Originally Posted by
Framebender
Perhaps I am a little more sensitive because we are discount and alot of people, including our peers, precieve discount as sub standard. The Minister of Finance takes care of the tax stuff, but I want us to be able to hold our own with anybody in town. Having a crew of primarily geezers I don't sweat the basics, but I want them to be familiar with new materials and new lens designs. Heck, I want to be familiar with them as well.
We are fortunate to have good lab reps in our area from Hoya, Essilor & Zeiss/Sola so we have meetings about once a month to pick their brains on a rotating basis. We also invite frame reps in to help us with the newest styles and trends in our area. That's the real problem with running an older crew. I caught one of them on the floor the other day lamenting about the AG Deeda with the blue to pink tint. He had to buy lunch for the whole crew over that one!!
I want our receptionist to become ABO certified and she's working really hard at it. We let her work the floor about 2 days a week under the supervision of an experienced Optician. I believe this is important because she is the first one alot of our people come in contact with. She knows that we can still get execs, double d's and alot of other things that other people in town say are no longer available. When someone asks for something she's never heard of she knows enough to ask the person for their phone number so that she can check and see if its available. How can you put a price tag on that?
As soon as the classes are up for the Vegas show we gather around and figure out who's going to take what class. We spend a fair amount of money flying everyone in and putting them up for 3 days, but they all know that they are responsible for sharing whatever information they get with eveyone else. So its actually pretty cheap and we have next to no turnover!! The savings in training alone is a blessing, not to mention that our folks like seeing they same faces all the time.
There's only 6 of us now including myself. I don't know if we'll be able to continue as we grow, but we're certainly going to try. ;)
Bookmarks