Additional Information:

This article appeared in ASA Washington’s Dateline Magazine -- November 2007, Volume 13 Issue 10.

Maximizing Your Training Investment: Making it Pay Off 

By: Michael Strautman, TurnaroundTour.com

1pay·off - \ˈpā-ˌȯf\ - noun - 2: the act or occasion of receiving money or material gain especially as compensation… (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary)

               Do you have dusty shelves? Are they full of books and resources you bought at seminars and AMI workshops? When you bought it, you likely had the best intentions of using it. However, you got back to the shop, and got back to business as usual. Six months pass and the book is still there - still on your mind, but you never have time to work on it now. A year passes… two… three... “What’s this? OH, I thought I had lost this book… Here it is!” The mission of Automotive Service Leaders is to assist shop owners in maximizing the payoff for knowledge purchased: past, present, and future. They exist to turn knowledge into action and action into change.

                Since its creation in 1979, Automotive Service Leaders has sought to be a help to shop owners’ success through training and organizing group meetings for shop owners across the country. In the automotive industry today, there are countless resources available for training and knowledge gathering. Realizing this, Gary Gunn, founder and CEO of Automotive Service Leaders, and his team have sought to do one thing. Help YOU, the shop owners, USE what you already know and get the payoff for your investment.

                Automotive Service Leaders is dedicated to ensuring your return-on-investment for your training. Through years of observing training events and their results, Gary Gunn has found that shop owners commonly will invest training dollars in areas where their businesses are not performing well. However, most shop owners, after the investment, have found only marginal success with those investments. Automotive Service Leaders will help you answer the question, “Why am I seeing little or no results?” You will begin to understand what actions are necessary to ensure the success of any training investment. It is of no concern to them who your preferred training company is. They simply provide tools for planning, taking action, and moving forward with proven management techniques taught in training workshops you have attended. Gary’s easy-to-use FREE Payoff Tools© plus a Tuesday Class to help you learn how to get things organized. Just go to our website to get your FREE Payoff Tools©   www.turnaroundtour.com

                Most of your time training should happen AFTER the event is over. Simply getting emotionally charged will not create change. A few weeks later you will be back into your previous routines - unless you have a plan with which to take action. John Maxwell says it best in his DVD series on The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership—Law #3 The Law of Process. “The event encourages decisions, and the process encourages development.” Do you have a process for implementing business changes, or do the resources sit on the shelf gathering dust? Dust off your shelves. The books on the shelf represent decisions you have made, the dust represents the lack of action. Learn to get the payoff you wanted when you bought all of those books! Contact Automotive Service Leaders for further information and help at 1-800-233-8551, ggunn@turnaroundtour.com, or www.turnaroundtour.com.