APRO Expands Learning Opportunities in 2024 and Unveils Even More in 2025!

Scheduling Help: “We’re all busy, and we can easily get stuck in the day-to-day grind and everything that we have to get done. Sometimes, it gets hard to get on and do your posts, so I find it’s good to set a time on your calendar every week that you’re going to go and schedule everything out for the next week so that you don’t get behind on that. I have personally used several different tools, including Social Pilot, Hootsuite, and Later.com.”

Do Not Call List Policy: “You need a written policy on your ‘do not call’ compliance. You need to train your people on it. You need to make that policy available to people who ask for it. And the policy needs to explain how you process company-specific ‘do not call’ requests.” 

Do Not Call List Process: “If you’re reaching out because someone is a current customer or prior customer, and they’ve told you not to contact them, your obligation is to have a list internally where you’re marking that down so you’re not reaching out to somebody who’s already asked you to stop.”

Get In There: Start testing AI now and stop over-relying on your best employee: “You might think you don’t need to worry about AI because you have George, and George has been here for 75 years, and he knows everything. Well, George won’t be there forever, and George doesn’t know everything, so you might have an advantage if you’re using AI, even if George is a great owner. I encourage you to set aside time to play with AI. Share what you learned with your colleagues, and at least start now.”

Follow-Up to Store Visits: “After a store visit, we want to identify where we see execution gaps. We want to agree on an action plan with our store leader, along with some deadlines and actionable time frames that we want to see these execution gaps solved by. We always want to make a written record of what we talked about while we were in the store. And you always want to schedule your next visit – you never want to leave them wondering when you’re going to show up again.”

Long-Term Success in Business: “There are 2 keys to business longevity. The 1st one for me is to retire the debt. Pay off the debt as soon as you can get out from under any loans. The sooner that you can pay off that debt, the more successful you’ll be and the larger your profit margins will be. The second thing I would say is to develop the people that really care about your company, particularly at the top level. Depending on what size you are, recognize the ones that are special and make sure that you hang on to them. Recognize the good ones, and don’t let them get away, because their success will determine your success.”

Growth Calendar: “You’ve got to grow your accounts. You’ve got to grow your accounts receivable. You’ve got to grow your customer base. And there are times in the year we can grow. I think sometimes, in rental, we should divide our year into thirds – the 1st 4 months, the 2nd 4 months, and the last 4 months. In those 1st 4 months, if we’re a little up at the end of April, it’s going to be a great year, but we have to get growth in March and April. I believe that’s where the magic happens!”

Selling vs. Ordering: “We’ve got to get out of the mindset of ‘it’s just one deal.’ We’ve got to be focused on selling. No matter what we do, we can have the greatest ads in the world, we can have the greatest marketing plans, and we can use whatever customer engagement model you want, but if you can’t sell, it doesn’t matter. There is a difference in selling and ordering. We’re going to have both, but our people need to understand this as well.”

Stay Local: “The key to search marketing is to localize, localize, localize. Spending more money is a bad idea, but you want to always be the most relevant response at all times in your local market. Figure out what people are searching for, give them the response they want, and let them know you’re local.”

Getting Foot Traffic Into Stores: “When we’re targeting someone, we’re targeting customers 1-3 times a day for 45 days because the data shows us that’s what it takes to get someone to move within the market.”

Training Hours: “Employer-sponsored training is almost always going to be work time unless it’s voluntary, outside of normal work hours, no productive work is done during training, and training does not help employees do their job better. Very few companies can set up classes that are not designed to help employees do their job.”