Rent-to-own News - easyhome conference enters training mode, honors top performers

Jersey Boys 'easyhome style": L to R David Ingram, President & CEO, Dave Maries, Senior VP, Marketing, Merchandise & Financial Services, Steve Goertz, Senior VP & CFO, Rick Atkinson, Senior VP Development

Day two of easyhome’s 2010 National Conference in Niagara Falls, kicked off with several timely and relevant 'Breakout Power Sessions' encompassing focused training on topics such as employee retention, establishing meaningful initial customer relationships, sales optimization, and the annual vendor show.

With all Support Centre employees present and following the recent merger of easyhome's two corporate offices, trainer and facilitator Dan Bigonesse worked with the support team on how best to achieve superior customer service for all customers.

This session explored the distinction between internal and external customers as well as easyhome’s core values to further emphasize the importance of streamlining internal working behaviors and processes.  Mindstore’s Jack Black rounded out this session by inspiring to continue developing world class support that ultimately delivers a world class retail shopping experience and customer relationship.

The Employee Retention session led by Kelly Barrie, Director of Learning and Steve Green, Vice President Operations at easyhome, fine tuned the skills of hiring and retention practices using a series of training methods.

The Sales session, hosted by Kevin Graff, took easyhome managers through key selling techniques with the “Top 10 Do’s/Don’ts of Selling” serving as inspiration for store managers to focus on establishing a relationship with their customers sooner and achieving higher close ratios with in-store customer traffic.

The Vendor Show featured displays of easyhome’s 2010 Christmas product lineup and was a fantastic opportunity to expose store managers to the complete product lineup while giving them access to our vendor partners and in depth product knowledge.

The afternoon concluded with the annual Q & A session hosted by President & CEO David Ingram. It 
was an opportunity for 450 employees to go one on one with Ingram and ask candid questions or make observations about the organization. This closed door session continues to be a highly productive exercise as it surfaces many opportunities for improvements as well as delivers fantastic new ideas that Mr. Ingram assigns to the senior management team on the spot for immediate implementation.

Rounding out the conference was the Annual Gala Dinner.  Last year’s performance forced tough decisions on spending responsibilities with one of the cut backs being field Christmas Parties.  With performance returning to strong growth, the night was themed, “The Christmas Party You Never Had” and included a sumptuous Turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  The night’s entertainment included a joyful rendition of a popular “Jersey Boys” number by easyhome’s Executive Management team.

The Senior Management team and special Guest Don Johnson, easyhome’s Chairman, awarded top honors to the company’s best performers.  Awards were handed out this year for easyhome’s Top Store Manager and Top Regional Associate, along with the newest inductees to the easyhome’s Million Dollar, Platinum and newly created Diamond clubs.