Power Point do's & don'ts

      I have heard all kinds of things about power point and the wright or wrong way to do things. From my experience the power point isn't the emphasis or focal point in you're training it's you, the trainer. Now, Im not saying scrap your power point and stand up there and throw up information on your audience.  What I am saying is use your power point to complement what you training on. The power point is great visual to assist you to drive home a particular point. The power point can also be used to captivate your audience with a video or picture but should never be the training itself. A few other bits of advices when creating a power point for a training. Less is more, what I mean by this is if you have a power point slide crammed with pictures, text and animation all in different colors, sizes & fonts you will automatically help your audience turn on the Zzzzzzzzzz and at that point let the bobble heads begin. So, to avoid this from happening be consistent with your power point and use the same fonts colors and sizes. I also mentioned animations when describing less is more. Animations are cool but to many animations can really create problems for trainers. Imagine this, you have 3 hours to get through 400 slides and effectively train your retailer to help move the needle but you have added animations to EVER SLIDE. By doing this you have added 5 clicks on ever slide which increased your presentation time by 45mins. So your 3hr training just turned into a 3hr 45min training and you won't have the time to get to the entire training which will affect you're training trough put. NOT GOOD!


      Another thing that will lose an audience quicker than anything is for you to stand in front of your audience and read every power point slide word for word. You're not a parrot and Im sure your audience didn't come to see you read for 3hrs. By not reading the slides and understanding your material will allow you to interact with your audience and not turn your back on them to read the slides. I will leave you with this, the slides are there to compliment what you're saying. So, be confident, stand up there and tell the story, be animated and use your power point to help drive your points home!

Training Follow Up, how important is it?

          OK, you just finished your second full day of training (full day of training is 8hrs contrary to what The Head Monster thinks, LOL) and its time to start prepping for your next retailer. So, your back at ground zero and you're starting the process of learning a new retailers culture and spending all your time creating a customized training for them over again. But what about the follow up to the training you just finished up & the goals you set for the sales associates?  You did all the pre training work, spent the time customizing the power point, leaning the retailers culture and even spent time with their management team. So why wouldn't you follow up on all the hard work you put in? I mean the measure of a trainer is not how funny he/she is or how captivating they can be. The measure of a real trainer how the follow up and move the needle. Yes, it's all about the money! How did your hard work and training help increase what you trained on? If you don't work just as hard on the follow up the training doesn't really mean anything. By following up on you're training you can help increase the trough put and the likely hood of returning for a 201 with associates or maybe even a management style workshop.

         What is following up to a great training? It's taking the great energy and momentum from you're training and continue to have the sales associates and managers to feed off of it! This means making follow up calls and store visits. Their s nothing wrong with continuing or even furthering you're training on the sales floor.  Follow up also means working with the retailer to track sales after the training. The numbers are very important but not just to you. Look at it this way, you don't want to fly in, train and fly out never looking back! You can't treat you're trainings like a flock of seagulls. So get the numbers, because they are even more important to benefit the retailers and in a lot of cases they are over looked. Having numbers will allow the sales associates to know where they are and allow you and the management to set watermarks and goals so that the associates can be held accountable and see where they are going! So remember the numbers aren't really for you it's truly for the associates and the retailer! Following up is a very important part of training and in my opinion you're training is incomplete without it.

Practice Makes Perfect!

        The most important thing you can do to make sure you're training goes well and your audience gets the most out of your session is to practice. When I say practice I don't mean just throw the power point in slide sorter mode and go over the flow. That is important but what i'm talking about setting up your projector, clicker and power point at practicing LIVE runs as if there were a classroom full of eager minds ready to listen to your every syllable. This is how the great trainers become great! Remember you play how you practice! Do you think Michael Jordan went out and had so, so practices? NO, he played how he practice and he would practice for HOURS a day everyday! That's what made him the best player ever to step on the basketball court.

          Back to training, it's important to set up as if conducting a live training. Practice your delivery and button clicking. As I said in an earlier blog button clicking can save your life and help the audience teach back what they have learned. Some other advice some great trainers thought me over the years is to be yourself! If your funny than be funny, if your technical than be technical. Don't try and be something you're not, the audience will see right through you and at that point it's very hard to train anyone! It's also a very good idea to record your practice sessions. This will allow you to workout any slow points and help determine your flow. As I said before flow is important because over explaining or under explaining something is just as bad as not explaining something at all. So remember you will play how you practice so start there and don't hold back!

Training tips!

One of the most important aspects of training is knowing who you're training. This means doing tons of research on a few key thing's. Who are you actually training, managers or associates or a mix of both. This will help during the creation of the power point and allow you to work on your flow as well. The last thing you want to do is talk about The Accusation of Per Buying Customer to a room full of 18yr old sales associates.  Next is to me the most important prep you can do. Learn the culture of the company you're training. This will help you train them from the inside out. Spending time with them and learning there internal language aka ISIMS is very important when training them. It allows you to reach them on their level and shows them that they are the reason that your there! Something else I love to do while training is to get the audience to teach you! Use your button clicking and power point animations to help you teach and train your audience. Another idea would be to roll play with your audience. This is a great and proven method but it's not something people look forward to doing. So try having a break out session and then roll playing with in the smaller groups.Last thing and I can't stress this enough, Bring some demos to you're training! This drives home your presentation and gives your audience a chance to experience what you just talked about first hand. I will write more on how I train and give you more ideas from start to finish! Remember to pay attention to details when training!

Training Flow!

How important is having great flow during you're training session? 


        From my knowledge and experience having a great flow to you're training will make the difference between having a fun, exciting and interactive training or a snooze fest! Not flowing during you're training session will effect you're ability to really reach your audience. Having cohesiveness with you're training, training material and your power point is crucial. If one is off it will effect your entire training in a negative way. So how do you avoid not having flow to you're training? LONG PREPARATION and SHORT EXECUTION! Taking extra time to prepare for you're training will only benefit you and your audience and there's nothing wrong with practicing your power point and training. Get up and practice as if it were a live training. This will help you work through all the bugs that tend to happen during a training. Something else practice helps prevent or prepare for is MURPHY'S LAW, LoL. If it can go wrong it will and if you think it can't happen to you just wait, if it can go wrong it will! Something that really helped me that Noel Lee & John Asbil thought me was to record your practice sessions as well as your live trainings and then listen to them. Take the time to critique yourself as if you were the audience. This will help tremendously! Flow is everything, thats how important it is!


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