How to Build Your Agency’s Employee Training Process

Is your employee training process non-existent or too cumbersome? Do you want your team, contractors and clients to understand the fundamentals of what makes your agency unique? Then don’t overlook the power of a solid training process! With these three easy steps you can start onboarding your digital agency’s new hires and provide them with a consistent set of experiences and expectations on how you want to work with them. In this episode, we’ll cover: Helping your new hires with systemized onboarding. 3 easy steps to build your agency’s training process. Measuring the success of your agency’s training process. Today I chatted with Tom Kulzer, CEO and founder of AWeber, the successful email marketing platform agency he started over 20 years ago. Tom has built his business to over 100 employees and has helped over 100,000 clients.He is a well-respect expert in building a strong business with core values that are ingrained in every employee. Today he shares three quick tips for building your agency’s employee training process so you can grow. Helping Your New Hires By Onboarding Making that first hire, or tenth hire, or beyond, can be scary but it’s totally doable! Implementing a solid onboarding process is important to get your new hire(s) acclimated from day 1. This is a way to get everyone on the same page with the value your agency delivers to people. And, since AWeber is an email platform guess what they use for onboarding new hires? That right - a sequence of welcome emails with bite-sized nuggets of information, placed in the right order and sent at the right time. Tom also has all of his new hires participate in a two-week training program. The focus is mainly on customer service but it also allows new employees to understand the fundamentals of what makes AWeber unique. It’s similar to the training methods of Zappos.com who’s known and globally recognized for their company culture and core values. 3 Easy Steps to Build Your Agency’s Training Process 1. Identify your agency's biggest problem. You need to figure out where your agency has hang-ups or issues most regularly. Think of a checklist, like airplane pilots have their preflight check. What would need to be on your agency checklist, so everything runs smoothly? 2. Come up with the training around the identified problem. When you figure out your agency’s biggest trip-ups, start documenting a process on how to avoid tripping over them again. It can be as simple as a Word document, or whatever internal tool your agency uses. Your agency just needs to start somewhere. You can’t change anything if you don’t start somewhere. Then as you gain time and experience, layer on more expertise. 3. Create “bite size” content that is given slowly, over a period of time. A new employee isn’t going to read a one hundred page manual, and even if they do, how much will they really retain? You want to break down processes into easily digestible nuggets of information. Then feed them this information over a period of time, be it 2 weeks or 6 months, just NOT all at once. This “small and slow” method is more likely to be read, retained, and allow your agency employees to grow from it. Also, you can use this type of onboarding for your agency’s clients as well. Is Your Training Process Successful? Your agency will need to look at each job function separately. Different roles will have a different measurement for success. Use internal metrics to develop a quality score. Then have your agency team leaders review calls, emails, conversions, quality assurance, etc. and actually assign a grade. As you track this information and see how the grades change over time. Wherever you see improvement needed, then you know where there may be holes in your training and you can adjust accordingly. Assessment areas could include: Customer Service - Consider product knowledge and customer interactions Engineers - Escape defects found through quality assurance. Marketing - Conversions, success of split-test launches, etc. Remember, measuring the success of your agency’s training process is not a one-size fits all approach. Need Guidance and Support to Grow Your Agency 3X Faster? Are you overwhelmed by all the information out there on various ways to grow your agency? Do you want direction on how you can grow your agency faster and easier? Then you’re in luck! I created an innovative mentorship called Agency University. Agency University is a program which provides the 1-on-1 mentorship and ongoing support that is crucial to the success of your agency. Click here to see if it’s the right fit for you.