Okay, so you hire a new employee - one who has, let's say, ten years of applicable work experience. They show up at work and your number one goal is to get them up and running as quickly as possible, and indoctrinate them into your system, getting them to follow all the rules and procedures and doing things the right way.
But there's something very valuable that many manager's don't take advantage of, but you have a limited of window of opportunity to benefit from it. When this new employee first comes into your company's culture, he is bombarded with lots of new stimuli. And they can't help but compare this new stimuli to their existing paradigms of business thinking and behavior (the paradigms that they spent ten years developing).
So here's my advice: Don't miss the opportunity to sit down with your new employee after a month on the job and ask him a long series of questions about his observations of your company and your processes. You'll be surprised at what you might learn from your new employee. If you're hired the right person, you should welcome their feedback, their impressions, and their "compare and contrast" statements.
Ask them:"When you first started working here, what did you noticed that seemed odd or unusual?""How can we do a better job of selling?" (or serving our customers, or marketing, or fulfilling orders, etc.)"If you were in charge here, what would you change to make us more profitable?""What flaws in our systems (people systems, order systems, IT systems, etc.) have you identified?"What should we be doing differently?""What have you seen that leads to inefficiency?"and so on.Intelligent, sharp people will give you this information, but probably not unless you ask for it.
Create a business culture that seeks out and takes advantage of this valuable information from new employees!If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.
Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, and the financial, real estate, and insurance markets.Contact Skip | Join Mailing List Follow on Twitter | Connect on Facebook | Connect on LinkedIn
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