Is ELearning an effective tool for sales training? Well, the answer is no and yes. The stories are everywhere about companies who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on courses and a learning management system (LMS) only to learn "if you build it they won't necessarily come". Many even pay their salespeople to take courses with cash bonuses or prize incentives. It doesn't mean the company did anything wrong with their programs; it's just that the utopian dream of people rushing to take on-demand training courses because they are personally motivated to improve has never quite played out. For some reason this is especially true with sales training - you would think that salespeople would be driven to improve their skills, especially if they can do it without taking time out of the field. But it just doesn't happen that way.
The good news is that there are solutions that work although they may require a radically different way of looking at online learning in general. Here are some of the things we have learned in ten years of building and implementing sales elearning systems and that seem to be the keys to success. A Warning: many of these go against current elearning thinking; nonetheless, they are what works.
1. "Chunking" Content - not to disparage the attention span of a sales rep, but ... elearning programs need to focus on a single skill or concept with a maximum program length of 25 - 30 minutes to realistically fit in to the time a rep has available all at once. This also allows the rep to focus on a single skill or task and make it a part of their work.
2. Interactivity - "traditional" elearning says that we need lots of on-screen interactions. Sales people want just the facts: short, sweet, to-the-point programs that they can sit back and listen to, not play on-screen games.
3. Watch & Listen - engagement comes from interesting audio, interesting on-screen graphics and key points, and use of real-world "case study" examples included in programs. In other words, the programs are fun to watch. The best audio has turned out to be a casual "talk radio" style, not a slick announcer (or the ubiquitous computer-generated-voice we hear in so many programs). And ideally the audio track is directly from the subject matter expert!
4. Testing? Schmesting! - taking a test at the end of a course is useful for proving program completion and assuring understanding but it's a long, long ways from execution. A course that doesn't result in actions being taken by the sales reps is a waste of time and money and all the testing in the world won't help. We use a "posted-assignment, best-practices" approach that asks the student to create an action plan of what they are going to do based on what they learned in the program - this offers their sales managers a powerful coaching tool as well as proof of completion/comprehension.
5. No One Likes to Learn Alone - it's true; no one likes to take courses by themselves. What we value about the classroom is the interactions we have and sharing of ideas with other students and instructors. A vitual solution that is proving promising and effective is building and linking "professional" social networking tools, accessible only to course or program members - a sort of private learning center where students can find much of the interaction that the classroom experience brings.
The good news is that there are solutions that work although they may require a radically different way of looking at online learning in general. Here are some of the things we have learned in ten years of building and implementing sales elearning systems and that seem to be the keys to success. A Warning: many of these go against current elearning thinking; nonetheless, they are what works.
1. "Chunking" Content - not to disparage the attention span of a sales rep, but ... elearning programs need to focus on a single skill or concept with a maximum program length of 25 - 30 minutes to realistically fit in to the time a rep has available all at once. This also allows the rep to focus on a single skill or task and make it a part of their work.
2. Interactivity - "traditional" elearning says that we need lots of on-screen interactions. Sales people want just the facts: short, sweet, to-the-point programs that they can sit back and listen to, not play on-screen games.
3. Watch & Listen - engagement comes from interesting audio, interesting on-screen graphics and key points, and use of real-world "case study" examples included in programs. In other words, the programs are fun to watch. The best audio has turned out to be a casual "talk radio" style, not a slick announcer (or the ubiquitous computer-generated-voice we hear in so many programs). And ideally the audio track is directly from the subject matter expert!
4. Testing? Schmesting! - taking a test at the end of a course is useful for proving program completion and assuring understanding but it's a long, long ways from execution. A course that doesn't result in actions being taken by the sales reps is a waste of time and money and all the testing in the world won't help. We use a "posted-assignment, best-practices" approach that asks the student to create an action plan of what they are going to do based on what they learned in the program - this offers their sales managers a powerful coaching tool as well as proof of completion/comprehension.
5. No One Likes to Learn Alone - it's true; no one likes to take courses by themselves. What we value about the classroom is the interactions we have and sharing of ideas with other students and instructors. A vitual solution that is proving promising and effective is building and linking "professional" social networking tools, accessible only to course or program members - a sort of private learning center where students can find much of the interaction that the classroom experience brings.
