Industry training will be back and more important than ever
Make it Happen Signage Training and Consultancy hit the Industry in 2016 with a radical approach to signage training. Sam Armstrong and her team developed a training programme targeted at specifically exploring the skills and knowledge essential to any signage representative.
Make it Happen’s signage training programme quickly gained momentum and interest with signage businesses of all shapes and sizes.
While the Bootcamp product-based programme has been popular with new and existing Industry delegates, allowing a hands-on approach, it pathed the way for an additional course. On the Frontline is a customer facing training programme which claims to give delegates tips and advice on how to get the best out of not only themselves as a sales or customer service but their business and their customers.
Both programmes across the past three years have trained over 1300 people. Courses are now held at the new for 2021, purpose-built visitor and training facility at Signfab (UK) in Leicester.
We caught up with Sam, managing director of MIH, regarding how training is going in the current climate.
“Quite simply, we had to stop our courses and postpone all bookings at the start of the year, a 7-hour hands on, training course can’t be achieved online. The true essence of our course success has always been the interaction between delegates and not forgetting that excitement when you visit the training facility, where we have showcased an impressive array of fabricated signage samples to view and simply inspire.
With all that said, I felt It was necessary for certain groups to continue online,
I have hosted 1 hour training seminars to franchise networks within the UK recently which were a huge success. Plus, I will be holding an online course for a New Zealand based sign maker, however that needs no explaining why!
Not only has the Bootcamp programme had a refresh but we have also had enquiries to train a much wider spectrum of roles, which is something I am extremely excited for.
My biggest hope and desire for the coming year, is for people take the opportunity to embrace educating themselves. Training is not only for new people; my longest serving delegate had been in Industry for over 40 years and even they went away having learnt something new; that was a proud day for me.
If you have new or existing employees that are in sales and marketing, graphic design, or own your sign business, give an opportunity to learn even more about our skilled and diverse Industry.
We must move out of the days where we are fearful or see no importance of training and educating our teams and ourselves. Some employers say what happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us? But I ask: what happens if we don’t and they stay? We will once again, one day soon, Make it Happen!”