Treat people right. I think doubt, questioning and insecurity are very bad for a business environment. You treat people like adults, you give them specific responsibilities, and you compliment them. Most businesspeople don’t tell people they do a good job enough. I like them to know they’re appreciated. I also really believe in teamwork, so I try to let everyone know everything that’s going on with what’s going forward at least six months out. I try to keep them involved in the process, then there’s buy-in, then there’s not as many questions. We’ll review what’s coming up short-term, midterm, so that everyone knows what everyone on the team is working on. If you treat people like adults, you give them responsibility, and you mark their papers and they do well, you let them know so, and if they don’t, you tell them.
My people pretty much come and go as they please. I’m very flexible with that. They don’t have to be here at 8:30, they can be here at 10 so long as they get it done, and they get it done because they appreciate the fact that it’s not rigid. One of my favorite sayings is smart people can solve problems, and if you hire for intelligence and you give people flexibility to be themselves, you get good results.
Spend the resources on training. What did Bob Dylan say? ‘He not busy being born is busy dying,’ and if you don’t move forward, then you’re absolutely going backward. We’re in a fast business to begin with, and we are the leaders, really, in our category, and as a result of that, we need to be upfront with the latest technology. The bad news is that the vendors have basically abandoned training because it’s expensive. But the companies that still believe in it long term will have more success. We believe in it, we have a full-time sales trainer, so we’ve taken over the burden from the vendors.
(He) visits with them, and then we try to make it as advantageous as possible. Green is very big right now, and we’re trying to have a lot of green options available, so take solar. We’ve just sent 10 people to school last month, and we’re sending another 13 or 14 this month, and so they’ll be able to sell solar panels to save on electricity, and so what we’ll do is we’ll have twentysome people trained, and then we’ll bring that up again, and if they have success, then it will filter through the organizations.
When you have 60 different companies you want to have a unified message, you want to have a unified purchasing, you want to be all in step. I can’t travel as much as it would take to get to 60 stores or 60 dealers and 97 locations and so he does a very good job of that. And it’s done a very nice job of coalescing the members into the unity that we’re looking for.
How to reach: Home Theater Specialists of America, (610) 363-9055 or www.htsa.com