Determining whether it’s a jacket or umbrella day requires a few non-complicated data points. Unless you’re a pilot or a merchant marine you don’t need to know where the high and low-pressure systems and jet-stream are. Succinctly, the majority of the weather reports you and I ‘enjoy’ are chock-full of superfluous information.
Coincidentally, many sales trainings resemble weather reports in that they are infused with too much product specific information. The inclusion of this type of information doesn’t prepare sales people for business-related real world conversations. Consequently, where sales training should lower the execution risk associated with the act of selling, it fails by actually raises it.
This begs the question, what should sales training look like? Moreover, what type of information should it include and how should it be delivered?
From the top, think like your customer. News Flash: Customers don’t care about you or your product. They care about two things:
How does your product or service help them fulfill their job responsibilities?
How does your product answer a specific business challenge?
That’s it, plain as day. If your training doesn’t prepare your sales people to answer those questions (at a minimum) it’s nothing more than an exercise in futility. The natural inclination when thinking about sales training is to increase product knowledge. Enhancing product knowledge is not a bad thing, however, you can’t lead with it. The art of selling begins with uncovering the opportunity. Translated, this means, what is the real issue the customer is having? Furthermore, do they even know what their core issue is? At a higher level, what are the typical issues organizations in that market are having?
The only way to make a salesperson feel comfortable having a probing conversation is to arm them with holistic market data points. These are often referred to as market dynamics and they include:
Market size
Market trends
Competitive landscape
Typical customer pains (per vertical)
The conversation surrounding these attributes has nothing to do with your product. Of course there is a time and place to communicate how your product fits into the landscape and but this isn’t the first step by any means. The first step is 100% about mapping product/service capabilities to business challenges.
Investing in training and learning activities positively affects revenue. Organizations across industries are starting to understand this. The wheels typically fall off when these organizations attempt to standardize the tools used to create and execute these new learning initiatives.
Determining the tools used to create compelling learning activities is an important task but not the first step. Standardizing the authoring tool before identifying the objectives (the what) or audience (the who) will stifle creativity and diminish your ability to innovate. The right “step one” is determining the objectives, i.e. What do you want to teach? What do you want the audience to walk away with?
Objectives frame the conversation. A conversation without an objective is a meandering mess, which equates to a waste of time. Think of these objectives as the cornerstones of the “what” conversation.
Following the “what” is the “who” which predicates the “how”. This creates a three step process: determining the “what”(step one), outlining the “who” (step two), and determining the “how” (step three). It’s only appropriate to deviate from this process if you have an endless budget, cycles to burn and believe that generating a positive ROI doesn’t pertain to your deliverables.
Placing more emphasis on one step as opposed to another is impossible because each step is predicated on the one before it. Changing the pitch or length of one of the steps will throw your audience’s balance and no one wants that.
Knowing your audience, is invaluable. Developing a deep understanding of their job related responsibilities and how they consume information will pay dividends in the future. It’s these differences that will help you to determine the best way to communicate with them. If you’re hearing marketing speak, that’s good, you get it. Frankly, if you’re unable to understand how your audience listens you’ll be unable to connect with them and therefore ultimately your learning activity will fail.
The data points you’ve gathered in steps one and two culminate with the “how”. How are you going to communicate your points? What is the learning experience going to look like? Is the material best delivered face-to-face in an instructor-led format or should you leverage the web? Is the audience expecting materials that they can use for reference later? These are the core qualifying questions that will help you to determine which authoring tool is the right one for the job.
All future conversations emanate from this point. Your answer needs to be crystal clear as to how your product solves their business issues. Solving these issues might or might not include 3rd party products and services but that’s immaterial. It’s immaterial because your customer doesn’t care. They care only about whether or not your product is the right fit and can you enable them.
Technical organizations are notorious for making the mistake of starting product education with a technical dissertation centering on architecture and installation caveats. To make an accurate assessment of where training should begin, use the questions below.
Why is the customer interested in this product?
What is he trying to accomplish by deploying this product?
Who is the decision maker for this purchase?
Incorporating the answers of these questions into training accomplishes a number of things. First, it tightens the scope of what the educational event will convey. Next, it proves to the prospect that the product operates as advertised in their environment. Third, it establishes you as a trusted advisor.
The net benefit of this approach is the creation of a welcoming environment for your sales team to walk into. The creation of this environment is a culmination of speaking the customer’s language and providing them with the know-how to intelligently evaluate the product. This culminates with presenting the sales channel with a relevant platform to address the customer from.
We’ve made it to the final installment of the Virtual Teaching Is Easy series. In this last segment we’re going to walk through tips five through eight.
Don’t Skimp On Equipment:
This is not the time to be cheap. Frugal maybe, cheap definitely not. Seems like a no brainer however this happens all too often and the audience pays the price. In short, you might be the next Walt Whitman however if your machine doesn’t have the horsepower to compile your voice properly or your Internet connection is flaky you might as well be a mute.
Make sure to arm yourself with a higher quality microphone headset combination. Being that you’re going to have it strapped to your head for hours on end, make sure that it’s as comfortable as it is functional. I use the Logitech ClearChat Pro USB. Hindsight being 20/20 I should’ve purchased the wireless version for convenience sake but this one works just fine.
Location, Present in a Quiet One:
Find a location without background noise. It’s surprising what microphones will pick up. Echoing kills quality by making it hard for the audience to hear you. Add to that, a globally dispersed audience of non-native speakers and you’ve created a perfectly horrible learning environment. Improve sound quality by putting a pillow in front of you but behind your monitor to absorb sound. If you’re near a window, think about putting up a heavy blanket to absorb your voice from the inside and any street noise from the outside.
Be A Student:
Do this from two perspectives. Work in the environment as if you were taking a course. Pay attention to how the instructor shares applications, interacts with the class and moderates lab sessions. Also, see how he handles Q&A in both the chat window and live from the microphone. Second, take the opportunity to sit with the instructor who developed the course you’ll be teaching. Talk to him about his style of teaching and determine if there are any pitfalls you should avoid.
Have A Personality:
Be yourself. If you’re snarky by nature, use it in your instruction. You’re not a robot. Your one-liners and sidebars add color to the conversation, don’t be afraid to use them. The combination of building a compelling presentation, expertly manipulating the presentation application and keeping your vernacular conversational will keep the audience engaged.
Lastly, there’s no silver bullet or magic elixir that will ensure a successful teach. Rather, it’s a combination of doing a number of things right. There will be malfunctions and students will ask tough questions. Remember to stay calm, expect the unexpected and talk to them as if they were directly in-front of you.
Providing an overview of the components essential for a successful virtual teach was step one. Step two of the conversation focuses on components one through four.
Own The Content:
“But I didn’t design or create the content”. Frankly, no one cares if you created the content or not. If your voice is behind it, it’s yours and you own it, plain and simple. It’s best to visit with the author(s) of the courseware to get a better feel for the message they are trying to convey and to whom they’re targeting. Not gathering this information puts you at risk of misinterpreting key points, contradicting previous communications or worst yet, being off brand.
Command the Environment:
As a baseline, understanding the courseware is the first half of being prepared for a virtual teach. Understanding how the course will flow within the presentation application (Elluminate, WebEx, Saba Centra) is the second half. Situations that affect the presentation software of choice as well as flow are;
Is instruction being delivered via PowerPoint only
Are technical labs which include virtual machines (VMs) being used
Does the presentation have slide builds (animations)
Will an application be demonstrated
Is the application web based
Is the web based application secure (https)
Will the audience be expected to participate
How are the expected to participate (labs, quizzes, surveys)
These are some of the parameters that require consideration when scoping a presentation platform as well as understanding how the platform will be used. Regardless, it’s imperative you’re comfortable with the environment. Why? Simply, because you won’t have the time or the brain-power to concentrate on the presentation at hand and stumble around the environment trying to figure out how to share the desktop, take control of an application or start a lab exercise.
Lose the Distractions:
Everyone multitasks. No one multitasks when standing in front of an audience. When you’re presenting to a virtual class, treat the situation accordingly. Turn off instant messenger, the ringer on your phone, and close your email. Have in front of you the objects that are pertinent to the presentation, such as reference material or diagrams. ESPN.com won’t help you when some asks a question about extending the schema in generic LDAP.
Present in Manageable Bites:
Your audience will revolt if your plan is to lecture to them straight for 4 hours. This never happens, right? Think again, it does and somewhere there’s a soon to be unemployed instructor who’s planning to assassinate a class with PowerPoint. Don’t be that guy.
Content is consumed best when it’s broken into 15-20min chapters. Weaved into these chapters should be the corresponding demonstrations that enrich the conversation. Try out different sequences to determine where labs and demonstrations make the most sense.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of this 3 part series where we’ll talk though points five through eight.
5. Don’t skimp on equipment
6. Location, present in a quiet one
7. Be a student
8. Have a personality
Online dating is devoid of the trappings of body language. There’s no eye contact, subtle touching, preening etcetera, etcetera. As body language is the most reliable indicator of how others perceive us, it’s the cornerstone of effective communication. This premise is also common to teaching virtually. Here too, there is no eye contact, and little ability for the instructor to determine visually, if the class is lost, interested and or engaged. In an environment such as this, it can be a daunting task trying to deliver content overall, keep it engaging, all the while staying on track. Here are a few tricks of the trade you should use to ensure a successful teach.
Yes, I oversold them a touch but I needed your data. Moreover, as a creator and deliverer of content it’s critical to be able to measure the engagement level of the target audience. Regardless of the scenario, be it training, marketing, or the development sales collateral.
The question you should be asking is;
What should I be measuring?
Traditionally, engagement level metrics have centered on counting the number of downloads and capturing audience impressions via embedded forms and static surveys. Unfortunately, these measurements are close to useless.
Case in point, most organizations have a library of content designed to enable its direct and indirect sales teams, technical staff, new employees, etc. This content consists of videos, podcasts, articles and white-papers. Counting the downloads and possibly the frequency quantifies which content is popular and which is not. The questions that cannot be answered are:
Was the white-paper, article, video or podcast consumed completely?
Where did the audience spend the most time in the document?
Where did they pause and rewind the video/audio?
How long did it take them to consume the white-paper?
Where did they spend the most time in the article?
This is but a subset of the questions that enable content creators in building the ‘good stuff’. Arming them with this information focuses content development and the associated spend in the right areas for the right people. As important, engagement level measurement ensures a consistent, high quality product the target audience is sure to need and want prior to asking for it.
A. Information overload is a problem common to many learning environments.
B. Many learning environments suffer from a lack of the right information.
Unfortunately, both are correct.
Environments can suffer from one or the other but not both simultaneously. Often the second is predicated from the first. In an attempt to streamline the menu of available educational content, organizers prune aggressively. Learning paths are created to organize data into bite size chunks. Finally, the information is ordered in a ‘logical’ linear format. Consume this first, then this, and finally this. This method is neat, clean, organized and is wrong a majority of the time.
What’s missing is context. Learning is a highly contextual experience by nature. Good teachers, naturally use facial expressions, eye contact and body language to determine if their students get it. In contrast, many courses or learning activities that are developed and delivered to sales professionals and support staff alike, are devoid of this. A popular excuse is, virtual, online, self-paced learning prevents this from happening. That assertion too, is wrong.
What’s missing is the ability to process the digital body language (DBL) of the audience. The DBL is processed by calculating the sum of a person’s:
Sales performance (or lack there of)
Previously completed learning activities
Job function
Career path
Areas of interest
Market dynamics
Departmental & organizational objectives
Upcoming product releases
Upcoming program changes
This data is then used to create a personalized learning campaign that follows audience members indefinitely. The content delivered to the learner can be anything from pertinent blog posts, articles, and white-papers to formalized activities such as self-paced/online courses with quizzes attached. The premise is, to truly enable an audience, content must be delivered, cheaply, in a timely fashion and to the right people at the right time.
The use of web delivered learning activities by organizations has grown substantially. With respect to the economy and how it has reduced budgets, common business activities are still required. In regards to training; partners, customers, and sales teams, still need to be enabled. Although organizations get it, they are having difficulty creating and implementing sticky learning activities.
Most audiences view elearning as required reading and the associated exams as annoyances. The fundamental issue with exams of this nature is, approximately 95% of learners pass on the first try. The method we’ve developed to mitigate this, is building exam failure into the design process. Designing in this method, improves the quality of the supportive materials in addition to increasing the audience’s attentiveness to detail. No one likes to or wants to fail. For our purposes, failing is positive in that the exam forces the learner to review the content again in search of gaps in understanding. Something we as humans naturally do. This method improves information retention while deepening the level of engagement and interest.
This requires a marketing type approach. Many instructional designers and learners view learning activities as one-time events with zero follow up. The marketing type approach centers on a learning campaign, which is matched to a learning path. The learning path represents the menu of learning activities and the order of consumption. The learning campaign, is designed around a learner’s digital body language. This language is derived from their job function, material they’ve consumed, exam scores, product release dates, marketing campaigns, etc.
Engaging the learner from this perspective aligns activities and materials to job functions and to what their audience will be asking them. The innate benefit of this is approach is, a high level of engagement and the development sticky content overall.
Marketing works when it’s accompanied by elements of learning. Twitter recently unveiled Twitter101, which answers the question:
How can your business use Twitter?
Does it get any simpler than that? I think not. Contemporary business speak is maligned with jargon, fancy words and phrases that frankly, mean nothing. Anamitra Banerji has distilled this message to its core.
Mr. Banerji opens the piece with a concise explanation of what Twitter is and how it works. This opening, positions the tactical capabilities of Twitter front and center. The real value of the piece is in the business stories that impart how the tool is used to:
Share information
Gather real-time market data and feedback
Build relationships with the customers, employees and partners
Providing this type of focused, real world use case information creates a buzz which; reinforces Twitter’s focus on ‘real’ business challenges and sets the stage for bundled services that will be unveiled at a later date.
So, where’s the learning activity?
It’s all around you, stupid.
Twitter101 educates and emphasizes
Who Twitter is.
Why Twitter is relevant.
What Twitter does for the individual.
What Twitter does for the organization.
Isn’t that marketing? Yes
Isn’t that learning, too? Yes
There isn’t an associated quiz. There’s no form to fill out. There’s no portal to log into either. Quizzes, forms and portals don’t transform marketing activities into learning activities. Whether or not you learned something makes it a learning activity. In short good marketing is founded in learning and compelling learning has its basis in smart marketing.
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