuss thosetopics on upcoming episodes of
Lighting with Lisa, the podcast.
So again, the email, lisa atlightingwithlisacom.
(03:31):
This week I want to talk a bitabout training staff.
Okay, so I always say like wetalk a lot sometimes in the
industry about how to hire for alighting showroom what you're
looking for, what you're notlooking for.
Do you want somebody that'slike got excellent sales
(03:53):
experience?
Do you want somebody withindustry experience?
What are the keys for hiring agreat member of your showroom
staff?
And honestly, the answer reallyvaries, I think, by what you're
strongest at training in inyour particular business.
Maybe your sales skillstraining isn't super high in
(04:19):
your business but you're reallygood at the technical training.
It's always like a mix andmatch Oftentimes.
I think the most common answeris that sales skills can be
taught and we'd rather kind ofcollectively have somebody that
has a little bit more lightingtechnical industry background
(04:41):
and I know that most showroomsstruggle the most teaching the
technical side of theresidential lighting and fan
industry.
It is an experience Ipersonally went through when I
started in this industry I did,was not born and raised in it
like many people were.
I actually came into my job froma marketing standpoint in terms
(05:07):
of database and website, soit's not like I started out in a
showroom like hanging fixturesor putting together displays,
like all of this stuff cameeventually, but it wasn't how I
entered the business.
So I had a tremendous crashcourse in the technical side of
(05:27):
lighting and fans and it wasintimidating to me and so I'm
always very sensitive to thatwhen I hire or I'm interviewing
for new staff members for myshowroom, that this technical
skill component is the hardestpart of the initial, like
(05:48):
professional development andtraining for sales staff, and
it's also the hardest likeongoing especially so, like I
would say, for even my first 10years in the industry, by and
large things stayed prettystable.
We had the incandescent, we hadthe fluorescent, we had the
compact fluorescent, likeballasted, self ballasted
(06:10):
fluorescence basically and therewas a little bit on the edge
with LEDs.
Lighting controls were a thinglow voltage, line voltage but
all that was relatively staticthe first 10 years or so I was
in the business and theneverything changed as the price
of LEDs dropped and they becamemore pervasive in the
(06:32):
marketplace and then I feel likeeverything I thought I knew was
wrong it all changed and it wasalways just an ongoing learning
process for me to even keep upwith that change, let alone try
to make sure my staff was wellversed in these things, and
especially when you were hiring.
(06:53):
It's not as much a challengeright now, but when I was hiring
staff members while we werestill dealing a lot with the old
and the new wasn't quite here,there was even much more to
learn than I would say there istoday.
Like some of my newest hiresmight be speaking of lighting
controls like glancingly awarethat there was a lighting
(07:13):
control type called magnetic lowvoltage or electronic low
voltage, but it's just notsomething that comes up in years
, often today, so they don'thave as much in depth knowledge
about that kind of tool as likewe had to be, and then in the
transition you had to knoweverything about everything.
So, yeah, so I would say insome ways things are easier now,
(07:38):
but they're not easy.
There is still so muchvariation out there that makes
training for the technicalskills part of this job so much
harder.
When I am hiring somebody to bea salesperson, I always
(08:01):
disclose in the interviewbecause I really try to be
upfront about what thechallenges are with the position
.
I always say that the prettystuff is the easy stuff.
If this business could justsurvive selling the pretty stuff
right out of the box nothing,custom, no, whatever this would
be like actually not that hardof a job.
(08:22):
The pretty stuff is a goodportion of what we do, but it's
just a small portion.
It's all that other stuffthat's so much more challenging
and necessary.
Especially if you're aspecialized business like a
lighting showroom.
You need to be well versed inall of the intricacies of the
(08:42):
business.
You need to be expert in all ofthese different areas, because
why else would somebody come toyou?
There are so many other placesthat you can just get the quote,
unquote, pretty things.
So we have to really bedeveloped in our expertise as
lighting showroom owners,operators, employees and that is
(09:04):
it.
It's challenging and it's sohard at first.
So there's like so manyvariables, like okay.
So here's a really commonexample that will resonate with
anybody who's ever worked in alighting showroom for any period
of time.
Take something like obnoxiouslydeceptively simple like track
(09:25):
lighting, like it's pretty lowbudget.
There's nothing particularlyremarkable going on about it.
But if you didn't know, wouldyou know.
But there's three differenttypes of standard track.
Setting aside all theproprietary ones, there's three
(09:46):
different types of track thatcould be found in any single
person's home in the country.
And like, how would you knowthat?
So, like, is it H, J or L?
And then how do you identifythe difference?
Like, it's so kind of mindboggling how common and
(10:07):
pedestrian some items appear tobe but are actually extremely
complicated, especially whenyou're dealing with not the
initial install.
Like if everything was newconstruction, life would be, in
a lot of ways, way easier.
It's because not a lot of whatwe do, not a lot a lot of what
(10:29):
we do is new construction, butalso a significant portion of
what we do and where we reallyreally add value for many of our
customers and get their repeatbusiness in the showroom is by
being experts on their remodels,on being experts on the
challenges that they're facing.
So maybe they moved into a homeand they had track lighting in
(10:50):
their den and it worked fine fora while and they were all right
with it, but then somethingwent out about it and they
realized they needed newfixtures or new lamping for that
track, and then we have to like, and maybe they just take a
picture of it from the floor andit's, you know, 12 feet in the
air.
Well, I can't identify whatkind of track you have from a
(11:14):
picture like that's thatdistance away.
I need one of the heads, I mean, you know, if there's just more
information required to be ableto answer this question.
And so then you know, we getthe lovely customer that comes
into the showroom and has theirpicture of their track and just
thinks that like we can solveall their problems off of this
picture.
And it's certainly a start.
(11:36):
I was telling one of myemployees recently like it's so
much easier with the ubiquitousof like cell phone cameras and
pictures than it ever was,because even like in the early
days of cell phones, if you didtake a picture with them, the
resolution was terrible.
And you know, most people justdidn't operate that way like we
do now, and so it was so muchmore having to go out to a
(12:00):
customer's home or giving themreally specific instructions
about what they needed to do orbring to us so that we could
therefore help like solve theirproblem or or whatever the case
may be.
There's just so many variablesfor even deceptively simple
items that it is a real trainingchallenge from a management
(12:25):
standpoint and I have come atthis problem from all different
ways.
Don't worry, I'm going to leaveus with some keys at the end of
this podcast of potentialsolutions, but I just kind of
want to talk through thechallenges here at the first
part of the episode.
So I've tried the info dumpmethod.
(12:46):
Let me throw everything I canthink of at you and hopefully
some of it sticks and good luck.
So what I found is with infodump method, it's so easy for
the individual to becomeoverwhelmed and then they forget
(13:06):
what they learned, or theybecome frustrated or because,
like they knew that they sawthis but they didn't retain it,
and then they just like I know Ishould know the answer, but I
don't know the answer, and so itjust becomes like an
overwhelming frustration andjust quite honestly, there's so
many different random instancesof a question that you really
(13:30):
cannot prepare for that.
While I could info dump, likethis particular answer, a
customer is going to come infrom left field which is a
slightly different twist on thatquestion that I didn't go over,
and a salesperson might feellike overly empowered because
they thought they had all theanswers.
(13:51):
But then this question wasreally out of left field.
But they couldn't identify thatit was out of left field, so
they thought they knew theanswer.
And then you just get into thiswhole like giving unintentional
bad advice If you don't giveenough information to a
salesperson.
On the flip side of that, ifyou just say, here's your
computer, let me teach you ourshowroom processes and
(14:11):
procedures and we'll learn arest as we go along, that also
leads to frustration from a lackof feeling like you can do
anything at all to helpcustomers.
And then I found thatsalespeople will kind of like
isolate themselves and reallyonly want to talk to the people
about the pretty decorativethings that are easy, because
(14:33):
that's straightforward and theycan follow that, and then they
really become like averse todealing with the more technical
things.
And again, it is, I think,critically important for any
specialty business to be expertsin the harder parts of their
business.
Why else would somebody come tous?
Just truly, it is really wherethe secret sauce of lighting
(14:58):
showroom lives.
It's in that expertise of beinga resource for our customers
and you have to prove yourselfas that resource and those
customers will come back againand again because they know this
is the place I can go to get ananswer about this kind of weird
lighting electrical issue, thatI can't go anywhere else to get
(15:22):
this information.
Maybe Google, but Google needsto be verified and the internet
is not always correct, as we areall well aware, although plenty
of people believe that it is.
It's just, it's really wherethe magic of a lighting showroom
really comes to life is inthese areas of demonstrating our
(15:42):
expertise and being a reasonfor customers to shop with you.
So therefore, we circle back tothe challenge at the top, like
how do you get a salesperson inthe right position to be able to
do all this, to able to be theexpert, to have the technical
(16:02):
lighting and fan and controlsskills needed to really
effectively perform their jobs,to answer questions, for
consumers, to upsell effectively?
That's a big part, like knowingthe product at a baseline is
really required in order to eventhink about upselling or adding
(16:24):
on a dimmer or swapping out thelamping or whatever, whatever
your upsell opportunity is.
So I'm going to take a minutehere to thank our sponsor of the
episode and then at the tailend of the episode we're going
to talk about some solutions tothe presented problem of
training.
So Lights America is thesponsor of Lighting with Lisa
(16:48):
for this episode and they wantall of us to know that they're
proud to support not only thepodcast but the lighting
industry as a whole.
Lights America is the leadingdata provider in the lighting
industry for fans, lighting andhome decor, with more than 250
brands in their database, withinformation that is sourced
directly from the manufacturersthemselves.
(17:10):
The Lights America website,catalog and dealer tools
platforms was built specificallyfor lighting distribution.
They have exclusive tools likethe IMAP holiday system, pro
tools, and they have taken overthe 3D image and augmented
(17:31):
reality program originallybrought to market by the
Lighting Show Association, whichis something I'm super, super
proud of and excited for to seehow they're able to grow that
program, which was really alabor of love for the LSA.
So if you're a showroom orelectrical wholesaler, lights
(17:52):
America is a dependable dataresource.
It's a platform builtspecifically for your team and
they offer all of these toolsthat allow you to close sales
faster and quicker, which weknow leads to more profitability
, because you're able to, intheory, process more sales, the
(18:13):
quicker it can go If you're asales rep listening to this
podcast, which I love it.
Listen more.
Give me your feedback.
You all have a lot ofinformation that you could share
with me, so send me an email.
If you're a sales rep, thatLights America has a free
website program just for you, soit's super easy to sign up with
(18:34):
them.
Give them a call and find outabout that.
If you're a manufacturerlistening, lights America does
free data collection, offersyour data only to your sales
reps and your qualifiedshowrooms, and there's no better
way to get your information outto your customers in a timely
and correct manner than by usinga service like using partnering
(18:58):
with Lights America.
So if you haven't already askedfor a free demo of Lights
America and you fall into any ofthese categories, make sure to
go to LightsAmericacom, requestyour demo and remember to tell
them that I sent you Lisa fromthe Lighting with Lisa podcast,
and here is your offer.
(19:20):
So the just for Lighting withLisa listeners.
Here is their promo.
Current customers Can get afree banner or email blast done
for your business or website.
So that's really, really great.
You don't have to have any ofthe design fees.
(19:40):
So do reach out to the team atLights America If you're a
current customer.
They want to thank you for yourbusiness and they want to offer
you one of these free add onsfor your website or to reach out
to your customers.
So I would definitely takeadvantage of that offer.
If you're a wholesale customer,new to Lights America you're
(20:03):
getting a 15% discount on setupfees of premium or data 52
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15% discount that's huge.
So if you're not already acurrent customer of Lights
America, sign up for a demo.
Tell them you came to itthrough the podcast and be sure
to take advantage of your offer,whether you are a new or
(20:26):
existing customer.
And thank you all so much andthanks to Lights America for
your sponsorship of the podcast.
All right, so moving on tosolutions for training, I'm open
to learning more from y'all,but here's what I've come up
with over my years of doing this.
(20:47):
For me, the best solution Ihave found is to team staff
members up.
The downside I have here isthat it's not always immediately
clear who you should partner anew hire up with in terms of
their personality and fit withyour existing staff.
(21:08):
Sometimes you have to give thisa few weeks to see how things
play out and relationships growbetween employees.
Sometimes that's okay becauseyou can spend the first couple
of weeks of their new hires timewith you getting them trained
on your ERP software, yoursystems, your processes, the
(21:30):
very basics of how to operatewithin your business.
Then maybe by then things havebecome clearer about what their
particular skill sets are, howthose might mesh well with the
skill sets of an existingemployee.
If you have a new hire, thatsuddenly becomes very apparent
(21:51):
to you that they really are aquick study for the technical
ins and outs of lighting.
It's definitely a good idea toget them paired up with somebody
else in your staff that isalready strong at that and that
way they can grow and learntogether.
Doing this teams approach hasbeen the most successful
(22:13):
strategy for me to really getpeople paired up with someone
that can fill in the holes thatthey have a comfortable working
relationship with.
You want it to be a duo or trioor however your showroom is set
up, you want it to be a subsetof your entire staff, but people
that can work and communicatewell together.
(22:34):
If there are staff members thatjust can't quite ever
communicate on the samewavelength, this just doesn't
work as well, because you needthem to be able to trust and
rely on one another to bounceideas off of or to ask questions
without somebody being snippyin their response.
I already told you that.
Why haven't you learned it yet?
There definitely needs to be afriendliness level already built
(23:01):
between those staff members.
But once you have that and youcan team people up that have
experience with the new hire, itreally seems to ease a lot of
burden.
They want each other to besuccessful, and so I'll find
that the more experienced staffmember will really go out of
their way to help somebody comealong in their knowledge and
(23:23):
fill in all these holes for themas they learn the technical ins
and outs.
So for me that's been probablymy single most successful
strategy.
I do have and I think we allprobably do to some degree, but
it's worth developing it evenmore like just a resource bank
of general kind of tip sheets,like a cheat sheet for common
(23:44):
issues.
So I went on at length aboutthe issues with track lighting
and how challenging it can be tolearn the different types of
track.
So even just having like a onepage printout sheet that shows
from the side the profile angle,the three most common types of
(24:06):
track and where the tabs are onthe track head connector that
plug into the track so that ifsomebody walks in with their
track head you can turn it tothe profile, match it up with
the paper and understand, oh,they have J style track or they
have H style track.
And then I always like to havelike a little blurb, like a few
(24:28):
sentences written out like whatdoes the difference mean?
What, like what does thedifference between that third
prong on H style track meanversus the two prongs on the J
or the L style?
Like in, in, in function?
What does that difference mean?
So that not only can thesalesperson figure out how to
(24:48):
identify the difference, but no,like the reasoning behind.
Like, like what in function isthat difference?
So having just kind of aresource bank of cheat sheets of
common, common issues or commonbase sizes of lamps, because
while most lamps are prettystraightforward, you do get the
(25:11):
random E14, you get the randomE17 that walks in and like, at
first glance, especially with anE14, a salesperson might just
grab some E12 based lamps andlike, like, this looks really
close, it's got to be the samething.
And they go home and turns outit's not the same thing.
So having some kind of basiccheat sheets one pagers, not
(25:36):
overwhelmed with information,but like one pagers about some
of these common, common thingswith a little explanation,
having that resource bank onhand and easily accessible, and
like there in a binder, in afolder, in a data file on their
computer.
I don't care how it's done, butsomewhere where these people
(25:56):
can access it and get used to it, understand that these are
different things that they mightsee, and know where to go when
that, when that question walksin the door, so that they can
get a little bit further downthe road of helping the customer
without immediately having toturn for help.
One of the most handy things weever did in my store for new
(26:20):
hires is to take a light bulbcatalog, pick your preferred
light bulb manufacturer.
But we we took a light bulbcatalog of our preferred
manufacturer and it was like asmaller catalog of just like the
led lamps, and we went throughand highlighted all the ones
that we have in stock and it wassuper, has continued to be
(26:42):
super helpful, like, okay, aclear a lamp here's the model
number.
We stock a clear ctc here's themodel number.
We stock a frosted a lamphere's what we're stocking.
The par lamps.
Here's what we're stocking, andit was just a really great
quick reference so that a newhire wouldn't turn somebody away
(27:04):
who's looking for a par 20 bulb, thinking that we didn't have
that you know particular lamp instock because, like, the model
number they typed in on thelight bulb didn't show up in our
inventory.
They could just resource thishighlighted catalog and kind of
do that comparison and get thecustomer out the door with the
product they need with like areally minimum of having to go
(27:30):
hunt everything down and takeminutes and minutes to make a,
you know, a really quick lightbulb sale.
It's been a really handyshortcut tool for our team, so I
definitely encourage that.
And then the other potentialsolution I have is also the.
It probably been the secondmost effective for me.
It's something that I callsmart fearlessness in the
(27:54):
salesperson.
Smart fearlessness.
So it's almost like the sameconcept of like yes anding in in
like improv theater, like yes,and so we want people to be a
little bit fearless when itcomes to approaching customers
on topics that are new orchallenging for them.
I don't want them to be silly.
(28:16):
That's why we need smartfearlessness, but they do need
to feel empowered to engage totake on different difficult,
potentially topics, things thatseem intimidating to them, and
to just push through it in asmart and supported manner so
(28:39):
that they can like respond to acustomer with confidence but
also feel like they're in a goodspot to go get assistance with
whatever they need.
So that the salesperson canlike grow and learn, because
they got presented this like newthing that they never had,
never encountered before like aceiling fan, remote receiver
(29:01):
issue or something so they canget assistance on that and the
customer feels like they'restill getting an expert or at
least expert advice, even ifit's this particular
salesperson's first time atengaging with this particular
technical issue.
So smart fearlessness is the wayI frame it in my mind.
(29:24):
I want them to feel theconfidence to go up and talk to
anybody, find out what theirproblem is, engage in a way that
lets the customer know thatthey have the solution.
We're gonna I don't like I needto go like check a couple
things to make sure I have thedetails right, but we're gonna
get this covered for you on theway, no problem, because you
(29:47):
don't ever want to break thattrust with the customer that
you're the expert just becauseyou have a new hire on staff.
You don't want anybody to walkaway feeling like they didn't
get the support they needed outof your specialty business just
because they ended up coming inand working with the newest
person on your staff member thatisn't as well versed in the
(30:08):
technical side of things and Iwant every staff member to
really have a good baselineunderstanding.
I know sometimes a workaround isto just like have a person be
the technical person, but Ithink that can cause a lot of
like disservice to customers ifyou have to say, oh well, scotty
is our technical person, he'son the phone right now, just
(30:33):
hang around, I'll get him.
I'll get you to him as soon ashe's available, like if I'm a
customer.
I don't really want thatexperience.
Maybe the salesperson still hasto go to Scotty to get the
solution, but I don't want tohear that I just have to kick
rocks and wait until he'savailable.
I'd like to know that somebodyis proactively working on my
behalf.
So it's just creating this likesmart fearlessness, this aura
(30:57):
of confidence.
I've kind of aware of thisissue.
I can get it figured out foryou.
Just give me a moment and we'llget you on your way with
exactly what you need to fixyour problem to be the solution
you need to make your home thebest space that it can possibly
be.
So those are my kind oftraining pins.
(31:19):
I don't know, there's probablybetter ones out there.
I would love to hear about them.
This is like an example of asuccess I'd love to share back
on the podcast with the rest ofour listeners.
What's been your trainingsuccess Like?
What tool have you used,whether it's an ALA
certification, whether it's aNational Association of
(31:41):
Innovative Lighting Distributorstraining, is it ASID training?
Is it just a general retail 101training that you've done like
with a whiz bang or somethinglike that?
What has been your key tosuccess in getting people new
staff members engaged in up tospeed in the technical and
(32:06):
challenging part of theresidential lighting and fan
industry?
Would love your feedback Again.
Email me, lisa, atlightingwithlisacom with any of
those success stories that youwant to share, or not just on
this topic, on anything at all,because the more we learn from
each other, the more we grow andthe better we become as a
(32:27):
lighting industry.
Thanks one more time to LightsAmerica for sponsoring this
podcast.
I appreciate your support notonly of Lighting with Lisa, but
of the entire lighting industryfrom all angles, from
distribution to reps tomanufacturers Lights, america
has a solution and is a partnerwith all of us.
(32:48):
Thank you all so much forlistening.
I will talk to you next time,take care.
Hello and welcome fellow lighting nerds and
friends to another episode ofLighting with Lisa, the podcast
this week sponsored by LightsAmerica.
I'm super excited for thissponsor.
I'm going to have more detailsabout the benefits of working
with Lights America and theirexclusive offer for Lighting
(00:28):
with Lisa listeners, whether youare a new or current customer,
which is extra fun, so staytuned for that coming up.
Just a little housekeeping atthe very top of the episode.
If you're not already a memberof the Fixture Finder group on
Facebook and you are a showroomlistener to this podcast or a
(00:52):
manufacturer's rep, if you'retrying to find a product for a
customer, it's a super usefulresource, so be sure to join up
to that group.
The link is in the podcastnotes and also there is a
residential lighting job board,also on Facebook.
It's kind of small right now,but the more of us that join and
(01:15):
can share potentialopportunities, the more it'll
grow and also for futureLighting with Lisa podcast
content.
I am putting a message out toy'all to reach out to me via my
email address.
It will also be linked in theshow notes, but it's Lisa at
lightingwithlisacom and I wouldlove to hear from manufacturers,
(01:39):
reps, manufacturers, showroomowners and managers, anybody
that has a passion about theindustry, with a particular win
that they want to share.
Now I'm not talking like a job,like hey, we got this job,
we're really excited about it.
I mean a program you'veimplemented, a business decision
(02:03):
you've made that you would loveto share out to the industry as
a potential for good, asuccessful operation, something
that you would just really loveto shine a light on.
Please reach out to me via theemail address and I can either
interview you or we can air itas a podcast.
(02:25):
Or, if you just want to talk tome off the podcast and I'll re
transcribe it, can.
You can either be identified orI can keep you anonymous.
It really doesn't matter.
Whatever works best for you.
I just think sharing stories ofsuccess in the industry is
super inspirational.
It's motivational.
(02:46):
I know it helps me rethink mybusiness hearing about what
others have done.
Even if somebody is successfulin an area of the business that
isn't like a core strength forme, it definitely gives me a
reason to rethink things ormaybe potentially restructure
some areas of my own business,just knowing what can work for
(03:08):
other businesses.
So if you're interested at allor just have a story to tell and
want to send me an email aboutit again, it can be as anonymous
as you want it to be.
I would love to discuss thosetopics on upcoming episodes of
Lighting with Lisa, the podcast.
So again, the email, lisa atlightingwithlisacom.
(03:31):
This week I want to talk a bitabout training staff.
Okay, so I always say like wetalk a lot sometimes in the
industry about how to hire for alighting showroom what you're
looking for, what you're notlooking for.
Do you want somebody that'slike got excellent sales
(03:53):
experience?
Do you want somebody withindustry experience?
What are the keys for hiring agreat member of your showroom
staff?
And honestly, the answer reallyvaries, I think, by what you're
strongest at training in inyour particular business.
Maybe your sales skillstraining isn't super high in
(04:19):
your business but you're reallygood at the technical training.
It's always like a mix andmatch Oftentimes.
I think the most common answeris that sales skills can be
taught and we'd rather kind ofcollectively have somebody that
has a little bit more lightingtechnical industry background
(04:41):
and I know that most showroomsstruggle the most teaching the
technical side of theresidential lighting and fan
industry.
It is an experience Ipersonally went through when I
started in this industry I did,was not born and raised in it
like many people were.
I actually came into my job froma marketing standpoint in terms
(05:07):
of database and website, soit's not like I started out in a
showroom like hanging fixturesor putting together displays,
like all of this stuff cameeventually, but it wasn't how I
entered the business.
So I had a tremendous crashcourse in the technical side of
(05:27):
lighting and fans and it wasintimidating to me and so I'm
always very sensitive to thatwhen I hire or I'm interviewing
for new staff members for myshowroom, that this technical
skill component is the hardestpart of the initial, like
(05:48):
professional development andtraining for sales staff, and
it's also the hardest likeongoing especially so, like I
would say, for even my first 10years in the industry, by and
large things stayed prettystable.
We had the incandescent, we hadthe fluorescent, we had the
compact fluorescent, likeballasted, self ballasted
(06:10):
fluorescence basically and therewas a little bit on the edge
with LEDs.
Lighting controls were a thinglow voltage, line voltage but
all that was relatively staticthe first 10 years or so I was
in the business and theneverything changed as the price
of LEDs dropped and they becamemore pervasive in the
(06:32):
marketplace and then I feel likeeverything I thought I knew was
wrong it all changed and it wasalways just an ongoing learning
process for me to even keep upwith that change, let alone try
to make sure my staff was wellversed in these things, and
especially when you were hiring.
(06:53):
It's not as much a challengeright now, but when I was hiring
staff members while we werestill dealing a lot with the old
and the new wasn't quite here,there was even much more to
learn than I would say there istoday.
Like some of my newest hiresmight be speaking of lighting
controls like glancingly awarethat there was a lighting
(07:13):
control type called magnetic lowvoltage or electronic low
voltage, but it's just notsomething that comes up in years
, often today, so they don'thave as much in depth knowledge
about that kind of tool as likewe had to be, and then in the
transition you had to knoweverything about everything.
So, yeah, so I would say insome ways things are easier now,
(07:38):
but they're not easy.
There is still so muchvariation out there that makes
training for the technicalskills part of this job so much
harder.
When I am hiring somebody to bea salesperson, I always
(08:01):
disclose in the interviewbecause I really try to be
upfront about what thechallenges are with the position
.
I always say that the prettystuff is the easy stuff.
If this business could justsurvive selling the pretty stuff
right out of the box nothing,custom, no, whatever this would
be like actually not that hardof a job.
(08:22):
The pretty stuff is a goodportion of what we do, but it's
just a small portion.
It's all that other stuffthat's so much more challenging
and necessary.
Especially if you're aspecialized business like a
lighting showroom.
You need to be well versed inall of the intricacies of the
(08:42):
business.
You need to be expert in all ofthese different areas, because
why else would somebody come toyou?
There are so many other placesthat you can just get the quote,
unquote, pretty things.
So we have to really bedeveloped in our expertise as
lighting showroom owners,operators, employees and that is
(09:04):
it.
It's challenging and it's sohard at first.
So there's like so manyvariables, like okay.
So here's a really commonexample that will resonate with
anybody who's ever worked in alighting showroom for any period
of time.
Take something like obnoxiouslydeceptively simple like track
(09:25):
lighting, like it's pretty lowbudget.
There's nothing particularlyremarkable going on about it.
But if you didn't know, wouldyou know.
But there's three differenttypes of standard track.
Setting aside all theproprietary ones, there's three
(09:46):
different types of track thatcould be found in any single
person's home in the country.
And like, how would you knowthat?
So, like, is it H, J or L?
And then how do you identifythe difference?
Like, it's so kind of mindboggling how common and
(10:07):
pedestrian some items appear tobe but are actually extremely
complicated, especially whenyou're dealing with not the
initial install.
Like if everything was newconstruction, life would be, in
a lot of ways, way easier.
It's because not a lot of whatwe do, not a lot a lot of what
(10:29):
we do is new construction, butalso a significant portion of
what we do and where we reallyreally add value for many of our
customers and get their repeatbusiness in the showroom is by
being experts on their remodels,on being experts on the
challenges that they're facing.
So maybe they moved into a homeand they had track lighting in
(10:50):
their den and it worked fine fora while and they were all right
with it, but then somethingwent out about it and they
realized they needed newfixtures or new lamping for that
track, and then we have to like, and maybe they just take a
picture of it from the floor andit's, you know, 12 feet in the
air.
Well, I can't identify whatkind of track you have from a
(11:14):
picture like that's thatdistance away.
I need one of the heads, I mean, you know, if there's just more
information required to be ableto answer this question.
And so then you know, we getthe lovely customer that comes
into the showroom and has theirpicture of their track and just
thinks that like we can solveall their problems off of this
picture.
And it's certainly a start.
(11:36):
I was telling one of myemployees recently like it's so
much easier with the ubiquitousof like cell phone cameras and
pictures than it ever was,because even like in the early
days of cell phones, if you didtake a picture with them, the
resolution was terrible.
And you know, most people justdidn't operate that way like we
do now, and so it was so muchmore having to go out to a
(12:00):
customer's home or giving themreally specific instructions
about what they needed to do orbring to us so that we could
therefore help like solve theirproblem or or whatever the case
may be.
There's just so many variablesfor even deceptively simple
items that it is a real trainingchallenge from a management
(12:25):
standpoint and I have come atthis problem from all different
ways.
Don't worry, I'm going to leaveus with some keys at the end of
this podcast of potentialsolutions, but I just kind of
want to talk through thechallenges here at the first
part of the episode.
So I've tried the info dumpmethod.
(12:46):
Let me throw everything I canthink of at you and hopefully
some of it sticks and good luck.
So what I found is with infodump method, it's so easy for
the individual to becomeoverwhelmed and then they forget
(13:06):
what they learned, or theybecome frustrated or because,
like they knew that they sawthis but they didn't retain it,
and then they just like I know Ishould know the answer, but I
don't know the answer, and so itjust becomes like an
overwhelming frustration andjust quite honestly, there's so
many different random instancesof a question that you really
(13:30):
cannot prepare for that.
While I could info dump, likethis particular answer, a
customer is going to come infrom left field which is a
slightly different twist on thatquestion that I didn't go over,
and a salesperson might feellike overly empowered because
they thought they had all theanswers.
(13:51):
But then this question wasreally out of left field.
But they couldn't identify thatit was out of left field, so
they thought they knew theanswer.
And then you just get into thiswhole like giving unintentional
bad advice If you don't giveenough information to a
salesperson.
On the flip side of that, ifyou just say, here's your
computer, let me teach you ourshowroom processes and
(14:11):
procedures and we'll learn arest as we go along, that also
leads to frustration from a lackof feeling like you can do
anything at all to helpcustomers.
And then I found thatsalespeople will kind of like
isolate themselves and reallyonly want to talk to the people
about the pretty decorativethings that are easy, because
(14:33):
that's straightforward and theycan follow that, and then they
really become like averse todealing with the more technical
things.
And again, it is, I think,critically important for any
specialty business to be expertsin the harder parts of their
business.
Why else would somebody come tous?
Just truly, it is really wherethe secret sauce of lighting
(14:58):
showroom lives.
It's in that expertise of beinga resource for our customers
and you have to prove yourselfas that resource and those
customers will come back againand again because they know this
is the place I can go to get ananswer about this kind of weird
lighting electrical issue, thatI can't go anywhere else to get
(15:22):
this information.
Maybe Google, but Google needsto be verified and the internet
is not always correct, as we areall well aware, although plenty
of people believe that it is.
It's just, it's really wherethe magic of a lighting showroom
really comes to life is inthese areas of demonstrating our
(15:42):
expertise and being a reasonfor customers to shop with you.
So therefore, we circle back tothe challenge at the top, like
how do you get a salesperson inthe right position to be able to
do all this, to able to be theexpert, to have the technical
(16:02):
lighting and fan and controlsskills needed to really
effectively perform their jobs,to answer questions, for
consumers, to upsell effectively?
That's a big part, like knowingthe product at a baseline is
really required in order to eventhink about upselling or adding
(16:24):
on a dimmer or swapping out thelamping or whatever, whatever
your upsell opportunity is.
So I'm going to take a minutehere to thank our sponsor of the
episode and then at the tailend of the episode we're going
to talk about some solutions tothe presented problem of
training.
So Lights America is thesponsor of Lighting with Lisa
(16:48):
for this episode and they wantall of us to know that they're
proud to support not only thepodcast but the lighting
industry as a whole.
Lights America is the leadingdata provider in the lighting
industry for fans, lighting andhome decor, with more than 250
brands in their database, withinformation that is sourced
directly from the manufacturersthemselves.
(17:10):
The Lights America website,catalog and dealer tools
platforms was built specificallyfor lighting distribution.
They have exclusive tools likethe IMAP holiday system, pro
tools, and they have taken overthe 3D image and augmented
(17:31):
reality program originallybrought to market by the
Lighting Show Association, whichis something I'm super, super
proud of and excited for to seehow they're able to grow that
program, which was really alabor of love for the LSA.
So if you're a showroom orelectrical wholesaler, lights
(17:52):
America is a dependable dataresource.
It's a platform builtspecifically for your team and
they offer all of these toolsthat allow you to close sales
faster and quicker, which weknow leads to more profitability
, because you're able to, intheory, process more sales, the
(18:13):
quicker it can go If you're asales rep listening to this
podcast, which I love it.
Listen more.
Give me your feedback.
You all have a lot ofinformation that you could share
with me, so send me an email.
If you're a sales rep, thatLights America has a free
website program just for you, soit's super easy to sign up with
(18:34):
them.
Give them a call and find outabout that.
If you're a manufacturerlistening, lights America does
free data collection, offersyour data only to your sales
reps and your qualifiedshowrooms, and there's no better
way to get your information outto your customers in a timely
and correct manner than by usinga service like using partnering
(18:58):
with Lights America.
So if you haven't already askedfor a free demo of Lights
America and you fall into any ofthese categories, make sure to
go to LightsAmericacom, requestyour demo and remember to tell
them that I sent you Lisa fromthe Lighting with Lisa podcast,
and here is your offer.
(19:20):
So the just for Lighting withLisa listeners.
Here is their promo.
Current customers Can get afree banner or email blast done
for your business or website.
So that's really, really great.
You don't have to have any ofthe design fees.
(19:40):
So do reach out to the team atLights America If you're a
current customer.
They want to thank you for yourbusiness and they want to offer
you one of these free add onsfor your website or to reach out
to your customers.
So I would definitely takeadvantage of that offer.
If you're a wholesale customer,new to Lights America you're
(20:03):
getting a 15% discount on setupfees of premium or data 52
services.
15% discount that's huge.
So if you're not already acurrent customer of Lights
America, sign up for a demo.
Tell them you came to itthrough the podcast and be sure
to take advantage of your offer,whether you are a new or
(20:26):
existing customer.
And thank you all so much andthanks to Lights America for
your sponsorship of the podcast.
All right, so moving on tosolutions for training, I'm open
to learning more from y'all,but here's what I've come up
with over my years of doing this.
(20:47):
For me, the best solution Ihave found is to team staff
members up.
The downside I have here isthat it's not always immediately
clear who you should partner anew hire up with in terms of
their personality and fit withyour existing staff.
(21:08):
Sometimes you have to give thisa few weeks to see how things
play out and relationships growbetween employees.
Sometimes that's okay becauseyou can spend the first couple
of weeks of their new hires timewith you getting them trained
on your ERP software, yoursystems, your processes, the
(21:30):
very basics of how to operatewithin your business.
Then maybe by then things havebecome clearer about what their
particular skill sets are, howthose might mesh well with the
skill sets of an existingemployee.
If you have a new hire, thatsuddenly becomes very apparent
(21:51):
to you that they really are aquick study for the technical
ins and outs of lighting.
It's definitely a good idea toget them paired up with somebody
else in your staff that isalready strong at that and that
way they can grow and learntogether.
Doing this teams approach hasbeen the most successful
(22:13):
strategy for me to really getpeople paired up with someone
that can fill in the holes thatthey have a comfortable working
relationship with.
You want it to be a duo or trioor however your showroom is set
up, you want it to be a subsetof your entire staff, but people
that can work and communicatewell together.
(22:34):
If there are staff members thatjust can't quite ever
communicate on the samewavelength, this just doesn't
work as well, because you needthem to be able to trust and
rely on one another to bounceideas off of or to ask questions
without somebody being snippyin their response.
I already told you that.
Why haven't you learned it yet?
There definitely needs to be afriendliness level already built
(23:01):
between those staff members.
But once you have that and youcan team people up that have
experience with the new hire, itreally seems to ease a lot of
burden.
They want each other to besuccessful, and so I'll find
that the more experienced staffmember will really go out of
their way to help somebody comealong in their knowledge and
(23:23):
fill in all these holes for themas they learn the technical ins
and outs.
So for me that's been probablymy single most successful
strategy.
I do have and I think we allprobably do to some degree, but
it's worth developing it evenmore like just a resource bank
of general kind of tip sheets,like a cheat sheet for common
(23:44):
issues.
So I went on at length aboutthe issues with track lighting
and how challenging it can be tolearn the different types of
track.
So even just having like a onepage printout sheet that shows
from the side the profile angle,the three most common types of
(24:06):
track and where the tabs are onthe track head connector that
plug into the track so that ifsomebody walks in with their
track head you can turn it tothe profile, match it up with
the paper and understand, oh,they have J style track or they
have H style track.
And then I always like to havelike a little blurb, like a few
(24:28):
sentences written out like whatdoes the difference mean?
What, like what does thedifference between that third
prong on H style track meanversus the two prongs on the J
or the L style?
Like in, in, in function?
What does that difference mean?
So that not only can thesalesperson figure out how to
(24:48):
identify the difference, but no,like the reasoning behind.
Like, like what in function isthat difference?
So having just kind of aresource bank of cheat sheets of
common, common issues or commonbase sizes of lamps, because
while most lamps are prettystraightforward, you do get the
(25:11):
random E14, you get the randomE17 that walks in and like, at
first glance, especially with anE14, a salesperson might just
grab some E12 based lamps andlike, like, this looks really
close, it's got to be the samething.
And they go home and turns outit's not the same thing.
So having some kind of basiccheat sheets one pagers, not
(25:36):
overwhelmed with information,but like one pagers about some
of these common, common thingswith a little explanation,
having that resource bank onhand and easily accessible, and
like there in a binder, in afolder, in a data file on their
computer.
I don't care how it's done, butsomewhere where these people
(25:56):
can access it and get used to it, understand that these are
different things that they mightsee, and know where to go when
that, when that question walksin the door, so that they can
get a little bit further downthe road of helping the customer
without immediately having toturn for help.
One of the most handy things weever did in my store for new
(26:20):
hires is to take a light bulbcatalog, pick your preferred
light bulb manufacturer.
But we we took a light bulbcatalog of our preferred
manufacturer and it was like asmaller catalog of just like the
led lamps, and we went throughand highlighted all the ones
that we have in stock and it wassuper, has continued to be
(26:42):
super helpful, like, okay, aclear a lamp here's the model
number.
We stock a clear ctc here's themodel number.
We stock a frosted a lamphere's what we're stocking.
The par lamps.
Here's what we're stocking, andit was just a really great
quick reference so that a newhire wouldn't turn somebody away
(27:04):
who's looking for a par 20 bulb, thinking that we didn't have
that you know particular lamp instock because, like, the model
number they typed in on thelight bulb didn't show up in our
inventory.
They could just resource thishighlighted catalog and kind of
do that comparison and get thecustomer out the door with the
product they need with like areally minimum of having to go
(27:30):
hunt everything down and takeminutes and minutes to make a,
you know, a really quick lightbulb sale.
It's been a really handyshortcut tool for our team, so I
definitely encourage that.
And then the other potentialsolution I have is also the.
It probably been the secondmost effective for me.
It's something that I callsmart fearlessness in the
(27:54):
salesperson.
Smart fearlessness.
So it's almost like the sameconcept of like yes anding in in
like improv theater, like yes,and so we want people to be a
little bit fearless when itcomes to approaching customers
on topics that are new orchallenging for them.
I don't want them to be silly.
(28:16):
That's why we need smartfearlessness, but they do need
to feel empowered to engage totake on different difficult,
potentially topics, things thatseem intimidating to them, and
to just push through it in asmart and supported manner so
(28:39):
that they can like respond to acustomer with confidence but
also feel like they're in a goodspot to go get assistance with
whatever they need.
So that the salesperson canlike grow and learn, because
they got presented this like newthing that they never had,
never encountered before like aceiling fan, remote receiver
(29:01):
issue or something so they canget assistance on that and the
customer feels like they'restill getting an expert or at
least expert advice, even ifit's this particular
salesperson's first time atengaging with this particular
technical issue.
So smart fearlessness is the wayI frame it in my mind.
(29:24):
I want them to feel theconfidence to go up and talk to
anybody, find out what theirproblem is, engage in a way that
lets the customer know thatthey have the solution.
We're gonna I don't like I needto go like check a couple
things to make sure I have thedetails right, but we're gonna
get this covered for you on theway, no problem, because you
(29:47):
don't ever want to break thattrust with the customer that
you're the expert just becauseyou have a new hire on staff.
You don't want anybody to walkaway feeling like they didn't
get the support they needed outof your specialty business just
because they ended up coming inand working with the newest
person on your staff member thatisn't as well versed in the
(30:08):
technical side of things and Iwant every staff member to
really have a good baselineunderstanding.
I know sometimes a workaround isto just like have a person be
the technical person, but Ithink that can cause a lot of
like disservice to customers ifyou have to say, oh well, scotty
is our technical person, he'son the phone right now, just
(30:33):
hang around, I'll get him.
I'll get you to him as soon ashe's available, like if I'm a
customer.
I don't really want thatexperience.
Maybe the salesperson still hasto go to Scotty to get the
solution, but I don't want tohear that I just have to kick
rocks and wait until he'savailable.
I'd like to know that somebodyis proactively working on my
behalf.
So it's just creating this likesmart fearlessness, this aura
(30:57):
of confidence.
I've kind of aware of thisissue.
I can get it figured out foryou.
Just give me a moment and we'llget you on your way with
exactly what you need to fixyour problem to be the solution
you need to make your home thebest space that it can possibly
be.
So those are my kind oftraining pins.
(31:19):
I don't know, there's probablybetter ones out there.
I would love to hear about them.
This is like an example of asuccess I'd love to share back
on the podcast with the rest ofour listeners.
What's been your trainingsuccess Like?
What tool have you used,whether it's an ALA
certification, whether it's aNational Association of
(31:41):
Innovative Lighting Distributorstraining, is it ASID training?
Is it just a general retail 101training that you've done like
with a whiz bang or somethinglike that?
What has been your key tosuccess in getting people new
staff members engaged in up tospeed in the technical and
(32:06):
challenging part of theresidential lighting and fan
industry?
Would love your feedback Again.
Email me, lisa, atlightingwithlisacom with any of
those success stories that youwant to share, or not just on
this topic, on anything at all,because the more we learn from
each other, the more we grow andthe better we become as a
(32:27):
lighting industry.
Thanks one more time to LightsAmerica for sponsoring this
podcast.
I appreciate your support notonly of Lighting with Lisa, but
of the entire lighting industryfrom all angles, from
distribution to reps tomanufacturers Lights, america
has a solution and is a partnerwith all of us.
(32:48):
Thank you all so much forlistening.
I will talk to you next time,take care.
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