Episode 11 - 3 Steps To Orienting and Onboarding Your Team With Chris Calamusa

Service MVP Sales Training Podcast with Joe Crisara

"Definitely leaders need to be involved, if they're scheduling something for their guys they should be there as well with them you want to feel like it's a part of a group, I mean we're all human, group dynamics are how a lot of things work and you know if the group is separated the leaders are not even there then it just feels like we're not really in the group then..."

- Chris Calamusa

Chris Calamusa joins Joe Crisara on this episode of The Service MVP Podcast to discuss the key steps to Orienting and onboarding Your Team.

Contact Joe Crisara Service MVP.

Podcast Episode Transcription:

Definitely leaders need to be involved if they're scheduling something for their guys they should be there as well with them you want to feel like it's a part of a group, I mean we're all humans group dynamics are how a lot of things work and you know if the group is separated the leaders not even there then it just feels like we're not really the group then. Welcome to the service MVP podcast this is where you go to learn how to use pure motive service to create higher value to grow your results grow your results and now here is your host America's service sales coach Joe Crisara alright everybody welcome to this service MVP podcast and my name is Joe Crisara America's service sales coach as some people call me uncle Joe I'm the uncle to the service industry well we here now today are going to welcome if I had a mount Rushmore of uncle Joe's friends he would be definitely one of the figures on that mountain Ashton granite and his name is Chris Calamusa who is our onboarding coach and orientation supervisor for the clients who work at service MP and Chris is going to talk about a great subject called the three steps orienting and onboarding your team Chris welcome to the podcast I really appreciate you being here oh I'm so glad you asked me to be on this is going to be fun thanks for having me it will be Chris first of all we're going to talk a little bit about you know just you know it's like when people get off to a great start you know it's like in a football game if your team scores a touch on the first drive of the game well the other team is already got to catch up they're you know behind the same baseball when you get ahead of the game you're winning most teams were held in the 7th inning usually win the game by the 9th inning you know sometimes you do lose the game but most of the time it's a good indicator of doing things Christ tell us a little bit about how you got started in in this process of becoming an onboarding and orientation coach and tell me what's been your experience and how did you go from wherever you worked to where you right now well when I first joined the team at was originally contractor selling.com now service MVP uh I was just customer service I was just supposed to answer the phones and try to help people with their technical difficulties but the minute that I saw uncle Joe's doing some coaching meetings I was like I need to be a part of that and then about six months later they made me Joe's assistant and there it was for about two years just soaking up all the gold Nuggets that got spit out of your mouth so it was a very impactful time on my life and you know just my career and you know now you were you bless me by giving me the reins to help some other students out and uh practice with them and role play and graduate them now so at this point now I'm the onboarding coach and yeah we're just making sure we get everybody graduated and through our program here's the supervised that department we have other people who are coaches to and Chris has gone from not just the onboarding coach but also to the person who supervises the coaches and that area trains those people as well he doesn't just on board your company he onboards our company to our people here so he's gone through that process right now no matter who it is they have to go to that onboarding and orientation at our company right Christa again uh you know just you know Chris had a career he's still working on his career in stand up comedy he has that one thing he's probably just want me to tell you that supposing everything right now while but well I know well you know this is this is I think the his primary career right now but you never know I would say Chris a lot of question they say I would say that the standard for working a service map is that this has to be your dream job if we pass the test on that first or where we stand on that 100% with all sincerity this has definitely been my dream job I mean if you told me like 10 years ago that I'd be in a position where I get to role play with people and make an actual impact like basically doing improv all day long pretending I'm a customer and I mean doing it rob is one thing but the fact that this actually has a positive benefit on the world you know I mean that means a lot that I get to go home and I just sleep very well at night knowing that you know if there's any if there's you know uncle Joe has a I have a saying that I don't participate in negativity if you go on Facebook you'll see that I usually I don't have anything negative to say about anybody I try to keep that positive and I think Chris typifies that we walked the same path on that part he definitely he sees a lot of people with different backgrounds and different abilities and different elements of sometimes positive sometimes negative sometimes neutral it does a good job thanks Chris for staying positive in the face of helping these people find the path and enlighten the path of luminous path towards success I really appreciate that of course well everybody's got their strengths you know it's just about making sure they know what their strengths are and how that all fits into this big picture that we got here alright Chris let's go into the three steps to onboarding orienting if your team make sure how do we do this right so why don't you begin by telling us about step number one what do you think a company should do in the blue collar service industry to make sure that they get people started off on the right foot I think the key for anything is leadership it's always going to be the key is if leadership can't get it right then it'll be very tough for anybody that they're leading to get it right so one of the biggest advantages that you could have is if you're a leader and you're going through something that you're going to have the people that are following you go through so that way you could answer all their questions and I mean you know what's the definition of a leader it's really someone that serves the people that are following them so how could you serve you know what we call your internal clients if you don't even know what they're going through so leadership is a huge asp tell us about the effort that a leader needs to make to make sure that they're prepped so that they can you know don't got to be a superstar service tacker salesperson or a office you know got to be OK be doing the job but you have to at least experience it tell us a little bit about the effort that a leader would need to make to be able to make sure the team that they have a sufficient credibility so the team would actually follow them they have to be able to put in the effort to First off set the time aside to be able to do that and that kind of leads me into my next point which is scheduling is so crucial so you have to be able to schedule things for people like anything like if you wanted to lose weight you have to schedule your time for the gym if you want to get good at baseball you got to schedule time for practice it's the same thing with this if you don't schedule time watch our videos and go on to our meetings well then everybody's just going to forget about it so the effort from the leaders is about scheduling it's about being able to handle conflict in the right way too I mean there's going to be people that give you pushback some people are negative but that's all things that we could handle and we have plenty of material too to help you out when going through that so you're never alone on that but definitely some of the effort comes into the handling all the personalities even the small stuff like printing out papers for everybody to have so they could physically write stuff down because some people like that just really being prepared and making sure that people feel like they're coming into something that at least somebody knows the process from start to finish and that they could you know lean on them a little bit when they need some clarity it's not like you have to be an expert at the process but you should know where all the tools are located and things like that how important is it that you know if you're asking your people to graduate and go through something like this talk about how the leader needs to kind of complete that training could you go a little bit about that and some like what is the leader's role in this type of a thing you know when you're saying onboarding let's say we schedule it number one before we schedule it the leader should have like already kind of looked at the stuff to make sure we're going to what we're what we're scheduling we're sure it's sufficient for him to believe in the scheduling so to also talk to him about the effort that people need to do as leaders to be ahead of the team when it comes to training tell us about that little bit well yeah I mean what we tell all the leaders is that they need to go through our E course and pass it and graduate you know before they could even ask any of their employees to go through it you know and then you get yourself a lot of credibility when you're able to have graduated before them because then if you're a you know if you're a manager maybe you're not going out in the field you know and if you could do that you know and you're not this isn't even a role that you're typically find yourself in well then man how could somebody who is in that role not do it then so it really just shows everybody who's following you what the possibilities are you know and that's very tough to see if your leader hasn't even done it themselves I mean somebody's walking down a path if you're going hiking and there's a guy in the front of the you know of the group there and he goes hey you guys need to cross this river but I haven't never crossed it yet so good luck I mean you'd be a little bit worried to be like do we really want to cross this river I'm not sure if he hasn't done it yet is this safe to do but if you know you see the leader on the other side he says hey guys come over here I tell you it looks a little bit scary this river but I'm telling you could get through it well then you're a little bit more comfortable with doing that you realize that OK I can get through this it is possible and all that stress really just kind of I mean no pun intended but washes away when you're able to see your leader go through something like that yeah it kind of says well they can do it he's not asking me to do something he hasn't done or she hasn't done himself I think that is a big part of it there let's talk a little bit about that scheduling you mentioned so #2 the step number two you mentioned is the schedule the training the difference between amateur and professional is to schedule things right so let's talk about the scheduling and is it just scheduling the team for this or is the leader going to be part of it or a lot of times people say hey I bought this training for the guys hey guys go ahead and do it is that what a good leader because that's you probably see this that's one of the biggest mistakes as well too could you talk a little bit about not rescheduling it but who are we scheduling and how much time we have to schedule us little bit about what level of commitment it takes to take any employee listen doesn't have to be service envy but whatever you're doing if you're using a different system obviously we have an operating system for service field office staff and management right but you know no matter what you do what would you say is sufficient time and how frequent should it be who should be there and tell us a little bit about that definitely leaders need to be involved if they're scheduling something for their guys they should be there as well with them you want to feel like it's a part of a group I mean we're all humans you know the group dynamics are how a lot of things work and you know if the group is separated the leader is not even there then it just feels like we're not really the group then and people are definitely less motivated there's nothing that holds people more accountable than having your manager sit there and making sure that you were doing this the right way you know and if you're a leader that people respect well then people are going to put in an extra effort to want you to feel satisfied and the effort that they're putting on you know they're going to want to impress you they're going to want to look in front of you and that just means that they're going to put in more effort just by your presence alone and when you're not there I mean you know we've all seen situations I mean we could imagine like imagine a high school class without the teacher in it yeah get pretty chaotic really quick but also the teacher comes in and now they're all listening and paying attention which is good for them because then they learn something you know maybe if they were on their own they'd say we don't need to learn this but then after they do learn it they go you know what that was useful I'm glad I learned that and it really all it took was just somebody being in there leading the way and holding them accountable so a designated leader is going to play the video for the group and then they kind of make sure that everybody looks like you're a facilitator like you're not making the information up you're just doing that now is an important like there's a pretty big companies here like you probably got listening to the podcast probably got people who have 300 employees like that so we're not saying that the CEO has to sit in on these training meetings but we have to have a designated leader that we get through right but how important it would be that the owner is checking in to make sure that that the process is being followed because it's possible for somebody who's been designated the leader to maybe fall short themselves Chris how important it should be checking on that yeah leaders need accountability too you know leaders can have people leading them super important you know you want you want you definitely the whoever this manager who's in charge of the training the leadership they need to be on the same page as the owner and the owner needs to know what's going on because you don't want ownership making different decisions without all the correct information and vice versa too you don't want you know whoever that manager is that leader make a different decisions that you know maybe the owner isn't OK with so we all need to be on the same page and accountability goes all the way up the ladder I remember in my in my book whisperer sales management which we I wrote there's a story about a guy in Canada where I went out there he's like I can't get my team to work as a team and I said OK let's do a meeting so I actually start talking this is that we have the schedule to half a day in the morning from 8:00 o'clock to 12 noon and then about 8:30 the manager goes I got to go to a meeting I got the insurance guy coming and I had to leave the meeting so he leaves the meeting then the sales manager they got I got something I got to do too he lives the meeting I start out the meeting with 25 people Chris and then by other the meeting I had one person sitting there because everybody just got they followed the leader basically leader left so it's like well he's it's time for me to leave too right makes sense Chris that's typifies that how important is that I think the character of the leader that you say we're going to do something that you stick with it for a support is that TU is an employee if your boss is saying to do things a certain way that he does it that way too what do you think of that I mean yeah it's like what's better to lead by advice or to lead by example you know it's like if you see somebody just leaving it just implies well it's not important to him is this important to anybody else you know it makes you question it and then you start thinking of all the reasons why maybe it's not important but if that manager is sitting in there and focused and paying attention well you just assume that that's how it's supposed to be for everybody then so it's a lot and it does leave it to like accountability isn't just from the supervisor to the employee sometimes the employee should speak up and say hey I thought we had this training how important is it that if you're an employee of a company and they said you're going to do an orientation program or something like that it's just pick up for yourself how important OK what would you say a supervisor and when an employee brings up the fact that maybe we said we're going to do this training but I they got me off track I'm not on the training anymore what's going on how important would be the leader can admit that he may have fell short there do you think oh I mean well that's accountability one-on-one right I mean what's the other option you get defensive and blame somebody else I mean that's not a good way to react to anything but if somebody that you're leading is coming up to you and trying t I mean that's almost a blessing to have the fact that they would speak up and have the courage to say something to you especially in a positive way where they're just trying to you know do something that benefits the entire team the customer the company all at once I mean that's a that's a that's a good moment to have even though it's not a good sign it's still like a good pivotal moment where you could switch things around if somebody's able to speak up it's very import Chris let's go on to finally step #3 so you got step number one make sure we have leadership involved and leaders are going to be there to play the videos to test to role play to question people #2 is to schedule these training events and don't put anything else on the schedule right don't put any other calls on the schedule just get this done and then give them the service call our sales car go back to their desk if they're going to do that number 3 Chris what's step #3 to onboarding and orienting your team #3 is being very aware of all of our goals are the key to being able to have something that's the key to knowing what you need to do you know so if we know that the goal is to get graduated well now we can work back how do I get graduated well I got to complete entire call from start to finish well how do I do that well I got to know the benchmark sheet well how do I do that I got to show up to practice so then if you know what your goal is you know how you're able to accomplish it through you know different tasks and how you would work your way up to being able to accomplish that goal but without that graduation then you're just kind of left roaming around randomly doing things you know and what's the purpose of it if there's no goal in the end so it's like anything I mean it's like I was saying before we're losing weight how you schedule it you need to go I want to lose 10 pounds and I have something to work towards or if you just say I just want to lose weight in general but you're going to be happy if you lose what a half a pound which is just get back to next week or you know you just going to keep going and never really feel a sense of accomplishment so and that's the other important aspect of goals too especially as a leader trying to get you know your trainees motivated to want to do all this it's they need goals too they need to have a feeling of like yes I did it I accomplished something I was able to be successful and without those goals they never had a moment where they feel successful so it's really important that they they're motivated the right way for that you know it's interesting and the goals Chris it's like some people would make goals but they're not realistic because you're putting a goal on the results like hey I want to sell $20,000 a week or whatever that's something you necessarily can't control is that number right what you can control is the effort how important is it that goal is like effort based to say hey my goal is to make sure I'm 90 minutes a day for three weeks straight and then graduate on week four that's something that doesn't take a number or a something from the outside make this work how important is the goal is something that you intrinsically inside yourself can achieve as opposed to saying some of the goals like have built-in excuses like the weight because hey I want a vacation or that kind of a thing right certain goals that are important like the way you do things that would you graduate people in three weeks or four weeks that's the goal that doesn't depend on anything other than the fact you put the effort in help so that the goal is based on the effort intrinsically not on something that's outside of yourself that's the one thing that you can do is put in effort for the things you could control so I mean if I make a goal I could make a goal I wanted to reign three times this year it's like well it doesn't allow me to do any part of that you know so that's not even really a goal if you're just basing it off of what you're hoping for so it's really important to bring it down to the level of your effort like you said so one of the goals you can have is I'm going to make sure I go to practice twice a week or I'm going to make sure that I have this section of the benchmark sheet completely memorized by this part those are tangible things that you can do yourself and you don't need to rely on anybody else for that you know and even the team doesn't finish it you said I could still finish it I think I've seen many times when the team kind of fell off and individual people said I don't care I like what I'm doing I'm going to learn this thing you see next before Chris oh plenty of times yeah I mean those are the those are some of the people that are best with the program are the ones that say hey this isn't about you know oh I was forced to do this or anything like that this is something that I see value in this and I see the importance of me swinging the bat all the way through and finishing this thing out and making sure I graduate and learn this program the right way I mean those are the some of the best people with this stuff let's talk a little bit about one thing I was going to mention was the standpoint when you're graduating the sense of achievement that people get could you give us a little bit about that and like I know you that's part of the part you can as a as the trainer the guy who's doing this actually so this guy is Chris has got like I don't know how many meetings do you do Chris how many how many days you do well myself right now is 3 on boarding practice sessions but we have 1234567 day seven practice seven days 33 fills in for Sabrina sometimes he gets three to four a day he does and every single day of the week he's except for Wednesday he's graduating people tell us the sense of satisfaction that you get as a trainer as as a leader of these people in our group what's the sense of satisfaction you get the reward that you get when people graduate as you're leading to this we think well you asked before if this is my dream job and this is literally the reason why it is I mean I can't even tell you how great it feels that multiple times a day I get to have somebody have this sense of relief of happiness of satisfaction of accomplishment and it's just it's crazy because it goes from a span of 15 minutes where they start and they're nervous and you know it's a little bit awkward because we're all on zoom and the nerves are still getting shaken off and by the end of it they did it and it's just this great moment of accomplishment and man I mean there's just nothing better than seeing somebody so excited to have graduated because they put in a ton of work at that point I mean there's a ton of videos a ton of practice sessions a ton of pressure to really come in and nail this thing and obviously the pressure in front of the customer too to try this stuff I mean it takes a lot of courage to do all this so You know when they finally had that moment where it paid off and they're successful to be able to see that live right there and be part of that celebration with them I mean there's nothing better it's definitely one of my favorite parts of this job for sure right and then so the kind of an outline here so what's the journey or the timeline somebody starts with a kick start meeting tell us from the time when they go to kick start for the time they gradually tell us what is happening in that period of time so people can't get understanding of what it looks like and if they did want to see a professional do this everybody here is welcome to join us for a tour to to to watch what Chris does and you could say if nothing else even if you don't join our program for free get to see a professional do this job so you know what it would look like look for somebody to Orient your team could give us look Chris give us a little bit of a sort of a timeline or snapshot of what that yeah thumbnail if you will of all that stuff what was that look like from start to finish well so you have your kickstart meeting and that's where everybody gets oriented on what the program is going to be about we give you some stuff to leave that day and start to see some improvements but then we begin the real training the training is going to consist of watching videos in the morning carve out 90 minutes a day to be able to watch those videos that way you got plenty of time to sit in there and really absorb that material not just fly right through it and then on top of that twice a week we will have five of your guys join us for practice where we literally are going to pretend like I am the customer they are going to be them and we are going to actually start using this stuff so that way they get hands on practice can actually hear themselves say it out loud you know and anybody could role play with anybody right you could do with your manager but there's something about when you know the person and you gotta pretend like you don't know the person makes it a little bit tough to get effective practice out of that so that's why people love coming out to practice with Sabrina and I cause for somebody that they don't know and they could actually treat us like a real customer and not have to you know really play for ten too much so you go to practice twice a week between the videos and practice we do that for about three weeks and then after that point once you finish the videos you're ready for graduation what we'll do is we'll have you send in an option sheet and that's like your ticket to get into your graduation once I get an option sheet that's approved and you did it the right way we'll go ahead and let you schedule your graduation and then when your time for your graduation comes it's just one-on-one and we hit record and it's time to put you to the test and then once you successfully get through the entire call Dennis graduation time you did it you get your certificate we celebrate and then we move you on up to the next level or some of our other coaching classes that we have too but that's the time it takes about three weeks from start to finish right there to get to their onboarding and then at the end of it I I've seen several people make us at the actual companies kind of making a celebration of this thing right they played the video for the team they hand the tell us how that kind of would go on the ground if you OK graduate with you they get the video they get this they get the option the pricing sheet done what's the experience like back at the office for some of these people I mean I've heard a lot of different stories of what people do I've heard that there's pizza parties for people I've heard that there's huge celebrations some people get little gift baskets for doing it and that's really important that we make sure that they realize that we appreciate the effort that they put in so like us as leaders in a company we want our employees to understand like hey you just went through this three weeks of training you deserve a little pat on the back for that and that's what's going to encourage them to continue with the training and make sure they stay sharp because anybody could get trained on something but it's about the coaching that follows too to make sure that you stay consistent with it and no better way to to motivate people than to show them that we appreciate their effort I mean it's one of the things we teach with the magic moments you know so praise and effort goes a long way and that's one of t a magic moment graduation well first of all Chris let me just praise your effort this guy's grinding he's grinding it out all week on a Friday I say hey how about after you're done with work we'll do a little podcast it's like oh and then he comes back and he sounds so fresh like truthfully Chris it's like it warms my heart to see somebody like you who you definitely feel it's in your heart that you really believe in this and if you have to tell contractors from your heart what do you think what's the message you'd like to send to them to let them know that about you and the service that you offer what do you think well I mean at the end of the day I just get a lot of satisfaction from seeing somebody go from not really being interested in something like this to then by the end not only are they interested they're asking me and begging me for more hey where can I find this where can I find this what kind of videos do you have on this and just floating with questions because they see the value in it and you know at the end of the day I I understand the value in this program and I just want the whole world to know how great it is sometimes it bums me out that I can't hop on top of a mountain scream to the entire country that we have this program available so but hey you know when people do find out about it I mean it's just it means the world that I get to hear all the things I mean they're just there's countless stories about oh now I could afford a babysitter or daycare and I could afford cars for my kids and I could afford school and I got more time to spend with my family I have more time to do the things I want I mean there's nothing more satisfying than that and that's possible for everybody just got to get you to go through the training and do the program and follow with it alright everybody that's all we have time for today I would say good meeting starts on time and a great one ends on time I think we qualify for that Chris thanks so much for being a guest on today's podcast and definitely you have my complete gratitude and thanks for that everybody have a great one we'll see you on the next episode.