Super-Charging Your Sales Team’s Performance

How to make a difference by delivering the right training and information – at the right time

Caleb Johnson, Director of Strategic Accounts, Expertus

By Caleb Johnson, Director of Strategic Accounts, Expertus

In today’s tight economy, pressure in the marketplace is stronger than ever and hitting from many directions – turbulent business cycles, fewer buyers, decreased spending power, increased competition and dwindling returns. To succeed, you need a smarter, faster sales team – a team that’s armed with just-in-time knowledge, training and market insight that provides a real competitive edge.

Leveraging the expertise of your top performers has become a business imperative. So how do you deliver the critical information your sales force needs, precisely when it’s needed? It starts with next-generation cloud learning platforms that fit-in seamlessly with your existing infrastructure to integrate high-impact sales training, information access and knowledge sharing, precisely at the moment of need.

Tip #1 – Shift informal learning into high gear

Fact: Today, only 20% of learning is packaged in formal training courses. That means the lion’s share of your team’s expertise is gained through informal learning – for example, reading articles, sharing “war” stories with mentors and peers, sharing online video and audio how-tos, exchanging unstructured email and text messages to seek advice and support, or using Google and other search engines to find market news, competitive information, and other intelligence.

It’s what your salespeople must constantly do “outside of the LMS box” to learn what traditional classroom training can’t teach them. But now, there’s a better way.

A cloud-based dynamic learning platform is a breakthrough, because it’s a more flexible, efficient way to support formal classroom training and e-learning. But more importantly, a dynamic cloud LMS extends your learning environment to incorporate and all the relevant, valuable informal learning content and channels in a single unified, dynamic interface.

Tip #2 – Optimize time-to-competency for new hires

With everything your sales team needs to learn available under one web “roof,” you can speed on-boarding and time-to-proficiency, and reduce the time your salespeople spend in classrooms. And consider this – a portion of most new-hire curricula focuses on topics that simply aren’t necessary for sales professionals to absorb immediately (for example, general corporate information and methodologies).

Imagine how much more quickly new sales employees could be productive if on-boarding focused first on necessary sales skills and information – followed in subsequent weeks and months by non-critical training and information? A dynamic cloud LMS can make it easy to automate custom learning paths for all new sales employees.

Tip #3 – Keep the best sales guidance top-of-mind

Let’s face it – your sales organization’s most valuable knowledge can’t be found in the training department. It’s actually walking around with your team in the field. Smart new sales reps love spending time with experienced colleagues – listening to their stories and advice. This is truly the most valuable training your business can provide. Mentor guidance can shorten your team’s learning curve help avoid costly pitfalls.

Just imagine if this advice was at every fingertips – including sales call planning tips, follow-up strategies, talking points, differentiators and buyer insights? A dynamic cloud LMS provides a centralized, collaborative forum for on-demand learning and interaction. So your sales force can finally get the info and know-how they need, when they need it, in portions that are easy to digest and understand. And in sales, that’s the key to success!

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Conclusion

Are you ready to facilitate and optimize sales knowledge sharing? Make training more useful and valuable? Leverage the collective expertise of your senior team members? And overcome the demands of today’s marketplace? Your best bet is to add a dynamic cloud learning platform to your arsenal. Don’t be surprised if your sales force rewards you with dramatic performance improvement.

Note from Caleb: Are you facing challenges with sales performance? Need advice about how to make a lasting difference for your business? Contact me anytime at calebj@expertus.com.

Or read about our dynamic cloud LMS designed specifically for sales enablement  – ExpertusONE for Sales Teams.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Enterprise Learning Portals: Building Your Case

How to Develop a Business Case That Works

By Mohana Radhakrishnan, VP Client Services, Expertus

Mohana Radhakrishnan, VP Client Services, Expertus

In a 2009 TrainingIndustry.com survey, more than 90% of learning executives relied on learning portals as part of their infrastructure. Also at that time, nearly 60% of respondents planned to upgrade or launch a new learning portal within several years.

Looking back, I wonder what the outcome of those projects has been. Did the organizations realize measurable value? How long did it take? And did their sponsors commit to continuous improvement?

After all, for most global corporations, learning portals represent a major capital investment — even if you rely upon a SaaS-based learning architecture, and applications are delivered from the cloud.

In the past few years, the need for specialized learning ecosystems has only increased. So if your learning organization is like most, it’s essential to seek stakeholder approval for ongoing upgrades and enhancements to your portal environment. It’s never too soon to start.

Getting Started

If you want to speak the language of today’s C-level executives, you’ll want to quantify your expected return-on-investment (ROI) in a clear, complete, compelling way. But where and how should you start?

The easiest entry point is to identify groups who are not able to participate in learning initiatives. Then estimate the business cost of this lost opportunity. Here are some quick tips to help you develop a persuasive argument with straightforward cost-benefit analysis techniques:

1) Examine Training & Performance Reports – Extract business metrics that support your case. Examples:

a) Choose statistical indicators that expose problems in reaching unserved/underserved learners (e.g. Are enrollments and completions lagging?)

b) Compare the proportion of learners served vis-a-vis the total target population

c) Identify trends that are moving in an undesirable direction (e.g. Compare performance indicators over time with benchmarks from comparable organizations.)

d) Highlight the upside impact of existing portals on groups currently served (employees, partners, customers, and others), and extrapolate those results across underserved audiences.

Download the whitepaper – no registration required

2) Audit and Analyze Stakeholder Concerns − Interview stakeholders to uncover and document training roadblocks. Next, create a matrix with two categories: Issues that can be addressed by a next-generation portal, and those that cannot. Then estimate the cost of each portal investment that can make a positive difference. Finally, compare those costs with the overall cost of maintaining the status quo. In other words, over a 1-year planning horizon, calculate the total estimated net cost or lost revenue for each untrained learner x the size of the learning audience.

3) Determine the Portal ROI − Divide your total opportunity cost by 5 (a typical rule-of-thumb for large companies). If the result is six-figures or more, it’s a great indication that your next-generation learning portal proposal payoff aligns with industry benchmarks. In this case, your business sponsors should have confidence that their investment will be worthwhile.

Would you like to know more? If you want more details about how to develop a business case, download “How to Boost Business Revenues with Learning 2.0 Portals.”

Or for guidance about whether your organization should build or buy a portal, register to download our whitepaper, Learning Portals: The Build vs. Buy Dilemma (including the 5 Learning Portal Gotchas).

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Note from Mohana: If you’d like to discuss your organization’s challenges, or you’re interested in understanding more about next-generation learning solutions – contact me anytime at mohanark@expertus.com.

Employee On-Boarding – Making it Stick

Reconfigure New Hire Orientation Programs to Reduce Turnover

By Mohana Radhakrishnan, VP Client Services, Expertus

Mohana Radhakrishnan, VP Client Services, Expertus

Even in today’s tight job market, many top companies are struggling with new hire retention. One example is Kelly Services – a leader in temporary staffing, recruiting and workforce outsourcing.

In recent years, the company was losing 40% of new employees within only 6 months of their start date.

Do you face a similar dilemma? If so, do you know what to evaluate, or where to start in strengthening a weak on-boarding program?

It’s not as difficult – or as expensive – as you may think! At Kelly Services, it was possible to make significant progress within only a few short months. Here’s how key metrics shifted:

• New hire turnover rate decreased from 40% to only 6%
• New hire time-to-competency accelerated by two months
• Program and retention costs decreased by more than $1 million

Tip #1 – Focus on the Fit: Why It’s Great to Work at your Company!

This is where Kelly Services experienced tremendous results – retooling its training content to reinforce the fact that joining the company is a good career decision.

“The new content includes career success stories and reminders about the importance of their jobs and how they will be helping to put people to work,” said Allison Kerska, Sr. Director of Global Learning at Kelly Services. “We also got executives involved in the deliveries, and used the forum to get folks excited about how they can contribute to the organization.”

Here’s how 2 other Expertus clients successfully engaged new hires through reconfigured training content:

• One focuses on building a solid understanding of company methods, systems, policies, and resources.
• Another thoroughly immerses new hires into the company culture.

Tip #2 – Foster Team Connections and Support with Social Learning

A commonly overlooked problem with traditional new hire bootcamps is that the personal connections made with peers and leaders are fleeting. Unless they’re working in the same office, there’s no real structure to help geographically dispersed teams stay connected in a purposeful, focused manner – which can negatively impact morale, loyalty and retention.

This is where social learning tools can make a huge impact. New enterprise learning systems, like ExpertusONE, build-in these tools – enabling online workshops, real-time web conferencing, chats, wikis, blogs, expert lists and more. They provide a virtual venue where bootcamp teammates and SMEs can reconnect to continue conversations, share tips, learn best practices, and other knowledge and guidance long after their “official” training ends.

At Kelly Services, “We gave employees access to information that keeps them from having to figure things out on their own,” Kerska explains. This, of course, results in faster time-to-competency and enhanced job satisfaction.

Tip #3 – Use Virtual Classrooms for Low Cost, High Impact Programs

Some companies are still leery of providing new hire training virtually. Will the impact be the same? Will attendees be just as engaged? In short – yes!

Kelly Services piloted a program in 6 markets – 3 based on virtual classroom delivery and 3 based on traditional ILT delivery. The outcomes were exactly the same.

Another leading company – Microsoft – turned to the ExpertusONE POD on-demand learning platform for new-hire orientation programs. Microsoft simultaneously delivered top-notch technical courses and labs to trainees across 46 countries. One attendee echoed the sentiments of many, “Both the service provided and user experience reached a professional level higher than I’ve ever seen.”

So, if carefully planned and implemented, virtual on-boarding can be just as effective at engaging employees – while offering a much more attractive solution for those on tight training budgets. Here are just a few of the benefits learning organizations can expect:

• Eliminate travel and/or venue costs of in-person events.
• Significantly reduce downtime for participants and presenters who would otherwise need to travel.
• Potential to increase the frequency and reach of orientation programs.

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Conclusion

New hire training is probably one of your company’s biggest investments. So why not take the time to ensure you’re getting the biggest return possible? Innovative cloud-based technologies can make a dramatic difference, much more quickly an easily than you might expect.

Note from Mohana: To learn more about how your organization can apply any of the new-hire retention solutions featured in this article – or to learn more about the ExpertusONE POD for New Hire Bootcamp – contact me anytime at mohanark@expertus.com.