All of us at Tortal Training are proud of our CEO Evan Hackel. He just wrote a new book, Ingaging Leadership: A new approach to leading that builds excellence and organizational success and we’re all talking about how wise and useful it is. We hope you will look at its listing on Amazon.com and add a copy to your professional library.

We’ll be exploring the book in some posts during the coming weeks. Today, let’s explore one of Evan’s principles that can offer a big payback to trainers everywhere.

Be sure to communicate the “What’s In It for Me” (WIIFM) when launching training 

Evan writes, “People are more likely to read communications or act on them when they perceive a clear and immediate benefit from doing so.”

That makes sense, doesn’t it? Few people are eager to take part in training (or any other company activity) when the only incentive is, “You have to finish this training by the end of the week, so log in now.” But if you trumpet a clear WIIFM, participation and enthusiasm soar.

You can make that happen with communication strategies like these:

• When announcing a new program of sales training, say something like, “You are going to close a lot more sales, because salespeople in other locations closed 40% more sales in the first month after taking this training.”

• Before training personnel to use a new company intranet or communication hub, say “You are going to gain 90 minutes a day that you are now wasting by reading and sending emails . . . what will you do with all that extra time?”

• Before training store managers to set up a new inventory management system, say, “You’ll keep your store open longer and sell more because you’ll never again have to close your doors to take inventory.”

• Before training regional offices to use a new suite of marketing materials, say, “You’ll see incoming customer calls surge to 30, 40 or more a day . . . that’s what happened in Des Moines and Tallahassee, and it can happen for you too.”

And There’s More to Come 

Visit this blog in the coming weeks for more insights from Evan’s new book.