(Article Archive)

Start A Success Library
by Dave Anderson

What resources do you have available for your people to improve their skills, habits and attitudes? Are there enough? Is the material effective? Here are some ideas to talk about this week to make sure you're providing the support your people need to grow personally and in their jobs:

1. Evaluate current materials you make available to your people. Are they current? Is it in multiple formats: tapes, videos, books, c.d.'s? Remember that people learn differently so having varied formats is necessary.
   
2. Evaluate your policy for loaning out the material. Can they check out resources? Many people would listen to tapes or c.d.s during their commute but aren't allowed to take them out of the business. Quite frankly, if you don't trust your people enough to loan them materials, why'd you hire them and why are you keeping them? Just make sure you have adequate controls.
   
3. Evaluate the variety of materials. Many organizations have ample sales material, but little or nothing on management or leadership. It's important that people at all levels of your enterprise be provided with growth tools.
   
4. Evaluate your rewards for people who take initiative and grow personally. What gets rewarded, gets done. Support the "second-milers" who learn more than they have to with special perks: lunches, cash, opportunities, resources of their own, etc. This creates an energized climate in your company.
   
5. Evaluate your ongoing strategy to add to your library. Building your success library should never have an ending point. You should have a discipline of adding "x" number of books, tapes or videos each month. Keep the information fresh and add depth to your content base and you'll keep them coming back for more.
   
6. Add a "loan and swap" feature. This is where anyone can bring favorite resources of their own to the library to swap or loan to others.
   
7. Eliminate the excuses for not building a library. We all know it's easy to find reasons not to do something: it costs too much, we have no system to track it, people should invest in themselves, etc. Ditch the excuses and make the time and financial investment it takes to provide the tools your people need to grow.

The training resources you're providing are to be used in addition to the normal training you have in your business, not in place of it. Many people don't buy resources on their own because they don't know where to start or they've never bought into the importance of it. As the leaders of your organization, it's up to you to set the tone for learning and growth. Set your expectations high and provide the tools to get the job done. It takes commitment. Don't dabble in it. Do it right. Make it credible. The long-term rewards you'll reap for making the investment will show up in people with better attitudes, aptitudes, self-esteem and performance. You have to pay the price up front, but the payoff will be tremendous.

© Copyright 1999 - 2006 The Dave Anderson Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

About The Author: Peak performance author, columnist, trainer, speaker and radio show host for sales, management and leadership, Dave Anderson walks the talk as a leader. He has led some of the most successful retail automotive dealership in the country—the most recent dealer group he led had over $300,000,000 in annual sales—and now gives 150 presentations, workshops and speeches annually on sales and leadership development around the globe.

Dave is author of over 50 training programs on sales, management and leadership including the books, Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence and No Nonsense Leadership: Real World Strategies To Maximize Personal & Corporate Potential. Dave authors a monthly leadership column for Dealer magazine, publishes a monthly leadership newsletter and hosts the weekly radio talk show, Dave Anderson’s Learn To Lead Hour. His books, cassettes, videos, newsletter, column, web articles and live presentations pull no punches and provide real world strategies for peak performance in business and in life.

Dave is a member of the National Speaker’s Association and is a featured speaker at conventions worldwide.

Dave is president of the Dave Anderson’s Learn To Lead and LearnToLead.com, a cutting edge web site providing hundreds of free training resources to thousands of subscribers in over 30 countries.

Contact Information:
The Dave Anderson Corporation
P.O. Box 1119
Los Altos CA 94024
Phone: 800-519-8224
www.learntolead.com
dave@learntolead.com