Last year, prior to the establishment of SDU, Darvin and George allocated $150,000 for class materials, meeting space, and the ever-present buffet table. ("Are we big on food!" George crows. "When we train, we eat.") But if staff time, travel, and lost sales were added in, the company would probably find itself way over budget.
Darvin isn't concerned. "Whatever we're spending, it isn't enough," he asserts. He plans to boost the company's employee-development budget to $600,000 next year -- 1% of Scandinavian Design's projected revenue for 1983. It isn't a low-priority item, either. Darvin vows he would slash his advertising and promotion budgets, curtail his expansion plans, and even reduce his sales force before he would lay a hand on any expenditure having to do with SDU. Having seen employees' sales performance rise 13% to 20% after completion of just the three basic courses, he is convinced the budget is money well spent.
"Nothing will work without that training concept," Darvin says. "It's a matter of self-esteem. If you expect people to sell well, you've got to make them feel good about themselves." You do that, he says, by valuing their opinions, by celebrating their accomplishments -- by giving them "the tools they need to feel and act like professionals." And, he concedes with a grin, you have got to give them a bit of that show-biz, that razzle-dazzle.
Want to sell something fast? Tell your customer that teak is the color of dust. It's true! [With teak] you don't have to dust as often. And another thing -- Don't talk about the grain of the wood; use the word 'patina.' Patina. Doesn't that sound great?"
This is SDU's product training course, trainer Holly Jordan at the easel. As she flips through her visual aids, a dozen salespeople ("sales consultants," in the company lexicon) learn how Scandinavian Design's furniture is made, how it should be shown to the customer, and how to handle pesky subjects like veneer.
"Does anybody have a favorite way of dealing with those people who refuse to believe that veneer is better than solid wood?" Jordan asks. There are groans and sighs from the group. Scandinavian Design contends that veneer is a better buy because it is less likely to crack or warp, but to the chagrin of the sales staff, most customers refuse to believe it is used for any other reason than to keep prices down.
"I've got one way," answers employee Douglas Roy. "It's reverse psychology. If a customer asks me if this is veneer," he says, assuming a look of shocked solicitousness, "I say, 'It most certainly is, sir!" The room erupts in laughter, but most of the students jot down the tip in their notebooks.
The course in product training, like most at Scandinavian Design University, is casual and participative. Rather than poring over books and taking tests, trainees learn by watching filmstrips or movies and by taking part in class discussions. They are encouraged to share their selling experiences with each other, and role-playing gives tbem an opportunity to try out unfamiliar techniques.
"Each of our basic courses is intended to make our sales consultants feel comfortable with the company and comfortable with selling our products," says Jordan, during a break in the day-long program. "Everybody learns the rules. But it's equally important that, through the programs, they learn the unwritten rules. I'm talking about how to dress, how to act -- really, I'm here as a role model as much as I am a trainer."
Scandinavian Design doesn't hire outsiders to conduct training programs. Jordan and the other full-time trainer, as well as six others who train part-time, are seasoned furniture salespeople. Each has managed a store, and one of the part-timers -- the company's general sales manager for New England, Aud Kaalstad -- wrote sales exceeding $1 million for two years in a row.
"People in the industry ask us, what are we, crazy?" Taking million-dollar writers out of the stores?" Darvin says, laughing. "Well, it was a big decision. Deciding to use our own people was a bigger commitment than the allocation of the financial resources."
But there was a beneficial by-product of that decision. Moving senior salespeople out of sales and into training created another rung on the career ladder -- something particularly desirable to people itchy for promotion to scarce managerial and merchandising positions. But Darvin and George say they made the switch primarily for credibility's sake, believing that proven salespeople make better teachers.
Employee Douglas Roy will vouch for the truth of that. "When you take a course from Holly or Aud, these people are really on! They know what they're doing, and they're excited about what they're doing, so you can't help but get excited, too. They're real cheerleaders. Real rah-rah." Then, answering the obvious question, Roy adds, "No, it's not being put on, but it is calculated. This company knows exactly what it's doing."
Roy speaks with some experience. His family is in the furniture retail business, and he spent more than a few summers selling furniture at retail outlets. But it wasn't until he joined Scandinavian Design that he received any of what he considers to be sales training. "Most furniture-sales schools are nothing more than a young kid following around an old man for about two weeks. There really isn't anything like SDU anywhere else, because most people either haven't thought of it or think it's a bother.
"In a lot of places, [a salesperson feels] like a number. At Scandinavian Design, it's different. You don't feel like a number, you feel important."
