The one thing that can make or break your business’ growth

Getting buy-in from your team now prevents hiccups down the line.

Welcome to The Manual Weekly – LI Edition, the can’t-miss newsletter for small business leaders. You’ll find snackable bits of news highlighting emerging trends, actionable resources, and proven best practices that can help take your business to the next level.

Hot off the SMB press this week: 

• Considering an executive assistant? Here’s what you need to know.
• This process templates can help you transition employees to people managers.
• This one important thing makes or breaks your growth strategy.
• And how Trainual helps you generate training tests — with a single click.

Thinking about hiring an executive assistant? Attend this webinar first. 👇

When you're stuck being busy instead of productive, you need a way to get that precious resource of time back — to focus, to recharge, and to reinvest in your business! And you've probably considered the power of an executive assistant, but where do you start?

Join us for the exclusive webinar event "Chaos to Clarity: Transform Your Workflow with Your Executive Assistant" with our partner BELAY, a leading provider of virtual assistants, tailorable to your specific business! BELAY founder Tricia Sciortino and Trainual co-founder and CMO Jonathan Ronzio will dive into all the ways an executive assistant can help you gain invaluable time back and scale your business. Plus, a bonus Q&A time to ask your burning questions and receive expert advice!

Here are the deets:

🗓 Tuesday, March 19, 2024.

🕘 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT.

📍 Anywhere and everywhere. (It’s completely virtual!)

🆓 100% FREE to attend! Just make sure to reserve your spot.

👉 Save your spot today!

P.S. If you can’t make it, don’t worry! Sign up anyway and we’ll send you the full recording of everything you missed.

Template of the week: Promotion to People Manager Process

Imagine: You’ve got an amazing employee who works hard, goes above and beyond with their responsibilities, and has proven they’re ready for the next step in their career. It seems like they’re ready to lead a team of their own, so it’s time for a promotion.

But, entrusting an employee with managerial duties isn’t just about giving them a shiny new title, a pay bump, and a pat on the back. 

Going from a stellar individual contributor to a people manager takes more than just hard work — it requires specialized training. Being a people manager means being responsible for other employees — for their work and in some ways, for their career trajectories. And that takes a completely new set of skills.

👉 That’s why your training manual is not complete without this Promotion to People Manager Process template, which we created in collaboration with Megan Galloway, founder at Everleader and leadership executive coach. Give it your business’ unique flair, and it’s ready to share with the new people managers on your team.

Want more templates to help you build your business playbook? Check out our entire template archive of free, multimedia-enhanced, and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Get a demo.

Why team buy-in is so crucial to your business’ growth

Picture this: You just came up with the absolute best growth strategy there ever was. (No surprise there, you’re literally a genius.)

But let’s say your team doesn’t have the motivation, skills, or resources they need to get it done. You may as well have your grandma’s secret cake recipe, but no oven, flour, or eggs to bake it. Without the proper support and tools, even the greatest ideas can never become reality.

The key to a successful growth strategy is internal buy-in. This means you need to include your team early on as you develop your growth strategy — so they hop on board (and stay on board) the growth strategy train. Here are four tips to help you achieve internal buy-in:

Trust your team.

It might be tempting to find outside experts who can give you fresh insights and plans. But your very own team can come up with stellar ideas that’ll make waves in your strategy. And when you let them be a part of strategic planning, you can be confident that they’re engaged and prepared to carry out the processes that are decided on.

Incorporate a strong educational component.

The people involved in strategic planning should have a shared understanding of how those plans fit into the bigger picture of the company as a whole — as well as any financial and operational benefits and challenges. So you want to be sure and give them the low down for all things strategy. That way, they’re set up for success as they participate in planning. (Hint: Trainual is perfect for this!)

👉 See the other two tips.

Testing, testing — with minimal effort 

Frightening fact of the day: We forget 50% of what we learned just one hour after learning it, and that number shoots up to 70% after a whole day. So think about a new employee going through your training and the knowledge they’re actually walking away with.

The good news: When you use Trainual, your employees can refer back to the information they need to do their jobs at any time. (Phew.) But ideally, you want to be able to pick out the 30% they remember the next day — making sure it really stuck.

The best way to do this? Tests. (Knowledge checks, quizzes, whatever you wanna call ‘em.) Here are some cool things you can do with tests in Trainual:

Mix up the types of questions you ask. You’ve got a wide variety of the types of questions you can create in Trainual: 

• Single-select. Just like it sounds: one right answer.
• Multiple-select. Choose as many correct answers as you want.
• True/false. See if your team can recognize the truth from the BS.
• Written response. This will require an essay or short response.
• Video response. Incorporate presentations or mock exercises into your training by asking your employees to record video responses.

Short on time? Auto-generate a full test in a couple of clicks! Click the “Auto-generate test” button to create a full, 10-question test (single-select questions) out of your existing content. With zero effort. Just review it and publish.

👉 Hear more test creation tips on Trainual Tips & Tricks.