Well, the REAL, truly good, long-term solution is education. But, that takes time. Training is the key to moving new hires from being new hires to contributors to the bottom line by being in the field. Mentoring is one way to accomplish this. Mentoring, however, is unreliable and creates situations where your best people are trying to "train" new employees instead of working. In some cases this works, but in most, it doesn't work well. Your best installer isn't necessarily the best person to train the rest of the installers. I am sure you agree and can even site examples where this has failed miserably. However, if you have a simple, documented training program that outlines the skills-set required to be in the field (or on the job) and then trains to give the new-hire that skills-set, you've got it! That simple. Please do that as opposed to stealing people because it's shorting our market growth.

Finally, Kayye Consulting may even surprise the market. We are in the midst of a change that may shock the market as we grow. The deal is already in the works and may be public by the time you read this, but if it's not, then you'll only have to wait a month or so. But, it will be good, overall.

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Gary Kayye is Principal of Kayye Consulting a firm that specializes in providing marketing consulting, telephony integration and training development to the professional audiovisual industry. His company also markets a software suite that's commonly used to set-up projection displays for optimized viewing quality. He spent 12 years at Extron and AMX as VP of Sales and Marketing before founding his own firm. He can be reached at www.kayye.com or via e-mail at gkayye@kayye.com.

Reprinted with permission from Sound & Communications Magazine (December Issue)

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