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HATTIE: Jim Schell has started and sold four businesses.

JIM SCHELL: If there ever has been a Achilles' heel to a small-business person, it's `Training is where it's at.

' HATTIE: Why do you think?

JIM: We get killed in training, particularly compared to our Fortune 500 cousins. It's because we're too busy to train. We consider training as an expense rather than what it really is, which is an investment. I'll tell you a great story on training. We had a staff--in my last company, we had 17 salespeople. We didn't do much training, just because that's the way small business is. My 17 salespeople came to me, as salespeople are wont to do, screaming and hollering and saying, `Jim, we want to be trained.' `OK.' I trained 'em. Had a...

HATTIE: What do you mean you trained 'em? How'd you do it?

JIM: We hired a consultant, came in--a sales trainer. Over a period of two or three months, had a three-day program, follow-up and a follow-up. What happened was, Hattie, that we--our company went from being 10 percent increase in sales every year to wham-o! All of a sudden it's 35 percent, as a result of training our salespeople. I'll give you a quote that I didn't say. I wish I had. People complain about training because you train an employee and then they leave, and this quote, by whoever it was: "If you think training employees and watching them leave is expensive, try not training them and watching 'em stay."