Your 2016 Spring Expo is not far away! It will be March 30th to April 1st in bustling New Orleans, Louisiana, at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans!
We’ve been talking to you, our members, researching topics and trends, and working hard to construct the perfect event that will help you become even more successful this new year and beyond! You can read a short synopsis of the many sessions that are planned below! Be sure to go to www.registerforsuccess.com today to reserve your space for what will be a tremendous event!
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
8–5 pm: Learning Alliance Day: Understanding Behavior Types Using the DiSC® Assessment Test
(Session Is Open to ALL—Members, Managers & Employees)
The debut of Learning Alliance Day! Prepare for a training unlike anything you’ve recently experienced at Expo. You won’t be sitting in a chair all day, fighting droopy eyes and deep yawns. You’re going to be moving, shaking, interacting, and learning! Learning Alliance is rolling out a new style of training centered on networking, team building, and challenging you to challenge yourself! Forget any preconceived notions about what this training day once was, and instead, buckle-in for what it will be: big energy and deeply impactful.
Your Learning Alliance team has spent countless hours talking with you, our members. We’ve listened to your needs and desires, and we’ve heard loud-and-clear a desire for guidance on how to help, train, and manage, all sorts of people. That will be the focus of our first Learning Alliance Day: Understanding Behavior Types Using the DiSC® Assessment Test.
Each person is unique, but research has identified that we have more in common than we think, especially when it comes to why we act the way we do. DiSC is an assessment tool that has managed to categorize our behaviors and explains how they drive our decisions and actions. During Learning Alliance Day, you’ll learn the finer points of the DiSC assessment—and more importantly, you’ll also learn how different behavior types work (or don’t work) together by taking part in a variety of activities—be sure to wear comfortable shoes! (That’s all we can share for now!)
You’ll leave Learning Day with a much deeper understanding of how to communicate with people different than yourself. You’ll be in a much better position to help your employees, coworkers, and especially clients. That will obviously lead to a happier and more successful company…
We’re excited to unveil a new type of training day at Expo—Learning Alliance Day! We promise you’ll be thrilled you brought your entire team for this eye-opening, training experience!
Thursday, March 31, 2016
8 am–noon: Opening General Session – Guest Speaker: John Stahl-Wert
Topic: Serving Leadership
John Stahl-Wert is a best-selling author, an internationally known speaker and an expert in growing great leaders. He has touched the hearts of over 100,000 people from around the world through his highly praised books, keynote addresses, and collaborative workshops. John is a working executive, serving as president of the Newton Institute (a subsidiary of Newton Consulting), and director of the Center for Serving Leadership. He is former president and director of the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation, and is founder and former CEO of Serving Ventures.
John is a pioneer in the “serving leadership” movement. From manufacturing industries to fast-food franchises, organizations are leaving autocratic, hierarchic leadership models for practices that “Upend the Pyramid,” value people, serve customers, and paradoxically increase productivity and profitability. John will challenge you to take a look at your own operation and see how you can better serve to better lead. Prepare to completely reevaluate your idea of what leadership should be. A simple change in philosophy can launch your business to new levels of success you’ve only dreamt of achieving.
Noon–1 pm: General Lunch
Noon–1 pm: Ladies’ Luncheon
Thursday Afternoon Sessions (Choose One Session from Each Timeframe)
1–2 pm: Goal Setting/Communicating Performance Expectations
You start every year with a general idea of how much revenue you’d like to generate, and you hope to hit a certain profit percentage. Before you know it, it’s late November and your numbers aren’t quite where you want them to be. If you want to create real success and generate real growth in your business, it means setting goals and building a plan to hit those goals. Furthermore, you must develop a set of expectations for your team to meet in order to hit those goals. In this session, we’ll take a hard look at this topic. You’ll leave with some ready-to-implement strategies to creating reasonably attainable goals and performance expectations. If you find that your company has hit “a ceiling,” you need to attend!
1–2 pm: Profits before Growth
Almost every contractor goes into business with big dreams. You’re going to have a beautiful, plush office with a fleet of 30, 40, maybe 200 service trucks! But here’s the truth: Does the number of trucks you have really matter if you’re barely able to pay the bills? In this enormously important session, we will be taking a look at the topic of maximizing profits before focusing on company growth. If you’re not generating big, double-digit profits, yet you’re very focused on growth, you should probably give this presentation a look. You’ll leave with some information that will make you think and deeply analyze your business.
1–2 pm: Building a Pricing Strategy
You went to Executive Perspective, and you left with your mind blown—but you were excited about the future. When you got back to your shop, you may not have known where to begin making changes. Well, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been within the SGI family 1 year or 10 years, if you’re not priced properly, getting your price structure where it needs to be should be your entire focus. In this session, we will examine some of the critical numbers you must have to be priced exactly where you need to be. You’ll walk away from this session knowing when and how you should raise your prices. And we’ll explore other critical components of your company that impact your pricing and revenue. If you’re scraping by or just not making the money you think you should be, check this valuable presentation out!
1–2 pm: Overcoming Objections in the Home & on the Phone
You follow SGI’s recommendations, and you make a concerted effort to train your office and field teams. You work with them to develop scripts. You role-play, and you talk about various challenges they face. But once your CCRs or technicians are with a customer, and they get a really tough objection, are you confident they have the best answers? How they handle that one objection can be the difference between sale and no sale. In this session, we will be inviting some of the SGI family’s top performers on stage to share with you their real-life experiences, their most difficult objections, and explain how they swat them with ease. If you’re a technician or CCR looking to maximize your performance and earning potential, you’ll want to be in the room for their presentation!
Thursday Afternoon Sessions (Choose One Session from Each Timeframe)
2:20–3:20 pm: Building Your Marketing Strategy
Your company is running efficiently. You’re happy with your team. Now, you just need calls! Not just to keep you busy now; you’re looking to grow! You can’t grow unless you have customers eager to have you out to their home. So, what’s the best marketing strategy for a small contractor to become a big contractor? We’ll take a deep look at that question in what will be a well-attended session. You’ll hear from fellow members explain, step-by-step, what they did with their marketing that helped their companies explode. If advertising has always been your struggle, be sure to attend this presentation!
2:20–3:20 pm: Online-Reputation Management
It is a different world out there. It’s certainly not the one you grew up in. In almost every market, the phone book is a thing of the past—a dinosaur. Today, people whip out their smartphone or laptop and pull up their favorite search engine when looking for a service contractor. What they find is your website and a host of third-party websites promising relevant reviews of your business! Never mind that you’ve been in business for 50 years, it’s those two or three remarks usually left by upset homeowners that can and do affect your call volume. What can you do about bad reviews? How do you manage your online reputation when it seems out of your hands? We’ll take a look at this deeply important topic.
2:20–3:20 pm: Personal Finance 101
You work with your people daily trying to help them improve their performance. You do it because it’s good for your customers, your business, and them—after all, productive, successful employees are happy employees. However, there’s one thing most of us never think to talk about with our people: It’s what they do with their money AFTER they have it. The sad truth is many people were not raised to understand personal finance. They don’t know how to secure their future. In this session, your employees (and you, if you’d like) are welcome to attend to learn the essentials of personal finance. You’ll walk away having a much better idea of how to put your money to work for you!
2:20–3:20 pm: Leadership Development
You have so many responsibilities as a business owner. You’re managing, training, and administrating. You’re looking for talented people to bring aboard your company. You’re searching for better pricing on materials and equipment. You’re trying to identify new sources for leads. But if you’re truly looking to grow your company, none of these tasks are as important as your ability to develop leaders within your company. When you have a team of motivated, eager leaders, there are few limits to your ability to grow and enjoy success. In this session, we will take a deep look at how you can develop leaders within your company—it goes far beyond basic weekly or daily training. As you will see, developing leaders takes a daily commitment. Make sure you attend this session to gain revealing and insightful information on how to elevate your team and company.
3:40–4:40 pm: ESI Breakout: Electrical Industry Trends
Your ESI team does its very best to keep you up to date on the latest business trends and developments. During this session, we’re going to give you some inside knowledge on what’s transpiring within your industry from our BuyMax vendor partners! Yes, we’re leveraging the power of our group and have asked some of our largest vendors to share with you where your industry is heading in the next year and the next five and 10 years. This is information you will hear—but your competitors will not! So be sure you’re in attendance!
6–9 pm: BuyMax Vendor Showcase
Your BuyMax Alliance team works tirelessly year-round finding new vendors, bringing them to SGI, and negotiating the best pricing possible for you! You have some of the best rebates and discounts imaginable in the trades! At Vendor Showcase you can meet most of the vendors available to you! Plus you can meet and network with other SGI members! Of course, there will be plenty of food and drinks at the showcase!
Friday, April 1, 2016
Early-Morning Breakout Sessions (Choose One to Attend)
8:30–10 am: Understanding Behavior Types Using DiSC Assessments
Each person is unique, but research has shown us that, as a species, human beings share a lot of common behavior traits. DiSC is an assessment tool that has managed to categorize our behaviors and shows how they impact our decisions and actions. During this impactful session, you’ll learn the finer points of the DiSC assessment, and in particular, you will see how different behavior types work (or don’t work) together. This information will help you better communicate with your team and your clients, leading to a happier and more successful company. This promises to be a high-energy, daylong event with plenty of networking and team-building activities. This session is highly valuable for not only owners, but for everybody in your company.
8:30–10 am: Branding Strategies from Your Fellow Members
Everybody is always looking for the next great marketing tool. You’re constantly seeking for an advertising strategy that keeps you busy during those traditionally quiet months. Or you’re always hoping to find a new strategy that leads to a windfall of leads. During this session, you’ll hear from your fellow members who have grown their operations from small, mom-and-pop companies into some of the largest residential service contracting companies in the country. They’ll share their branding strategies that helped them grow year-by-year. You might be surprised that much of their branding work had to be done inside the company before it could be done outside it. This is presentation will give you a roadmap to growing your company the right way!
8:30–10 am: Online-Reputation Management
It’s a different world out there. It’s certainly not the one you grew up in. In almost every market, the phone book is a thing of the past—a dinosaur. Today, people whip out their smartphone or laptop and pull up their favorite search engine when looking for a service contractor. What they find is your website and a host of third-party websites promising relevant reviews of your business! Never mind that you’ve been in business for 50 years, it’s those two or three remarks usually left by upset homeowners that can and do affect your call volume. What can you do about bad reviews? How do you manage your online reputation when it seems out of your hands? We’ll take a look at this deeply important topic.
8:30–10 am: Faith-Based Organizations
You obviously began your company because you wanted to make money and provide a great future for your family. But you’re not willing to do anything to accomplish your goals. You take your faith and/or your values very seriously. They play a huge part in how you operate your business, treat your employees, and handle your customers. During this session, we will be looking at your role as a business owner in your community. As your company grows and enjoys a profit, you should be committed to serving the people who’ve made your success possible. We’ll discuss ways you can make a real difference by serving others as a leader in your community.
Mid-Morning Breakout Sessions (Affinity Group Specific)
10:30 am–noon: ESI Breakout: Developing an Operational Plan
Feel like you’re always hitting a ceiling when it comes to growth? Frustrated that you can’t quite seem to get to double-digit profits? Confused why you’re not hitting your budget? Most of these stem from operational issues. You could be functioning properly in almost every way—but if there’s a hidden problem here or an unforeseen issue there, it can absolutely torpedo your company goals. In this session, we will take an extensive look at what you need to be doing every single day to achieve operational excellence. We will precisely highlight the segments of your business you need to be measuring, analyzing, and tweaking on a constant basis. Once your operations are functioning exactly as they should, nothing can hold you back from achieving any goal you have in your business!
Noon–1 pm: General Lunch
1–2:45 pm: Closing General Session—Featured Guest Speaker: Sam Glenn
Topic: It’s All About Attitude
With Sam Glenn, “It’s all about attitude and it all starts with attitude!” Sam went from working nights delivering newspapers—negative, depressed, and sleeping on the floor and barely getting by—to discovering renewed purpose, happiness, and humor. Sam had one of the most negative and self-defeating attitudes you would have ever encountered, but something happened that changed everything! It was a chance encounter at a buffet nearly 23 years ago, when Sam accidentally knocked over the legendary Zig Ziglar. This led to a positive friendship between the two and with Zig’s encouragement, Sam got on tract in a new direction for his life. Today, Sam Glenn is known as “The Authority on Attitude.”
For a little more than 19 years now, Sam Glenn has been traveling the country captivating audiences from every industry with his inspirational talks that focus on recharging attitudes for success. In addition to being an award-winning inspirational speaker, Sam is a gifted performance artist and author of 18 incredible books on personal and professional development.
Sam Glenn has been honored by being named Speaker of the Year on several occasions by meeting and event organizations and won two national awards for his training videos. He has a very uplifting story and weaves it into his topics, which revolve around attitude, empowerment, leadership, peak performance, employee engagement, transformation, customer service, and teamwork. Sam Glenn will ignite you personally and professionally as you leave Expo and prepare to return to your businesses.
5:30–9 pm: SGI Awards Gala (Formal Event, Please Dress Accordingly)
Salespeople, technicians, repair specialists, and CCRs across the country have worked very hard to attain their goals and achieve remarkable levels of success. During this session, SGI will recognize, honor, and celebrate its Crown Champions and Scoreboard award winners! There will be hors d’oeuvres and drinks for everyone to enjoy throughout the evening. If you’re bringing team members to this Expo, this is the session they will NOT want to miss! Encourage them to introduce themselves to these top performers and ask them questions. For you, the owner, this is another great opportunity to meet other members and network! There’s no better way to wrap up another great Expo!