Hi. We are to conduct a training programme for dealers of a paint manufacturing company. The purpose of the training programme is to sensitise the dealers about certain things like bad ambience & clutter etc. that can be a deterrent to customers' buying decision. The paint company is introducing certain in-shop elements, which are being projected as solutions to the problem of clutter etc. I'm looking for a good icebreaker for this programme that not only allows dealers to introduce themselves but also set the tone of the session. Please help. Thanks, MS
8 Responses
why not create the environment?
Hi Manish
Why not set up your training room (or ante room) in the type of cluttered environment you want your dealers to avoid; you could either do this as a cluttered training room (stacks of furniture, broken flipchart easels, old posters, discarded handouts etc) or a cluttered dealership (with whatever clutters their environment). You could open the day with introductions and “what do you think this environment says about us?”
I hope this helps
Rus Slater
http://www.coach-and-courses.com
bad ambience & clutter
Hi, MS
How about adapting good old Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory (see: http://www.provenmodels.com/21/motivation-hygiene-theory/barbara-snyderman–bernard-mausner–frederick-herzberg ).
In small groups discuss and flip answers to what things in a dealership encourage customer buying decisions (motivators) and what things discourage customer buying decisions (hygiene factors). With any luck bad ambience and clutter will appear on the discouraging list. Intro to programme link is that these hygiene factors are just as important as the motivators – let’s look specifically at ……
Good luck
Alan
http://www.PerformanceConsultants.co.uk
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
One activity we carry out is to get people in pairs and then to answer a few questions e.g.
If they won the lottery
what car would they buy?
what take away would they get?
what newspaper they read?
what holiday they are likely to go on?
then feedback what right or wrong about the other person’s first impressions to each other.
Then they swap with another pairing.
The idea is to show how we all make false impressions, rightly or wrongly based on they way people look – but then you could go on to pictures of messy desks and guess what the perceptions are about the person who left their desk this way.
Inventing paint colours
Why not provide them all with a set of different coloured poster paints and ask them to mix them to invent a paint colour which says something about themselves, and give the colour a name (as in a Dulux colour chart). Have a large sheet of card/paper on the wall (wallpaper lining paper works well) and ask each person to paint a square of their colour on it, and write the name underneath to create a giant paint colour chart. Ask each person in turn to tell the rest of the group about their colour, its name, and how it represents them.
This would satisfy a number of requirements of the icebreaker exercise:
It is fun and colourful so that people instantly relax and engage with the training
It will help people to get to know each other a little better
It will ensure that everyone gets to speak early on in the day to break through the nerves barrier
It has some relevance to the nature of the work of the participants
Hope this helps!!!
Nicki
Thanks
Thanks Rus. I’ll run this by my client.
Thanks
Thanks Alan. I’ll run this by my client.
Thanks
Thanks Sally. That’s a great icebreaker. I’ll definitely run this by my client.
Thanks
Thanks Nicki. I’ll run this by my client.