Education

When I graduated from high school, I thought I would take 1 years off before going to university, that 1 year grew into 35 years, now my dream is that maybe when I retire I will finally get to further my education.  I often say that my biggest regret in life is that I did not get a post secondary education.  Maybe that is why I put such a strong focus on education in our company.   When I started my work experience I thought I would use the education I had, to be able to do the jobs I got, little did I know that no matter what job you have, you will constantly have to further your education, education never ends.  After working in the same industry for over 30 years, each year I realize how much more there is to learn.  I do not think I will ever know it all, it is just not possible, but I am committed to continue to encourage not only myself but all our staff members to broaden their education and knowledge in our industry.

This past off season we invested in sending 8 staff members to an in depth chemistry school put on by one of our vendor partners Bio-Lab.  Over the past 20 years or so I have probably been to 15 chemistry schools, and to be honest I wondered if it would be beneficial for me to attend or not, but am I ever glad I did.   Like other chemistry schools I have gone to before, I heard much of the same things, but no matter what, I always learn something new, or once again pick up something that I once knew but have either forgotten or possible thought  was not important before.  Knowledge is never ending and no matter how mundane a course or seminar is, if you come away from it with 1 new bit of information it will have been worth while attending.

Education is one of the criteria we use when choosing our suppliers, why should we promote their products if they are not willing to invest in their dealers so that we as dealers can properly teach our customers in the proper end use of the product.  We have a number of industry leading suppliers who not only invest in us, educating us in their products, but often also invest in educating us in how to become more successful business partners . These are suppliers who realize that it is much more beneficial for them to help build strong dealer partners then to constantly have to look for new dealers. 

As a company we are committed to investing in our staffs knowledge.  When new sales staff are hired they go through an extensive training course before they are able to serve our customers.  Even then they will continue to learn each day as they deal with new circumstances.  We encourage sharing of ideas and knowledge as we realize we are only as strong as our weakest link, and to some degree we are all the weakest link.  We have also just gone through some training courses with all our sales staff and also service and construction staff.  I am sure that there were times that staff members  thought that the training sessions were a waste of time, but I would disagree with that, because I am sure that they all picked up at least one new bit of knowledge or idea that will help them better serve our customers.