Elearning! October/November 2016

October / November 2016 Volume 12 Issue 4 • www.2elearning.com

TONY ROBBINS

A FORCE

LIKE NO OTHER “…...WITHOUT ACCESS TO TONY AND HIS TEACHINGS, SALESFORCE.COM WOULDN’T EXIST TODAY.” -MARC BENIOFF FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF SALESFORCE.COM

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Contents

OCTOBER /NOVEMBER 2016 VOLUME 12 NUMBER 4

>> Cover Story: Sales

Enablement Superstars Reveal Their Secrets PG 16

What would you do when you’re faced with training your sales team on 722 significant new releases in a year like Amazon Web Services? What do you do to motivate sales executives to forecast accurately? What would you do if you had nearly 500 global subsidiaries to sales manage like Ingersoll Rand?

These sales superstars reveal their secrets.

By Keren Stanley and Claire Johnson

>> Essentials 8 9 10 11

News Deals Trendlines People on the Move

26

>> Features 22 How to Scale Training in a High Growth Enterprise Elearning! Magazine invited Jonathan Fear, Senior Director, Coupa University, to share his insights and advice on how to scale training in a fast-paced service enterprise.

By Catherine Upton

26 Extended Enterprise: Breaking Down the

Walls for Competitive Advantage The impact of learning is powerful, it closes skills gaps and it’s a way to keep up with ever-changing technology. Organizations who are able to effectively and quickly tap into knowledge and distribute it to its employees are already a leg up on the competition.

By Candy Osborne

30 Learning! 100 Profile: Eliminating Silos at Choice Logistics A silo culture can develop unintentionally and gradually, until it becomes an environment where individual teams think and act unilaterally, working against one another, inhibiting a company’s ability to achieve its goals. Choice Logistics realizes that with the right tools, support from the top down, and a strong strategy, silos can be dismantled and a culture of collaboration and learning can take hold.

By Kate Kearney

34 Selling with the Brain in Mind For the past decade, advances in neuroscience have shed new light on how the brain learns. While this young science is still in its infancy and there are more questions than answers right now, sales professionals can harness the power of the mind at work.

By Margie Meacham

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October / November 2016 Elearning!

>> Essentials 8

9

10

11

39

VC Firms Fund Minority Enterprises Learning! 100 Applications Open Cybersecurity Spending to Increase Businesses Budget for IoT

>> Management 12 Leader’s View

Continuous learning requires a different mindset and is often a difficult shift for learning professionals. Use this ingenious method to reveal your team’s strategies and tactics.

By Dani Johnson

14 Business of Learning:

Training as a Profit Center We know training can improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and sales, but how do we compute the return on each training investment?

By Dan Bobinski

16 Sales Enablement

Superstars Reveal

Their Secrets The sales enablement gurus from Amazon Web Services, Publicis.

Sapient and Ingersoll Rand reveal their secrets to sales enablement.

By Keren Stanley & Claire Johnson

26 Extended Enterprise:

Breaking Down the Walls for

Competitive Advantage Nearly a quarter of organizations cite that extended enterprise learning was one of their top goals and organizations with extended learning in place found a 17 percent greater year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time equivalent full-time employee.

By Candy Osborne

>> Tools & Practices

>> Business

34 Selling with the

Brain in Mind

7

For the past decade, advances in neuroscience have shed new light on how the brain learns. While this young science is still in its infancy and there are more questions than answers right now, sales professionals can harness the power of the mind at work.

By Margie Meacham

39 Essential Customer Services

Skills Forgotten in the

Digital Age With today’s competitive marketplace, fed-up customers are discovering they can simply take their business elsewhere. In fact, 65 percent of customers have completely cut ties with a brand over a single bad experience. Whether your company is B2B focused, businessto-customer oriented, web-based or brick-and-mortar, there’s no doubt that customer neglect can significantly reduce your profits.

By Stuart Leung

42 3 Lessons Learned From

Social Learning Launch

Failure

Editor’s Note Gauging companies’ digital maturity

By Claire Johnson

10 Trendlines Statistics, figures and industry trends

12 Leader’s View A four-step process for continuous learning

By Dani Johnson

14 Business of Learning Training for profit

By Dan Bobinski

43 New Products >> Learning Platforms >> Sales Training >> Mobile Learning

By Claire Johnson

49 The Last Word Using social learning to improve employee engagement

By Kathy Bries

Companies launching social learning should start small and keep their users’ need in mind, use proper communication and set clear goals and expectations.

By Johnny Hamilton

Elearning! October/ November 2016

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OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2016 VOLUME 12 ISSUE 4

Catherine Upton Group Publisher >> cupton@2elearning.com

Online@

2elearning.com Trending Topics

“Strip Maps” and “Comprehensive Maps”

By Jenna Smith http://www.2elearning.com/insightsblogs/blogs/entry/strip-maps-andcomprehensive-maps Mathematics and the End of Days

By Keith Devlin http://www.2elearning.com/insightsblogs/blogs/entry/mathematics-andthe-end-of-days Call for Learning! Champions Applications Open Through Dec. 1 http://www.2elearning.com/latestnews/item/56550-call-for-learningchampion-nominations

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October / November 2016 Elearning!

Joe DiDonato Editor at Large >> jdidonato@2elearning.com Claire Johnson >> editor@2elearning.com

Managing Editor

Jerry Roche

Contributing Editor >> jroche@2elearning.com

Adam Weschler Manager Digital Programs >> aweschler@2elearning.com JW Upton Vice President >> JW@2elearning.com Robert Akert

Media Sales Manager >> rakert@2elearning.com

Kim Lewis

Art Director >> production@2elearning.com

TJ Hume Print Production Manager

Contributors:

Dan Bobinski, Leadership Development, Inc. Kathy Bries, Cisco Systems Johnny Hamilton, Providence Health & Services Dani Johnson, Bersin by Deloitte Kate Kearney, Choice Logistics Stuart Leung, Salesforce Margie Meacham, Learningtogo Candy Osborne, for Elearning! Magazine Keren Stanley, CloudCoaching International

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Editor’sNote

T

The Importance of Digital Maturity and Enterprise Learning

his marks the start of fourth quarter. The summer months are over, vacations are winding down and employees are getting back into their day-to-day habits. It’s important to reflect what learning tools and practices were helpful this year and what can be improved upon, and for many companies, that’s digital maturity.

I recently listened to a podcast talking about digital quotients and what com-

panies need to do to become digital leaders. According to Jay Scanlan, head of McKinsey’s Digital Strategy Practice, there are three areas where digital leaders excel and their digital counterparts and laggards struggle:

>> Corporate strategy and digital initiatives need to be aligned. >> Drive a fast and flexible culture. >> Correct organizational factors need to be in place; hiring and training appropriate talent, streamlining processes and implementing systems that gets work done.

Four essential capabilities that digital leaders possess are robust, high-speed decision making processes allowing organizations to seize opportunities and combat threats; the ability to connect with the business system; radical cost reduction; and having a two-speed IT architecture so that the organization’s core values and practices continue to be implemented while simultaneously transitioning to new digital capabilities.

With the Dreamforce conference taking place October 4-7, you’ll have access to knowledgeable speakers that will help you inspire the change and growth needed to succeed in 2017 and the digital age. You’ll also find many examples of what companies are doing to grow and succeed internationally in this issue. Our cover story on Sales Enablement Gurus features sales leaders from Amazon Web Services, Publicis.Sapient and Ingersoll Rand. These leaders reveal their secrets to driving innovation and sales performance. (See article page 17). Choice Logistics shares how leveraging Salesforce helped them eliminate silos and build cross-team collaboration to better serve customers. (See page 30.) Don’t miss how Brain Science should be changing your sales training on page 34. Welcome to the digital age of sales training!

—Claire Johnson, managing editor

Elearning! October / November 2016

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News Venture Capitalist Firm Funds Minority Entrepreneurs The share of racial minorities launching startups has almost doubled to 40 percent between 1996 and 2015, but many are lacking the funding needed to build a successful company. Many VC firms are building microfunds specifically for minorities since people of color will be the majority in the United States by 2044. The population will be younger and black and Latinx people will be the actively spending majority. As VC firms such as 500 Startups recognize new products that target these consumer groups, VC firms will dedicate more money to minority entrepreneurs. Monique Woodard is trying to change that as the newest partner in venture capitalist firm 500 Startups. She leads the $25 million microfund that supports black and Latinx entrepreneurs. Woodard attempted to launch many startups early in her career before getting into venture capitalism the old fashioned way, by working on the ground, now she’s helping others pursue their dreams.

—Learn more: http://500.co/

Facebook’s Internet Drone Takes First Test Flight Aquila, Facebook’s internet drone took to the skies for what was meant to be a 30-minute demonstration. The test went so well, engineers decided to allow it to fly for 96 minutes. Aquila is meant to bring internet connectivity via satellite to those on the ground. Part of Facebook’s major initiative to bring internet to developing countries, the giant drone weighing 880 pounds will beam connectivity to those on the ground in a 60-mile radius using laser communications and millimeter wave systems.

Facebook will still need to overcome many obstacles to have drones meet its goals; currently the world record for an unmanned solar flight is two weeks and the company wants the drones to operate for three months at a time. Other challenges include getting the sun to charge the drones’ batteries in the winter months and in the dark while still remaining economical.

The Connectivity Lab at Facebook is still working out the details on what exactly is the best way to transmit the beams in rural areas; ideas have been submitted but are still being developed.

—Learn more: https://code.facebook.com/ posts/268598690180189 8

October / November 2016 Elearning!

Education Department Awards $144 Million to Improve College Readiness

The U.S. Department of Education is awarding $144 million for 459 new grants under the Talent Search program. Commemorating 51 years since its inception, these five-year grants will assist more than 300,000 students across 49 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau in gaining the skills needed to successfully graduate high school and prepare for college. Of the 459 applicants who competed successfully in the 2016 competition, 418 applicants will begin new awards in the 2016-2017 project year and future awards will be made to 41 applicants with one or more years remaining on their current Talent Search grants. This year’s grant competition marked the first year of encouraging evidence-based strategies for both secondary completion and postsecondary enrollment.

Talent Search, one of eight programs collectively known as the Federal TRIO Programs, provides disadvantaged youth with connections to high-quality tutoring services and counseling services for students and families to improve financial aid literacy and financial planning for postsecondary education.

Talent Search and other TRIO programs are critical to the nation’s goal of leading the world in postsecondary credential attainment and college completion. The Obama Administration has taken a number of steps to widen access to higher education by boosting Pell Grant funding, streamlining the FAFSA, and maintaining low interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans. One important element to increase college-going is ensuring students and families have good, user-friendly, information about their postsecondary options. The College Scorecard is a tool, developed during the Obama administration, to help Talent Search students and others compare institutions across key areas including: cost of attendance, degree type, average student debt, and projected post-graduation earnings.

—Learn more: http://bit.ly/2bhUPGV

Learning! 100 Applications Now Open The 7th annual Learning! 100 Awards, honoring the top global learning organizations, is now open for nominations. The award program recognizes public- and private-sector organizations for innovation, collaboration and/or learning culture that drives organization performance.

Join past alumni, including AT&T, Choice Logistics, Facebook and Defense Acquisition University in become a Learning! 100 organization. Applications are accepted until January 31, 2017. The top 100 will be honored at the 2017 Learning! 100 Awards Dinner & Reception at the Enterprise Learning! Conference. Get recognized for your team’s hard work by applying today at http://learn100.b2bmediaco.com/award/form_100.php.

LinkedIn Launches Videos LinkedIn moves to drive more viewers to its platform with the launch of videos. In the beginning stages, LinkedIn Influencers, a select group of 500 leaders, will create the short videos clocking in at 30 seconds or less in answer to questions specific to their subject expertise. Videos will be created using a special app, Record, that will present each video on a black backdrop when users click on them. For now, LinkedIn will not charge for the creation or broadcast of videos.

—Learn more: linkedin.com

Nine Out of 10 Organizations Plan to Use Virtual Reality for L&D

Virtual reality (VR) has captured the imagination of learning and development professionals and could prove to be the next big transformational learning technology according to a study

by Kallidus. The study reveals that 91 percent of learning and development (L&D) professionals plan to use VR for learning in their organization, with more than one third planning to roll out VR over the next three years.

More than 200 learning L&D professionals participated in the survey and 95 percent of respondents said they see VR as being useful for enhancing L&D. Only a small minority (8 percent) feel VR is ‘just hype’; 81 percent think it has ‘real potential’ for learning, and a further 11 percent are prepared to go one step further, calling VR the ‘next big thing’.

The survey reveals that more than half (53 percent) of respondents have VR at the top of their list as the next new mode of learning they most want to implement, ahead of virtual classrooms, mobilelearning,games-basedlearningandsociallearninginterms of priority. Just two percent of respondents said their organization is already using VR for training.

—Learn more: https://www.kallidus.com/resources/whitepapers-reports/

Deals HTC VIVE is heading a $10 billion initiative to put the investment weight of virtual reality on itself and its partners, multiple VR-centric VC houses, and more staple firms like SEQUOIA

CAPITAL AND REDPOINT VENTURES. The alliance, known

as HTC Vive in the VR Venture Capital Alliance (VRVCA), includes 27 firms. Alvin Wang Graylin, China Regional President of VR at HTC, will run it.

EVERFI, INC. is receiving $40

million in new funding from

investors BEZOS EXPEDITIONS (an investment arm of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos), NEW ENTERPRISE ASSOCIATES, TOMORROW VENTURES, (an investment arm of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt), and RETHINK EDUCATION. The four new investors are joining a group that includes ALLEN AND COMPANY AND WARHORSE

in backing the critical skills learning software leader.

SALESFORCE completed the acquisition of DEMANDWARE, a

global cloud leader in the digital commerce market. As the new Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Demandware will be an integral part of the Customer Success Platform, allowing companies to transform the way they connect with customers individually across sales, service, marketing, communities, analytics, IoT, platform and now commerce.

NITROSPARK, creator of games-based learning solutions, signed its first interna-

tional partnership for gamebased learning with AL RABBAN CAPITAL, enabling the companies to collaborate on learning projects in Qatar – extending Nitrospark’s reach into the Middle East.

APPLE allegedly acquired TURI,

a machine learning company for $200 million. Although Apple will not confirm the acquisition, it isn’t the first company that Apple has acquired in the machine learning/artificial intelligence sector.

Elearning! October / November 2016

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Trendlines News U.S. Users Pay the Least for Cloud Services

The cloud services industry offers the most competitive pricing for those in the United States. Cloud users pay seven to 19 percent more in Europe, 14 to 38 percent more in Asia-Pacific countries and 38 percent more in Latin American countries for the same cloud applications. When choosing a cloud service provider, organizations should research and take advantage of variances in prices to stay in budget.

The dominate public cloud services company in the United States is Amazon Web Services with Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS seeing significant public cloud adoption increases in 2016 according to RightScale. Seventeen percent of enterprises now have more than 1,000 virtual machines in public clouds, an increase from 13 percent in 2015.

Security is no longer the biggest challenge of cloud adoption; 32% say lack of internal expertise is.

Most respondents say security is no longer the biggest challenge; instead, 32 percent of respondents cited a lack of resources and expertise as being the top cloud challenge.

Many businesses have chosen to move their information to cloud-based services because of better insight and visibility, easy collaboration, it allows for rapid development of new products and services and can support a variety of business needs. —Sources: Rightscale.com & 451research.com 10

October / November 2016 Elearning!

Cybersecurity Spending to Increase Cybersecurity continues to be an ongoing threat according to Cyber Risk Report from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Attackers have shifted their efforts directly targeting applications to access sensitive enterprise data. Thirty-five percent of the applications scanned in the study contained at least one critical or high-security vulnerability. About 86 percent of enterprises are using intrusion detection systems and 14 percent say their use of open source components in applications have increased. The mobile applications suffering from internal system information leaks are a concern for storing business data on devices that can be easily misplaced or stolen.

35% of applications contain at least one critical or highsecurity vulnerability.

By 2020, IoT will be at play in 25 percent of cybercrime but less than 10 percent of budgets will invested according to a Gartner study. Last year enterprise spent roughly $281.54 million on IoT security- and is expected to reach $547.2 million by 2018.

Further, by 2020, half of all IoT implementations will use a form of cloud-based security service. —Sources: http://bit.ly/2btmcOr, http://www.gartner.com/ newsroom/id/3185623

Mobile Use Up in Digital Media Mobile Devices Use Up to 3 Hours/Day

Mobile App Usage Dominates Mobile Usage

9% of time on media is spent within mobile app Source: CommScore. http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/ mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/

Businesses Budget for IoT Seventy-six percent of businesses say Internet of Things (IoT) will be critical to their success in the future according to a study by Vodafone. More than 60 percent plan to implement IoT technologies within the next year. Consumer electronics have taken the biggest interest in the IoT area, with 88 percent having clear objectives — likely smart homes.

Technology departments are also spending on IoT — the portion of the budget spent on IoT has surpassed spending for mobile and utilizes approximately 24 percent of technology budgets. Security is one of the biggest concerns for IoT and companies will continue to increase their security IoT budgets in the coming years.

Enterprises view IoT as a lucrative revenue stream. A study by Oxford Economics shows that revenue growth is the biggest factor driving IoT adoption. IoT will continue to generate more revenue because of data monetization, core IoT networks and low power devices, platforms as a service (PaaS) and increased investment in IoT startups.

Many enterprises can improve their data practice. The study found only eight percent of enterprise use more than 20 percent of available IoT data, but in two or three years, nearly half will do so.

Enterprises will see an upsurge in PaaS because most companies cannot maintain the sensors, mobile devices, data analysis, new service scalability integration and fine-tuning in-house.

Enterprises are drawn to PaaS because they realize the complexity and fragmented ecosystem of IoT coupled with security concerns. These trends will result in enterprise-based startups received 75 percent more venture capitalist funding and expected to increase significantly in 2016.

—Sources: http://bit.ly/2aPyhiq, http://vz.to/2aXitte, http://gtnr. it/2bcDlOW

IoT by the Numbers: Percentage of Growth by Application Healthcare/Pharma: 26% Home Monitoring: 50% Energy/Utilities: 58% Smart Cities: 43% Agriculture: 33% Transport/Distribution: 49%

The budget spent on IoT has surpassed spending for mobile and accounts for 24 percent of all technology budgets.

People on the Move industry trends. A preeminent sales enablement expert, Ninivaggi has three decades of experience studying and driving B2B sales productivity.

Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement solutions, is appointing JIM NINIVAGGI as Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. In this role, Ninivaggi will help drive key

partnerships that extend the power of Brainshark’s solutions and platform, shape and execute strategy as a member of Brainshark’s leadership team, and share his deep knowledge of key

RICHARD MINER, co-founder of Android, is stepping down from his general partner position with Google Ventures to work on a new, unnamed education project for Google with very few details attached to it. Miner will remain on the boards for most

of his Google Ventures companies and remain in New England rather than going to Silicon Valley even though most of his team will work from there.

BOB MANSFIELD has been

named the leader of Project Titan, Apple’s alleged autonomous and electric car set to launch in 2021. Mansfield was the key developer in several of Apple’s main products including the iPad and MacBook Air.

Elearning! October / November 2016

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Leader’sView Drinking Our Own Punch: Continuous Learning

BY DANI JOHNSON

T

o create excitement around the idea of continuous learning and to get her team thinking differently, the CLO of Deloitte Consulting LLP staged a “shark tank” type competition, where participating teams pitched continuous learning initiatives they had worked on to a panel of judges. I was honored to be one of three executives playing the sharks.

I was also pleasantly surprised. Continuous learning requires a different mindset and is often a difficult shift for learning professionals. The following is a summary of the winning entry.

THE CHALLENGE When you are one of the largest firms in the world, cross-cultural teaming and working across geographies has to be a core competency; however, the issues can be complex.

In 2015, the Deloitte Consulting Project Controller practice unveiled their 2020 vision which seeks to integrate teams in the United States and India into one global delivery team with an “As One” mentality. In order to support this vision, the L&D support partners built an initiative designed to help analysts adopt the new “As One” mentality and to create an environment that enabled global teaming.

Dani Johnson, Vice President, Organizational Learning Research, Bersin by Deloitte

THE SOLUTION When faced with the challenge of helping its business move toward its global vision, the Consulting Human Capital Learning team recognized that the program should be aligned to Deloitte’s development culture and mindset — continuous learning.

Education: The initiative includes an education component, consisting of a week-long immersive simulation, in which analysts complete a series of role plays, debriefs, and straight talk sessions. The simulation emphasizes the various connection points U.S. analysts have with their Indian counterparts, giving teams the opportunity to practice interactions in a non-threatening, low-risk environment.

Experience: The initiative also provides participating analysts with opportunities to develop through experiences. For example, a U.S./India rotation program was launched in conjunction with this initiative.

This program gives participants the opportunity to gain cross-cultural experiences and to foster better relationships with their counterparts. Participants then return to the U.S. to serve as key points of contact and act as mentors to the U.S. practice on items related to interaction with the team in India.

Exposure: The initiative incorporates an online Community of Practice site. This site provides a forum where analysts may both learn and teach each other — spotlighting successes and discussing progress in implementing the new “As One” strategy. This ongoing connection keeps new knowledge and skills top of mind and creates a culture conducive to the new strategy.

Environment: Tools leveraged by the team and the Community of Practices provide analysts with information that will help them to continue implementing the “As One” strategy. Tools leveraged by the community include emails, newsletters, and monthly town hall calls. Members of the Community of Practice have also been important in the creation of tools, such as job aids and other performance tools that are being used to sustain and enhance performance of the entire team.

THE RESULTS While the results from this initiative to date are largely anecdotal, both participants and business partners indicate that the program has increased the effectiveness of inclusion leadership, as well as enhanced the team’s overall performance. To date, the program has also received one hundred percent favorable response from participants.

—Dani Johnson, Vice President, Learning & Development Research, writes about the evolving L&D function.

Specifically, she focuses on the necessary changes in how L&D approaches its responsibilities and allocates its resources (people, time, and money) to have a lasting effect on both organizations and individuals.

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October / November 2016 Elearning!

Businessof Learning

S Dan Bobinski, President & CEO, Leadership Development, Inc.

14

Training As a Profit Center

BY DAN BOBINSKI ome people view training only as an expense. On the other hand, while most executives intuitively know that training has value, few MBA programs explore how this might be calculated.

We know training can improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and sales, but how do we compute the return on each training investment?

If one plans on calculating ROI for a training program, preliminary data must be collected for comparison use down the road. Preliminary data collection can include surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, observations and tests.

If one of the factors being assessed will be performance, create a control group for the training. Control groups are employees who don’t participate in the training, so that their post-training program performance serves as a baseline for the group of employees who did participate in training. That way, any difference in performance between the two groups can be attributed to the training with a high level of confidence.

Establish a timeline for each level of evaluation. Training and development guru Donald Kirkpatrick created the first evaluation model more than 40 years ago, which has since been modified by ROI expert Jack Phillips to include the ROI component. The model advocated by Phillips for ROI has five levels that measure: >> Level 1: Reaction/Satisfaction: What are the participants’ reactions to the learning and what do they plan to do with the material? >> Level 2: Learning: What knowledge, skills, or attitudes have changed and by how much? >> Level 3: Job Application: Was there any behavior change and did participants apply on the job what they learned in the training? >> Level 4: Business Impact: Did the on-the-job application produce measurable results? >> Level 5: ROI: Did the monetary value of the results exceed the cost of the program?

A chain of actions need to occur as skills and knowledge are learned (Level 2) and applied on the job (Level 3) to produce business impact (Level 4).

Once a training program has been completed, data collection continues. It can involve follow up surveys and questionnaires, additional on-the-job observation, post-program interviews, focus groups, program assignments and performance contracts, among others.

A second main task is isolating the effects of training. Control groups, as mentioned earlier, are probably the best way to attribute results to training. Also valuable is analyzing trends of pre- and posttraining factors, such as employee turnover, grievances, sales, customer satisfaction, employee production, and the list goes on. Differences in pre- and post-training trends can often be attributed to the training with a high degree of confidence.

A third task needed before calculating ROI is converting all the collected data into monetary value.

Part of this third task involves determining the complete cost of the training itself. Factors to consider include costs involved in designing and developing the training, materials provided to each participant, the cost of the instructor (including prep time), training facilities, travel, lodging, meals, and the cost of salaries and benefit to each participant while attending the training.

Once the above number crunching is done, you’ll have a final number that represents the benefits accrued as a result of the training, and a number that represents program costs. Dividing the benefits by the costs provides the cost/benefit ratio. To determine the ROI for a program, divide the net benefits by the program costs and multiply that number by 100.

Many companies find their results to be amazing. For example, after I conducted a six-month supervisor training program for 32 front-line supervisors in a 600-person company, I calculated the ROI and discovered that the program brought a 968 percent return on investment.

By crunching the numbers, many see training is not an expense, but a profit center.

Dan Bobinski is a training specialist, author, and an accomplished keynote speaker. He’s been providing management and leadership training to Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller, regional concerns for more than 20 years.

October / November 2016 Elearning!

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Clockwise from top left: Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales, Amazon Web Services; Tara Cargle Ashcraft, Strategic Capability Learning Manager, Ingersoll Rand; Seth Bartlett, Global Chief Operating Officer, SapientNitro; Amy Ingram, Senior Learning Strategist, SapientNitro; Melissa Nelson Tate, Enterprise Director of Sales Excellence, Ingersoll Rand; Brain Garvey, Head of Worldwide Commercial Strategy and Enablement, Amazon Web Services; Lloyd “Chip� Lambert, Director of Sales, Ingersoll Rand; Joe Anzalone, Global Sales Enablement, Amazon Web Services; Michelle Kelly, Managing Sales & Marketing Operations, Sapient Global Markets

Sales Enablement Superstars Reveal Their

Secrets

BY KEREN STANLEY AND CLAIRE JOHNSON

What would you do when you’re faced with training your sales team on 722 significant new releases in a year like Amazon Web Services?

What do you do to motivate sales executives to forecast accurately? What would you do if you had nearly 500 global subsidiaries to sales manage like Ingersoll Rand?

The sales enablement gurus from Amazon Web Services, Publicis.Sapient and Ingersoll Rand reveal their secrets to these questions. And, it all starts with changing the sales and learning culture.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES INNOVATES AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT As the fastest-growing Enterprise IT Company in history — having grown to $10 billion in 10 years and still growing at an

annual rate of 64 percent year-over-year — Amazon Web Services continues to accelerate the pace of its innovation. After starting with one storage service, today Amazon Web Services offers more than 70 services including compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile and enterprise applications. The organization announced 722 significant new features and services in 2015, which is 40 percent more than what was introduced in 2014. And, just recently, Salesforce named Amazon Web Services its “preferred public cloud infrastructure provider,” and announced that its investing $400 million on Amazon Web Services during the next four years. Amazon Web Services’ growth has happened organically, and it’s placed an emphasis on innovating — rather than dictating — a company culture that contributes to its customerobsessed nature.

Known for its “Amazonian” style of doing things, Amazon Web Services has a rigorous dedication to its culture, best exemplified in its 14 Leadership Principles. One can easily see how it would require an immersive learning culture to deliver on its standards by just looking at a few of these principles: >> Customer obsession >> Ownership >> Invent and simplify >> Hire and develop the best talent >> Insist on the highest standards >> Learn and be curious While these are the traits expected and even demanded from its leaders, Amazon Web Services holds all of its employees to such exacting standards. So, when the company needed a way to standardize its primary leadership principle, customer obsession, it took a thorough approach to learning that was both broad and deep.

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salesenablement CUSTOMER OBSESSION Amazon’s primary leadership principle of customer obsession is the major driving force in the company. “One of the things that Jeff Bezos has set out to be as a company is the most customer-obsessed company on the earth,” says Mike Clayville, Vice President of Global Sales. “That’s his goal.

It’s written on our walls. It’s embedded in our leadership principles and it’s lived every day at every level of the organization.”

“What it means here at Amazon Web Services, and in particular in our organization that deals directly with customers, is that it translates to our team being problem

OUTCOME BASED ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT It was critical that the learning solution match the Amazon Web Services culture.

So, a customized version of the Customer Outcome Selling course was developed to line up with the methodology and language of Amazon. This Amazonian selling approach is called Outcome-Based Account Management (OBAM).

OBAM is the process, tools, competencies, and dialogue architecture for initiating and solidifying Amazon Web Services’ customer-obsessed relationships, fixated on the journey of transforming the seller-

ally to around 1,000 people in all geographies, including Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and North and South America.

In every location, the program is being met with great success, achieving a global average score of 4.2 or higher out of five from participants.

Amazon Web Services’ deep commitment to a culture of continuous learning and skill development enables innovation and customer obsession.

PUBLICIS.SAPIENT MERGES CULTURES Sapient is a marketing and digital services agency that helps marketers transform

“One of the things that Jeff Bezos has set out to be as a company is the most customer obsessed company on the earth.”

—Mike Clayville, Vice President of Global Sales, Amazon Web Services solvers with the customer,” Clayville continues. “When we are working with a customer to help them understand how he or she can gain business abilities through using the cloud or how he or she can reduce cost if that’s his or her goal in using the cloud, what we enable them to do is leverage that technology in the best way possible and we do that by sitting at the table with them. On the same side of the table, understanding the issues that are in front of them and helping them solve the problem.”

As the company quickly grew, leaders knew they needed a way to unify by implementing a common methodology and language to further extend the customer-obsessed mindset across its global sales force. Through collaborating with CloudCoaching International, and through deep discovery and design, a global program called Outcome Based Account Management was developed and deployed for sellers across Amazon Web Services. This program provides language, process, behavior and methodology that even further increases customer intimacy and focus on both business and personal customer outcomes.

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customer engagement into a lifelong strategic relationship.

“We’re not trying to sell you parts and pieces or technology. What we’re trying to help you do is get the business outcomes,” says Clayville when defining OBAM. “Our job is to sit down and help.

We really talk about it as the four E’s: explore, engage, empathize and enable.

Those four E’s are ingrained in the behaviors of our teams that are really supporting this notion of problem solving, identifying business outcomes, creating a path for those business outcomes to be achieved and then helping the customer achieve those business outcomes.”

THE RESULTS The development of this program has spanned three years and is currently on its third release. The immersive program thrives on a blend of pre-call, pre-work, a live one-day collaborative training day session, three post-workshop coaching calls, and an on-demand OBAM playbook.

The program has been delivered glob-

their business to go digital, and the culture of Sapient goes back to its roots. Culture is always at the forefront at Sapient.

“The most important thing in your business is not what you’re going to sell but what you value,” says Bill Kanarick, Chief Marketing Officer of global services company Sapient, who helped steered the company since it startup days. Culture was so integral that when the company reached 49 employees, Sapient dedicated two of them to keeping its culture intact.

As Sapient continued to grow and expand, its dedication to culture has never wavered. And, learning is clearly a deeply held value at the core of many of its founding principles.

Sapient believes in the need to cultivate openness to create the conditions for curiosity and change. As such, the company is committed to exchanging information, feedback and ideas which engages employees, piquing their curiosity. Sapient understands that learning is continuous, no matter an individual’s role in the organization.

Sapient embraces a culture so:

>>Individuals let go of what is no longer working.

>>Individuals welcome healthy conflict in

the service of more robust thinking and better outcomes. >>Individuals leave behind hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake and enable a meritocracy of ideas that gives each person a valued and respected voice based on the quality of his or her thinking. >>Individuals understand the critical role of failure to teach and can recover quickly and come out better for it.

THE CHALLENGE: INCREASE VISIBILITY In order to deliver at the speed and agility of the digital marketplace Publicis.

Sapient required a world-class business platform, and selected Salesforce. It also selected Salesforce to help promote better collaboration and visibility into the pipeline.

Because Sapient’s culture is highly creative and opt-in, it doesn’t mandate training on its new CRM. Knowing that its team would benefit from Salesforce, the organization decided that it needed a solution to drive adoption, quick onboarding, and a clear path to competency for all Salesforce users. To get the team’s buy-in, it needed to create a highly engaging experience that would pull the users in. It also needed the training to be in a highly scalable format that clearly shows each employee what’s in it for each of them individually.

THE SOLUTION: SALESFORCE ON-BOARDING Enter the new Salesforce On-Boarding and Adoption Program developed in partnership with CloudCoaching International.

This program addresses the challenges of global diversity and opt-in culture by creating an engaging, informative and creatively executed end user Salesforce on-boarding and adoption strategy.

To sustain learning and encourage selfpaced, incremental growth, the program focused on three main areas: strategy, implementation and fine tuning. The design of this effective strategy included a comprehensive blend of executive coaching, leadership coaching, virtual workshops, open office hours, video communications, self-paced e-learning, and corporate communications and change management.

This unique blend appeals to all learning types and, because it’s delivered over time, it maximizes retention and effectiveness. Additionally, the e-learning series is delivered via an interface by an engaging video host that takes end users through an informative and enjoyable learning journey

Sales leaders have to be ready to put on their coaching caps to harness the potential and to realize the performance available to their team.

that introduces the new company sales philosophy and methodology, step-by-step Salesforce process demonstrations, knowledge checks and even a little singing.

So far the deployment has impacted more than 1,200 users across North America, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

Based on the success of the initial program, Publicis.Sapient, which is composed of Sapient as well as digital agencies Razorfish and DigitasLBi, will continue to use and evolve this approach to drive end-user adoption and consumption with its Salesforce platform.

THE RESULTS Sapient has seen measurable results since it began the implementation. It has a 50-percent increase in early-stage entry, improving the accuracy of its forecasting and pipeline. It also has 75 percent engagement in Salesforce, showing that the team is opting in and making use of the company’s major investment.

“As an extremely creative, opt-in culture, we needed a highly engaging solution to Elearning! October / November 2016

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salesenablement captivate the imagination and clearly show our end users the benefits of using the system,” says Seth Bartlett, Global Chief Operating Officer at SapientNitro.

INGERSOLL RAND INSPIRES PROGRESS Ingersoll Rand is a $12 billion global diversified industrial firm that provides a wide range of innovative products, including complete air compressor systems, air conditioning systems, tools, ARO pumps, material handling systems and more. It continues to lead the way in the market through an impressive portfolio of market-leading brands, which include Club Car, Thermo King and Trane.

Ingersoll Rand strives to lead the way in solutions that make everyday living health-

between business units, Ingersoll Rand’s sales management team was struggling to set standard practices. Sales representatives focused on driving sales excellence but found themselves impeded by a fragmented sales management culture.

“On the surface, those of us who are not in this latest generation of the workforce tend to think about selling and sales in much the same way it has traditionally been seen for many generations,” says Melissa Nelson Tate, Enterprise Director of Sales Excellence. “If we take a step back and look at how buying behavior has changed, we see a different playing field. Buyers have all the information they need at their fingertips. Think about how you buy for yourself today either

laborated to customize PTG to meet Ingersoll Rand’s specific requirements. The collaboration resulted in a single global sales management standard: IRSMX. This standard serves as the template for each business unit to customize in order to meet its business unit requirements, without altering the integrity of the overall system. In fact, the company took its commitment to the program so seriously and believes so heavily in its effectiveness that it mandated IRSMX be used across the entire company.

As the system was being implemented globally, BCI suggested that Ingersoll Rand consider using Salesforce as the system of record to enable IRSMX. With support from BCI, Ingersoll Rand selected the

“As an extremely creative, opt-in culture, we needed a highly engaging solution to captivate the imagination and clearly show our end users the benefits of using the system.”—Seth Bartlett, Global Chief Operating Officer, SapientNitro

ier, more energy efficient, more comfortable and more productive. To constantly inspire progress, innovate positive solutions, and unleash the potential in employees, along with the customers, Ingersoll Rand relies on a culture of learning.

Ingersoll Rand is focused on driving learning and growth across its corporate culture. In 2003, it established Ingersoll Rand University to support the development of leaders and staff through strategic competencies and a single pervasive culture.

THE CHALLENGE: 484 GLOBAL SUBSIDIARIES AND ONE STANDARD While Ingersoll Rand made learning a predominant feature of its culture, like so many other companies, it needed help establishing a consistent methodology and process for its sales management teams.

Because of an inconsistent sales management process and pipeline tools varying 20

October / November 2016 Elearning!

personally or in your position. Technology has added an incredible dimension to buying and that dimension compounds the work of the seller, for developing sales people and accelerating their learning curve has become more important than ever.”

She explains that sales leaders have to be ready to put on their coaching caps to harness the potential and to realize the performance available to their team. “It’s a much, much different space to operate in today than it has been for the last several decades,” she says.

STANDARDIZING THE SALES PROCESS Ingersoll Rand selected the Pathways to Growth Sales Management System (PTG), which is a series of nine sales management disciplines, authored by Tony Robbins and Walter Rogers. Ingersoll Rand’s Sales Excellence Division, Ingersoll Rand University and Baker Communications col-

CRM leader to standardize the ISRMX process and reporting in order to support the global initiative. IRSMX is now further accelerated with the use of Salesforce as it rolls out globally.

The implementation spanned multiple geographical, cultural, and business unit environments, requiring customized content and coaching to address the worldwide business unit and diversity. All together, this project will impact more than 7,000 sellers and managers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and Asia.

“Such a complex implementation goal requires the design of the learning strategy be creative and impactful for all of our diverse learners,” says Tara Cargle Ashcraft, Strategic Capability Learning Manager installing Sales Excellence. “Our blended approach is both traditional and innovative; it includes assessment, e-learning, face to face classroom learning, experimental

field work, and a 12-week virtual coaching cycle to support adoption, reinforce learning, and practice application of content.

Our sales teams are supported throughout the launch of the sales management system.

It’s not a one and done. The commitment of our leaders to coach through the change is the secret sauce.”

Due to the scale of the project and Ingersoll Rand’s desire to accelerate adoption of IRSMX across various business units, global delivery was accomplished through a joint effort between BCI Master Coaches and BCI-certified Ingersoll Rand business unit Coaches, with both groups leading IRSMX workshops and IRSMX coaching cycles. Ingersoll Rand continues to leverage BCI Master Coaches for IRSMX delivery and on-demand support, including coaching, content changes, and specialized delivery needs.

THE RESULTS Ingersoll Rand’s desire to make IRSMX a part of all its business units’ operations has led to faster-than-expected adoption of the methodology and substantial business results, while ensuring a high level of pipeline health, forecast accuracy, and regular one-on-one coaching sessions between sales managers and sales representatives. It also found that the switch to Salesforce has been an incalculable benefit as the company uses it to track, communicate and report on the health of the business.

Through the determination and desire shown by Ingersoll Rand’s Sales Excellence division to make the IRSMX meth-

od a part of its core sales management culture, it will succeed in reaching the end goal of rolling out IRSMX to every sales manager.

“Through the areas of strong sales leadership that we have in Ingersoll Rand, we have consistently seen improvement in en-

“We’re getting bigger pipelines, better deals at the table and winning more of those deals.”

—Melissa Nelson Tate, Enterprise Director of Sales Excellence, Ingersoll Rand

gagement scores where teams have a focus on strong and improved sales leadership and coaching practices,” says Nelson Tate.

Sales professionals describe their time with management and as a team as important to each member’s success.

An unexpected result is that sales leaders have a better work life balance. “[Sales leaders] have seen that they can more proactively, strategically, effectively lead their teams to greater performance by actually putting in less direct hours in a day. Of course, all of this improves retention and we know how costly it is to have poor performers. Those are some of the softer results we’re seeing,” Nelson Tate says.

“On the quantitative side, we definitely are seeing cleaner pipelines, better forecast accuracy, improved win rates,” she says.

“We’re getting bigger pipelines, better deals at the table and winning more of those deals, which, of course, drive revenue improvement and then translate to market share gains.”

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How to Scale Training in a High Growth Enterprise

BY: CATHERINE UPTON

Elearning! Magazine invited Jonathan Fear, Senior Director, Coupa University, to share his insights and advice on how to training can thrive in a fast-paced service-dominate organization. In this interview, Jonathan shared his best practices and lessons learned.

Q:

WHAT TRENDS ARE YOU SEEING IN THE LEARNING SPACE? Most of the trends we see in the learning field are due to the mind shift that has happened in the way we learn and see our career progression. This is a result of innovations in cloud, mobile, social, and e-commerce areas. Technology has changed how we learn, where we learn and from whom we learn.

Today, pull learning is more prevalent than push learning and learners want to consume just-in-time resources, learn from their peers, and leverage their social network to get to the best content quickly. These are the trends we see in response to this cultural shift: >> Rise of stand-alone LMS platforms >> Emphasis on learners’ experience and ease of use >> Attention on expert content at a variety of price and quality points >> Significance of shorter, contextual learning content >> Focus on deeper and broader quality support >> Importance of integration to existing platforms 22

October / November 2016 Elearning!

Q:

WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR ORGANIZATION’S UNIQUE LEARNING CHALLENGES? We were looking for a solution that could support our partner community and also provide a platform for our own internal resources to ensure a ubiquitous learning experience. We struggled with scalability and adoption on our previous platform, and because of our fast growth, we needed to find a strategic partner who could provide the thought leadership and value drivers to help us scale our training program. We were also looking for a platform with a high level of ease of use for both learners and administrators.

I’ve found that learning has to be something that is intuitive and easy to consume. Not only does the content have to fit those criteria, but learners should also be able to easily access the LMS and know exactly where to go and what to do without any confusion.

Q:

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO THOSE SEEKING A NEW LEARNING PLATFORM? Coupa delivers measureable “Value as a Service (VaaS) ,” so we believe that when we are working with our customers, we have an obligation to create value; there is a partnership associated with that which includes a level of thought leadership to drive adoption. We were looking for a vendor that provides that same level of thought leadership and value add to help us fully adopt their learning platform.

ABOUT COUPA Coupa is a cloud-based spend management software company located in San Mateo, California, and provides a unified spend management suite of cloud applications for finance, including procurement, expense management, sourcing, and accounts payable. Coupa provides real measurable value to customers via our Value As A Service (VaaS) belief system.

Coupa University is a holistic educational team covering a broad range of training initiatives. Coupa University supports product-level education, technical documentation, platform certification, instructor-led training (ILT) classes, employee onboarding, and sales enablement. With a rapid growing employee, customer and partner base, training has truly become an integral piece of Coupa’s success.

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scalingtraining In recent years, there has been a flood of learning vendors coming to the market, but not all learning management system (LMS) vendors are equal. Litmos offered domain expertise and thought leadership in the learning space. We were also looking for a solution that is entirely cloud-based and agile to respond to customer needs and also innovate with each product release. We wanted a partner who is continually challenging themselves to always be better, just as we

quickly, and ongoing effectiveness, engagement, and customer success is increased.

Partner Benefits: Certifying our partner base allows us to scale much more rapidly.

One of the common mistakes in building a hightly successful partner channel is not training them as if they are an extension of your team. Having a partner training and certification program truly allows us to put trust in our partners and see them as a serious asset to our business.

“Technology has changed how we learn, where we learn and from whom we learn.”

—Jonathan Fear, Senior Director, Coupa University do. Ultimately, we felt that the partnership with Litmos allowed us work with a company that would grow with us and we were proud to support, and would support us equally as well.

Q:

HOW DID YOU GET APPROVAL FOR AN ADDITIONAL LEARNING INVESTMENT? Coupa lives by the model of pre-approval for service initatives, so there’s an approval process to which we must adhere. We had an existing platform in place, and the rationale is that it’s always easier to stick with the vendor you have currently. In order to make the shift we had to present the business case to our CFO. Since we have taken a holistic approach with our training, there were many aspects that helped us build our business case. Not only are we utilizing Litmos to train our internal employees, we are also using it for partner and customer training and certification.

We homed in on a few key points in each of these channels: Internal Benefits: Having a well-trained internal staff means that they are able to begin adding value to the organization 24

October / November 2016 Elearning!

Customer Benefits: ADOPTION. With so many software as a service (SaaS) solutions on the market these days, ensuring that your customer base is enabled through training is a huge competitive advantage.

We focused on this in our business case as increasing adoption has a big effect on customer advocacy and ongoing usage.

taking advantage of surveys, exams, and learning paths natively within Litmos.

Learning paths have been extremely useful for us to create an experience that is truly fit for the learner. By using the native functionality within Litmos and combining features like surveys and learning paths, both our adoption and learner satisfaction rates have rapidly increased.

Q:

HOW DO YOU MANAGE CHANGES TO THE CONTENT? We are a VaaS-based organization and are very agile in the way that we do business.

That means that there is continual change that we have to be able to support from a training and documentation perspective.

So we have taken a modular approach in the way we build our courses. At Coupa, we believe there needs to be a single source of truth so that if something changes we can update it in one place and ensure that populates everything else.

We’re able to pull out a single building block within the course and make our updates there. This requires us to be very organized in the structure of our account so we can easily find specific building blocks when changes happen.

Q:

HOW WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE DURING THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS? The process of implementing Litmos was seamless. We were able to go

“At Coupa, we believe there needs to be a single source of truth so that if something changes we can update it in one place and ensure that populates everything else.”

–Jonathan Fear, Senior Director, Coupa University

Q:

HOW ARE YOU CREATING CONTENT USED IN YOUR CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS? Our current courses are a mix of externally built content in Storyline, and through native modules from within Litmos. We have found that building the actual content in Storyline works best, but we are also

online shortly after signing and invite users to the platform with ease. We also successfully integrated Litmos and Salesforce; its integration is offered through the Salesforce AppExchange and is a certified app. Since the certification was already in place, it put our IT team at ease during implementation. Since the

Litmos integration is out of the box, we went through the necessarily steps to get it started. Lastly, as I mentioned, Litmos provided us with the thought leadership required to think big and take our future plans into consideration knowing that we were on a high growth trajectory.

Q:

HOW HAS THE INTEGRATION WITH SALESFORCE MADE YOUR PROGRAM MORE SUCCESSFUL? Many of our teams here at Coupa practically live within Salesforce, so it was definitely a requirement to have a seamless integration in place. We’re taking advantage of numerous areas of the Litmos and Salesforce integration, but one that really stands out for me is reporting.

Reporting is absolutely critical if you’re going to scale your business. By having our training program integrated with Salesforce, we can determine within an account who has taken training and extend those types of insights to others within the organization. This allows for an extra level of visibility which is beneficial when understanding what training someone has taken or whether they are certified.

For example, if you have your services or support teams working in Salesforce, they can clearly see if the person with whom they are working has completed all necessary training which allows for an allaround more efficient process.

Q:

CAN YOU SHARE ANY LESSONS LEARNED? HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR SUCCESS? Overall, we’re thrilled with the success that we’ve had with Litmos. Before we started using the solution, we struggled with motivating people to actually want to take training. This was probably a combination of a poor learner experience and unproven content. Now we’re seeing our training offerings scale quickly and our audiences are coming back time and again to learn as much as they can about Coupa. In fact, when another LMS is introduced for compliance training we often get asked “Can’t we put this in Litmos?” We’re seeing a big focus on selfservice compared to standard prescription because the learning system itself is more engaging. It’s been a paradigm shift from the old one-and-done training to a combined understanding from learners that this is

COURSE

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Litmos for Salesforce

How to defend the wall against wildlings

Training Your Dire Wolf

Traveling Across Westeros

How to Fight a White Walker

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Becoming Grand Maester

How to Speak Dothraki

One-Handed Sword Fighting

Becoming King of Westeros

Wildfire Safety

the platform where learning will take place.

Because of the rapid adoption of the learning platform, we’re now being approached by thought leaders and subject matters experts with content to share throughout the university. Due to the increased level of shared thought leadership among our partners, we’re seeing the added benefit of content curation along with the content that we are creating.

organized implementation. All published training has a shelf life and we have used reference codes and category within Litmos to help us understand who created it, when it was created, what version it is, and which areas the product training applies.

Q:

WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PLANS? We absolutely plan to continue to stay at the cutting-edge with our training

“It’s been a paradigm shift from the old one-and-done training to a combined understanding from learners that this is the platform where learning will take place.”

–Jonathan Fear, Senior Director, Coupa University

Q:

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO COLLEAGUES LOOKING TO ROLL OUT A CUSTOMER AND PARTNER CERTIFICATION PROGRAM? We have learned a lot through our journey of building Coupa University. If I had to focus on one overall piece of advice, I would recommend an initial focus on building a program that has the vision to scale. Many factors fall into this process, but you certainly have to be willing to make the upfront investment and work with an LMS partner who can help guide you as you grow. A huge component in rolling out a solution that scales is having a well-

programs and take advantage of the new innovative functionality. Right now we are looking to extend our partner certification reporting and have that fully integrated with Salesforce like we have for our employees and customers. Moving forward, we hope to have a training checks and balances process in place which does an automated check to ensure that everyone assigned to an activity, whether a partner, internal employee, or customer, has been adequately trained prior to taking on the engagement. We’re confident that this is something we can achieve with Litmos as our LMS partner.

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Extended Enterprise:

Breaking Down for Competitive Advantage

BY CANDY OSBORNE If knowledge is power, then organizations who are able to effectively and quickly tap into it and distribute it to its employees are already a leg up on the competition. Organizations that are able to distribute the power to affiliates beyond its employee base may have an even greater competitive advantage.

In the context of learning, extended enterprise is learning offered to non-employees such as customers, partners and other affiliates. Aberdeen Group defines it as “learning specifically for custom-

ably. The concept is the same in that multiple affiliates both inside and outside of the organization’s wall can access one learning management system (LMS) instance as separate tenants.

OPPORTUNITY IS IN THE MINDSET SHIFT The impact of learning is powerful, it closes skills gaps and it’s a way to keep up with ever-changing technology. If executed correctly, not only will organizations keep up with the pace of change, but they can use to be an agent change agent. What happens when you shift the mindset away from training employees to building a strategic and

“Extended enterprise learning is training specifically delivered to customers and/or partners…”

–Aberdeen Group

ers and/or partners, beyond just internal stakeholders like employees and management.” It can include training, knowledge, certification or performance support to a “beyond-the-wall” group of constituents.

Many may use the terms or variations of terms “extended enterprise” or “extended enterprise learning” while some, such as Moodle use “multi-tenancy” interchange26

October / November 2016 Elearning!

unified global network with all company affiliates? There is an even greater potential with broad thinking and its more profitable potential; one that may earn a seat at the executive table. While the knowledge base of internal employees will increase, there is a genuine opportunity for organizations to save and make money simultaneously by extending learning beyond the walls.

Nearly a quarter of organizations cite that extended enterprise learning was one of their top goals according to an Extending Enterprise Learning: Educating the Channel to Improve Results, an Aberdeen Group study.

Furthermore, “organizations with extended learning in place found a 17 percent greater year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time equivalent [full-time employee].”

So, who is using extended enterprise learning?

Seventy-four percent of respondents offer learning to customers and 47 percent deliver extending learning to reseller/channel partners and supply chain partners, according to the 2016 Learning Platforms Study conducted by Elearning! Magazine.

Some believe that if you’re not offering extended enterprise, you’re already behind your competitors.

Why aren’t all organizations taking advantage of this potentially lucrative extended enterprise learning?

Target audiences for an extended enterprise solution vary by industry but generally fall into the following categories: customers and prospects, channel partners and resellers, contingent workers and supply chain organizations. Organizations may extend learning for free or for a fee by utilizing an e-commerce component of the LMS, the latter being the heart of the solution. Additionally, certification, recertification, advanced training and accreditation programs are all potential areas for an added revenue stream or simply added value.

the Walls

extendedenterprise

“Companies that extend learning to customers experienced an 800 percent greater year-over-year increase in revenue per full-time employee than companies that don’t extend learning to its customers.”

– Aberdeen Group

EXTENDING LEARNING TO CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS Customers, end users and prospects fall into this category and the return on investment is a compelling argument in its favor. “Companies that extend learning to customers experienced an 800 percent greater year-over-year increase in revenue per full-time employee than companies that don’t extend learning to its customers,” according to Aberdeen Group. Online reference libraries, product trials, training and demonstrations, and online and instructor-led courses all contribute to a number of benefits.

Have you ever considered training as a lead source for your organization? This is especially helpful if your learning is relevant to the prospect and/or if your product is in fact, learning. Universities, content providers and continuing education organizations can all benefit by giving to receive. “As customers educate themselves they voluntarily absorb knowledge about products and services without costly active involvement from the sales force or channel,” reports Talent Learning’s CEO, John Leh. The benefits of extending learning to customers and end users include: >> Increased brand awareness >> Increased product/service knowledge >> Increased engagement >> Accelerated sales cycle >> Increased customer retention >> Increased customer satisfaction >> Increased customer experience >> Improvement in relationships between customers/prospects and products >> Reduced costs in customer and technical support 28

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VENDOR AND CLIENT SUCCESS Japan-based manufacturing company Mori Seiki, reveals the competitive advantage in offering extended learning to customers. Mori Seiki had a customer without a machine operator quit unexpectedly with contracts to fulfill. This customer couldn’t wait for a machine engineer to train an employee in-person to run it, so the owner and supervisor accessed online training.

With their baseline knowledge of the machine and the information they obtained in the training, they were able to get back online with production with little down time.

The deal was saved!

Cloud-banking company nCino, a 2016 Learning! 100 winner, extended learning beyond its walls to customers and channel partners. Doing so helped them save thousands of dollars from the reduction of printed training materials and now more efficiently disperses needed training.

EXTENDING LEARNING TO CHANNEL PARTNERS AND RESELLERS There is data supporting the positive return of offering training to this group. According to Aberdeen Group, “Companies who

extend learning to partners experienced nine times greater annual improvement in revenue per FTE than those who don’t.”

Imagine if your partners were involved in your new product launch. How would that reduce time, human resources and costs if the launch was executed concurrently through an LMS? With training offered at the same time as the internal organization, you’ll have an opportunity to increase speed to market.

Especially in situations in which channel partners bring home the most bacon, it’s imperative that a comprehensive, scalable solution is available to provide the information needed to continue selling. Security technology company McAfee delivers highly specialized training for 85,000 channel partners who need certifications before selling the respective products. This is important because these partners are responsible for 75 percent of the company’s revenue.

Extending learning to channel partners offer the following benefits: >> Increased knowledge and collaboration >> Improvement in relationships between companies and partners >> Increased speed to market EXTENDING LEARNING TO CONTINGENT WORKERS This group comprises contractors, laborers, consultants, independent agents, and seasonal workers, etc.

The contingent workforce accounts for up to 30 percent of the staffing at some large enterprises, according to Bersin by Deloitte. And, it is on the upswing. If you aren’t supporting this group of workers now, you will be in the future.

Today the contingent workforce isn’t always treated like full time employees.

Including them in an extended enterprise solution would help to bridge communication gaps, increase product knowledge and

“The contingent workforce accounts for up to 30% of the staffing at larger corporations.”

– Bersin by Deloitte

in some cases, help to instill in them the company culture and purpose.

Extending learning to contingent staff benefits include: >> Increased knowledge and collaboration >> Decreased safety incidents >> Expedited onboarding >> Well-coordinated company-wide rollout >> Increased speed to market CONTINGENT WORKFORCE SUCCESS STORIES Zumba Fitness needed a certification course launched to its Zumba Instructor Network (ZIN) members. The courses were deployed worldwide to thousands of users in multiple languages. Training is now available sooner and more cost-effectively to the instructors than before. Additionally, Zumba Fitness benefits from the added revenue stream.

“We see how well our instructors are responding to the platform and are engaging in the content. We are super excited to continue to build programs that will continue to inspire our instructors around the work,” says Joy Pouty, Director of Education, Programs and Training, Zumba.

Autodesk, CAD software publisher, provides teacher training to support its Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI) Program created for anyone who teaches Autodesk software.

There are 11 regional distributors across the globe managing their respective courses using an assortment of online and classroom-based training as well as user-generated content.

“We wanted a global approach because the ACI program is global, content is global and we manage this at the global level [with a system that] allows us to manage it in regional silos,” says Rickard Lautrup, Global Projects Manager at Engage Global Solutions, Autodesk.

EXTENDING LEARNING TO SUPPLY CHAIN ORGANIZATIONS This group is made up of manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors, etc. This group understands dependencies and has a genuine interest in helping you succeed.

You can quickly see how extending learning to this group has a domino effect on all sides of the supply chain.

SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNER SUCCESSES Klein Tools, a leading manufacturer of professional hand tools and occupational

protective equipment, offered training to its tradesmen in their respective professional fields. By using incentives and syndicating their courses with seven association universities, Klein Tools got the visibility, exposure, and participation they wanted.

Partner benefits include: >> Increased knowledge and collaboration >> Increased process efficiencies >> Increased communication of value proposition WHERE EXTENDED ENTERPRISE IS HEADED There are several indications that extended enterprise is here to stay, if not, grow. There are three key drivers that point to this conclusion.

Future LMS purchases are being based on it. Nearly a third (29.4 percent) say an LMS purchase in the near future must have e-commerce to support for partner/customer training according to the 2016 Learning Platforms Study conducted

by Elearning! Media Group.

There is an influx of vendors in the space.We will be seeing more of extended enterprise according to Leh. “Lots of LMS companies are entering the market because the barrier of entry is a lot lower than it ever was before.”

Vendors themselves are seeing growth, making enhancements and re-positioning the solution.While the solution has been around for a while, SumTotal now offers extended enterprise as part of the Talent Expansion® Suite the organi-

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zation unveiled in early 2016.

Kristy Sadler, Chief Marketing Officer at Docebo says extended enterprise is an area where they are seeing incredible growth and opportunity.

Rory Cameron, Managing Director, Litmos by Callidus Cloud points to the company’s 32-percent increase in revenues in the second quarter of 2016 as evidence of the market’s growth.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Many vendors offer training solutions beyond the wall. Training companies are also aggregating content and selling it under umbrella brands like Upside Learning. As extended enterprise learning expands, human resources and learning leaders will be revenue generators as well as strategic business partners, earning a seat at the table.

If your company doesn’t have an extended enterprise initiative deployed, or an LMS to support it, this may be some extra incentive for implementing one. If you are in the majority of medium-to-large sized organizations that already have one, find out if your provider offers an extended enterprise solution. It may be well worth your time to consider your future training needs and determine whether or not your organization, affiliates and bottom line would benefit from an extended enterprise learning solution.

Extended Enterprise Resources If you are considering extended enterprise learning, access this resource guide featuring 50 platforms and 21 free trials. Scan QR code to download.

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Learning! 100 Profile:

Eliminating at Choice Silos Logistics

BY KATE KEARNEY The Silo Organizational Structure: An office where no one communicates, everyone hordes their knowledge and best practices, and where no one works together to enhance the client experience. While some organizations are structured purposefully as silos to enhance competition rather than collaboration, in many organizations, a silo culture can develop unintentionally and gradually, until it becomes an environment where individual teams think and act unilaterally, working against one another, inhibiting a company’s ability to achieve its goals. This lack of collaboration in the silo structure impedes productivity, erodes employee satisfaction, and ultimately causes clients to question whether a company champions a united front.

Eliminating a culture of silos is not an easy undertaking. However, with the right tools, support from the top down, and a strong strategy, silos can be dismantled and a culture of collaboration and learning can take hold. When you break down silos, you enable individual teams to function independently, while working together as one cohesive team.

OVERCOMING SILOS As a global provider of supply-chain services with a footprint of more than 400 stocking locations operating in 90 countries, we at Choice Logistics are expected to meet clients’ time-sensitive service level agreements. It’s essential that we collaborate internally and with

when servicing their client base. Working cohesively is essential to our success; collaboration is key.

Indeed, two of our core values are collaboration and educating one another.

We believe our success is dependent upon the collective knowledge and growth of our employees. We strive to

Silo structure impedes productivity, erodes employee satisfaction, and ultimately causes clients to question whether a company champions a united front. vendors and clients to ensure alignment of goals and expectations. We must manage and move parts all over the world and must communicate and collaborate effectively to achieve the required results.

We’re relentless in our efforts to help clients achieve success, since they rely on us to act as a partner, part of their team,

build an environment where employees can reach their highest potential, and work with them to identify and support individual and collective growth.

Last year, we recognized that not all departments were working from a common set of goals, nor were they fully informed about the business, clients, and operations. Silos

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eliminatingsilos were beginning to take hold and, without a unified focus, our organization was unable to provide the best client experience. While functional departments are necessary to centralize team efforts, we needed a strategy and the right technology to help break down these silos and improve collaboration and learning across the organization.

THE STRATEGY In 2015, we made a concerted effort to eliminate silos, using a people, process, and technology approach. There were many goals with this program, but the overarching one was to break down silos by restructuring the organization to improve client focus and employee engagement; by evaluating current processes to eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies; and by utilizing Salesforce to support these efforts and to improve visibility and collaboration across the organization.

Strategy 1: People Organizational Restructuring: We reorganized our teams as a more clientcentric model. Although we continued to be function-focused, by making crossfunctional information more readily available, teams became better equipped to share and collaborate on the best solution for the client. With Salesforce, teams also have more centralized information at their fingertips. The end result has been a better client experience.

provided a safe, individualized environment for employees to share their concerns and provide the executive team the opportunity to remove any obstacles that may be impeding employees’ abilities to perform. We also hosted a variety of focus groups, organized by function, to open up the lines of communication and help employees understand the change, and feel part of the process.

We hosted quarterly town hall meetings to keep employees updated on the state of the company. We used common marketing strategies to gain buy-in, reinforce our message, and keep employees informed.

We continue to use this forum as an additional opportunity to reiterate strategies, progress, and future goals.

Strategy 2: Training Employees, through structured training and organic learning, continue to break down silos by using Chatter, Chatter Groups, and other functional processes within the Salesforce platform. Additionally, we refocused our monthly People, Process, Technology training series to facilitate knowledge sharing around core departmental goals and functions, and how they are aligned in support of the company’s overall goals.

Strategy 3: Process We chose Salesforce as the tool to support our processes. Though we already had a few licenses for our sales team,

ents and their business.We then expanded by moving the internal task management system, a custom-built SharePoint tool, into Salesforce to improve user adoption.

The rollout, and continued development of the company’s Salesforce platform, comes with constant communication and training, helping employees understand how to maximize the tool, and constant reinforcement of the importance of collaboration. As employees become more aware of the capabilities within Salesforce and the processes it has already built into the platform, they are providing new ideas to expand its use.

By integrating processes into a unified platform, we were able to reinforce teamwork and support the behavioral change needed to move from a culture of silos to a culture of collaboration and learning.

Employees have become more invested in Salesforce, and are embracing this transformation.

Strategy 4: Technology Choice Logistics began the process of eliminating silos with Salesforce. Though traditionally thought of as a CRM, Choice Logistics envisioned a platform where all departments could operate together on a daily basis, despite their particular focus in the overall process. We continue to customize objects and move operational processes into Salesforce to support our goals. Two examples of growth within the

Since we are in the service business, our success is largely dependent upon the strength of our people, and the Salesforce platform has introduced a new world of communication, training and cross functional collaboration to our workforce.”

– Anne Yarmark, EVP Human Resources & Admin, Choice Logistics

Constant and Consistent Communication: To support employees during this change, and as an extension to the company’s open door policy, executives hosted dedicated open office hours. These forums 32

October / November 2016 Elearning!

we expanded the number of licenses to include all operational and client-facing team members. We began by introducing employees to the account information, so they could gain a deeper knowledge of cli-

platform are value-added meetings and internal meetings. Value-added meetings are records of meetings with clients or vendors where value is brought to the relationship; issues and opportunities are

identified and next steps are planned and actioned. Internal Meetings are where we record functional or cross-functional meetings. Both of these meeting types are distributed to key stakeholders, and are also visible across the organization.

This helps to further eliminate silos and pave the way for collaboration. The more employees know about what is happening with our clients, the more they are able to improve the client experience.

RESULTS The results of our Salesforce implementation are far reaching. Breaking down silos in a service organization not only improves internal operations, communication, and collaboration, it also improves

In this more team-centric environment, employees are sharing not only information, but knowledge and experience.”

– Kate Kearney, Director, Organizational Development & Training, Choice Logistics.

working relationships with clients and vendors, and their overall satisfaction.

It has also positively affected employee engagement and employee satisfaction overall. A few key highlights are: >> Enhanced collaboration >> A 33-percent improvement to our Net Promoter Score >> Improved employee satisfaction >> More timely and complete client deliverables >> Better access to information >> Enhanced learning environment As we continue to build on this collaborative learning culture, more employees are identifying operational processes to integrate into Salesforce. Visibility into what the organization, departments, and individuals are doing is improving collaboration and learning. We’re now in the process of migrating our current learning management system into Salesforce, utilizing Redwing and Appinium, to further central-

ize our efforts and enhance our ability to provide just-in-time learning to our teams, improve their overall learning experience, and gather real-time data to help make informed decisions and track progress.

“Since we are in the service business, our success is largely dependent upon the strength of our people, and the Salesforce platform has introduced a new world of communication, training, and cross functional collaboration to our workforce,” says Anne Yarmark, EVP Human Resources & Administration, Choice Logistics. “All relevant client data is shared and captured instantly so there is internal visibility on all client initiatives across all functions. Since its inception, Salesforce has given us a customizable tool to enhance the overall client and employee experience because it has helped us to execute at a higher level. The platform has increased our productivity through efficient and effective process management, instantaneous information sharing, and core

communication governance. Ultimately, the Salesforce platform has given us innovative and exciting paths to training and for preparing our workforce to be successful.”

Using Salesforce has helped us create a more collaborative approach and boost its already robust learning culture. In this more team-centric environment, employees are sharing not only information, but knowledge and experiences — key components in the company’s core values of collaboration and educating one another. With the right strategy, continued communication, and Salesforce as a tool, employees are now better enabled to function independently within their teams while coming together as a cohesive unit to support corporate goals and provide the best possible client experience.

— Kate Kearney is Director of Organizational Development & Training at Choice Logistics, Inc. Choice Logistics is a six-time Learning! 100 organization.

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Selling with the Brain in Mind

Neuroscience Should Be Changing the Way You Design Sales Training

BY MARGIE MEACHAM

Suppose you had the chance to be present at the very moment of a world-changing discovery? Imagine sitting next to Marie Curie in her lab as she discovers the power of radioactivity or walking with Neil Armstrong on the moon. Maybe you are seeing the DNA double-helix for the first time with Watson, Crick, and Wilson. If you had the chance to be a part of one of these great moments of discovery, would you take it?

Right now, we all are embarking on a great adventure. We are discovering how the brain really works by watching it in the very act of cognition. We are expanding our understanding of how the human brain, a quivering bundle of more than 400 billion neurons, uses electrical charges to transmit and store sensations, feelings, decisions, fears, thoughts, and even our sense of self, on a constant and ever-changing basis. Someday soon, we’ll unlock the code that allows our brains to retrieve the sights, smells, and sounds of your seventh birthday as vividly as the first time you experienced it. And we’ll start to figure out what this wonderful, beautiful landscape of neurons, dendrites, and axons means to those of us who strive to help people learn.

For the past decade, advances in neuroscience have shed new light on how the brain learns.

While this science is still in its infancy and there are more questions than answers right now, many teachers, instructional designers and trainers

are implementing brain-aware techniques into their work as educators. Yet a quick review of the top 20 sales programs in 2016 offers pretty much the same solution selling approach that has been in vogue for decades.

While the rest of the education and training profession is finding new ways to apply the expanding understanding of how brains work, sales trainers often seem stuck in the past. This would be fine if the selling techniques of the past were actually working, but new research shows that people often make a major purchase decision in spite of the sales person, rather than because of him or her. If you want to give your organization a competitive advantage, here are some practical applications of brain science you can use today to revitalize your sales training programs.

TEACH SALESPEOPLE HOW THE BRAIN MAKES DECISIONS Think about a major purchase decision you made recently. You probably conducted careful research online, compared feature

We are using the same [sales training] approach in vogue for decades... while [others] are finding new ways to apply brain science.

sets, searched for product reviews, sought out the opinion of friends and colleagues, and ultimately, made what you consider to be a logical decision. At least, that’s how you felt during the process. But you might be surprised to learn that the brain processes emotional and purchasing decisions in the same place — revealing that our emotions factor into any major purchase.

Recently, two different research teams at Duke University discovered that they were studying the same part of the brain to understand two brain functions that were previously thought to be completely unrelated: emotion and high-value purchasing decisions. The region that is getting all this attention is the vmPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), which is located between the eyes in the front of the brain. By watching this region while people are making decisions, scientists have discovered that it’s most active when the subject is asking questions such like: “Is this product or service really worth the price I would have to pay to acquire it?” “Will I regret this decision later on?” “Is this really the very best choice I can make in this situation?”

In answering questions that appear to be about discoverable facts, the vmPFC considers some expected factors, such as the cost of one product compared to a similar product with similar features, expected financial benefits from the acquisition and use of the product, and so forth. But it also factors in some less quantifiable considerations, including status, emotional satisfaction, excitement, and small rewards such as snacks or prizes. This was quite surprising, because the scientists expected to see the cerebral cortex, the seat of our conscious thought, running the show. It turns out that the cerebral cortex doesn’t become involved in the decision until much later in the

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brainscience success and produced dopamine, delivering a positive feeling of success. She literally experienced her success in her mind before it happened. If the intern did not believe the idea would be accepted, it generally wasn’t.

This is pretty much what common sense might tell us, right? We’ve all been told that positive thinking yields better results than negative thinking, and this research confirms that intuitive belief.

process. What’s considered the logical part of the brain starts coming up with reasonable sounding explanations for a purchase decision after it has been made at an unconscious level. In other words, by the time you can explain the pros and cons of two competing products to yourself or another person, your brain has already decided.

So, did you buy that expensive human capital management application because it would give you more hard data about the effectiveness of your leadership development program, or because it would make you feel smarter than your peers? The answer is most likely a bit of both. If sales people are too focused on making a logical case for their customer, they may miss significant opportunities where the buyer is responding emotionally to the perceived benefits of a particular choice. As a sales professional myself, I am imagining a few readers right now nodding their heads and thinking, “Ah, so that’s what happened to the sale I was sure I had sewn up.”

The brain is most active when asked questions like: “Is this product really worth the price?”

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As early as 1994, Antonio Damasio made the case that emotions are a critical part of the brain’s decision-making process. Because emotions and logic are linked in our decision-making process, we must teach our sales people to allow time for buyers to process the emotional content related to their decisions. Remember that these emotions are happening at an unconscious level, so it may take some prodding to help the buyer bring these feelings up to the surface where they can be examined and discussed.

TEACH SALES PEOPLE THAT THERE REALLY IS POWER IN POSITIVE THINKING AS LONG AS IT’S GENUINE Many sales training programs focus on the skill of influence. The reasoning is that if you can persuade the buyer to have the same enthusiasm for your product that you display, he or she will be buy it. An interesting study has studied the process of influence by observing brains trying to sell ideas to other people.

One group was assigned the role of the intern.

Group members were told to bring movie ideas to members of the other group, the producer, and convince these people to make movies from their ideas. Interns were assigned these ideas, which they were supposed to sell.

By viewing a live MRI scan during the experiment, scientists discovered that they could accurately predict whether or not a producer would buy an idea by looking at two responses in the brain: anticipated reward and what’s considered the salesperson effect. If the intern believed that her idea would be accepted, her brain anticipated this

By the time you explain the pros and cons of two products...your brain has already decided.

In addition to the reward-behavior predictor, scientists found that some people were just more convincing than others. When these people spoke about their ideas, the same area of the brain was stimulated in the intern’s brain and in the producer’s. In other words, the presenter was able to trigger the reward stimulus in another person’s brain. The scientists called this the salesperson’s effect.

It isn’t clear if this effect is the result of some sort of innate ability or brain structure, or something that can be developed over time. Further studies likely will answer those questions.

Soon it may be possible to hire salespeople by watching their MRIs as they attempt to sell something to another participant. We might be able to determine a leader’s communication skills by measuring the strength of his salesperson effect on team members’ brains.

If we can discover the mechanism that is triggering this effect, we may be able to even train people to enhance this ability. What we do know is that when two people are communicating well, they are literally in sync, in that their brain waves produced by the electro-chemical communication between neurons is modulating at the same frequency.

In a video from a neuroscience conference in Amsterdam, several pairs of people sit quietly and use the feedback coming from sensors that picked up their brain waves to synchro-

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brainscience

“If sales people are too focused on making a logical case for their customer, they may miss significant opportunities where the buyer is responding emotionally to the perceived benefits of a particular choice.”

– Margie Meacham, Chief Freedom Officer, Learningtogo nize, which is indicated by the color (or wavelength) begin produced by their brains.

Daniel Goleman, expanding on his initial work in emotional intelligence, has discovered that the brains of two people who trust each other have a remarkable symmetry — their brains are so in sync that they exhibit high levels of brain activity in the same parts of the brain at the same time. The same synchronicity has been found in couples dancing and musicians playing together. Many successful sales professionals have sensed this syncing of brain waves when things are going extremely well in the sales process.

TEACH SALES PEOPLE TO BUILD TRUST THROUGH GENUINE CONNECTIONS Neuroscience suggests that the less we trust the salesperson, the riskier we believe the purchase decision and the less likely we are to act, regardless of the product’s benefits.

Approach-avoidance conflict is a term used to describe a major decision that has both appealing and unappealing elements to it. Since most people inherently mistrust salespeople, nearly every major purchase decision falls into this category. How can we feel good about a deal we’ve just made with a perceived devil? Neuroscientist Paul Zak was one of the first to identify the neurotransmitter oxytocin as an indicator of a high degree of trust toward a stranger, as exhibited by heightened levels of oxytocin.

Oxytocin and other “messenger molecules” are released in response to internal and external stimuli, flooding specific parts of the brain and triggering specific emotional reactions. Zak found that the more oxytocin is coursing through your brain, the more likely you are to trust people. It stands to reason that if we can stimulate oxytocin in the buyer’s brain, we can overcome the deeply ingrained tendency to distrust a sales representative. Here are a few behaviors that 38

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stimulate oxytocin and make us believe that an individual is trustworthy.

The Power of Touch Being touched by another human being stimulates oxytocin and other transmitters and increases the feelings of trust toward that individual. Zak found that hugging, in particular, generates high degrees of trust in both participating brains. Handshaking can also improve the degree of trust between two individuals and make the prospect of striking a deal more likely.

Storytelling Builds Trust and Connection Stories have a profound effect on the brain.

Brain imaging studies have shown that when we are immersed in a story, our brains respond as though we are the protagonist of the narrative. Therefore, stories about others buying and using the product can help buyers see themselves making the purchase decision and generate positive emotions about the product and the salesperson.

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Our brains are capable of detecting false statements within milliseconds.

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You Can’t Fake Trustworthiness Some sales training companies try to give sales representatives a list of behaviors which, if practiced, will increase their ability to generate trust and build relationships.

If only it were that simple. In “The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins explains that our

brains are highly tuned survival machines, so at some point in our evolution it must have become necessary to detect lies in order to stay alive. Today, our brains are capable of detecting false statements or actions within milliseconds. We may not be able to express the reaction in words, but we know at “a gut level” (really a brain level) that some people are not genuine. Trustworthiness cannot be faked; your buyer’s brain will detect the falsehood every time. Turning again to my review of the top 20 sales training organizations, I see a familiar pattern.

Their content seems to focus on external behaviors that will make salespeople appear more credible. Neuroscience tells us that we should focus instead on teaching sales professionals to be genuine, sincere, and trustworthy — a much bigger challenge with a much greater potential payoff.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? We’re still figuring out how to use the exciting information coming out of neuroscience, but we can start applying these and other insights now, to make our sales training – and all our training programs – more brain-aware. It’s a brave new world and learning professionals have the opportunity — and the responsibility — to continue to adapt as new information becomes available.

Whether we realize it or not, we are observers to one of the greatest eras of discovery in the history of the human race. We’re living in the early days of the age of discovering our true selves, and it is going to change not only how we view the sales profession, but how we understand ourselves.

—Margie Meacham is the Chief Freedom Officer, Learningtogo. She helps people learn and improve performance by applying our evolving understanding of how the brain works, as revealed through neuroscience.

Essential

Customer Service Skills Forgotten in the Digital Age

BY STUART LEUNG Evidence shows that consumers believe overall customer service is actually getting worse. Arizona State University found that customer complaints climbed from 45 to 50 percent over a two-year period. And, according to a study by NewVoiceMedia, poor customer service costs businesses in the United States approximately $41 billion every year. More

clients are having negative customer experiences, and those experiences are translating into a substantial dollar-loss for businesses across the nation.

With today’s competitive marketplace, irritated customers are discovering that they can simply take their business elsewhere. In fact, 65 percent of customers have completely cut ties with a brand over a single bad experience. And internet-based businesses aren’t immune

to this new-found customer awareness, either — roughly 60 percent of web users who encounter a problem (customer experience or otherwise) on a company’s website immediately leave the site and/ or visit a competitor’s site. So, whether your company is B2B focused, businessto-customer oriented, web-based or brick-and-mortar, there’s no doubt that customer neglect can significantly reduce your profits.

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customerservice

70%

About of customers’ buying decisions are based upon how they feel they are being treated.

THE DECLINE OF THE CUSTOMERCENTERED MENTALITY What’s the cause of this decline in customer service? The answer depends on a variety of factors. For one thing, the modern customer is more aware of what good customer service is. Companies that are being consistently recognized as having superior customer service are taking advantage of the positive publicity a customer-focused business plan creates. They use transparency and social media communication to ensure potential customers around the world know exactly what kind of positive experiences they could be having. This puts a great deal of pressure on businesses to provide equally awe-inspiring customer service. Once clients realize top-quality service is a possibility, they begin to expect it from every business they encounter.

The almost infinite reach of the internet has made it possible for even the smallest of businesses to amass customers from all over the world. As this international customer base grows, business leaders are forced to reallocate more of their finite resources toward customer service. This becomes an even more difficult task to accomplish as their client bases grow. Add to that the issues of providing customer service across multiple languages and cultural norms, and the cost and complication increases even more.

DIGITAL DIFFICULTIES Virtually every issue associated with the decline of customer service results from the advancement of the digital age. Simply put, 40

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as reach and abilities have increased, the one-on-one focus of pre-internet business has declined. This is unfortunate, because approximately 70 percent of buying decisions are made based upon how a customer feels that he or she is being treated.

The digital age doesn’t have to mark the end of the era of customer satisfaction. By recognizing and re-committing to some essential customer service skills that businesses around the world have been disregarding, you can ensure your customers remain happy.

Here are four customer service skills that many businesses need to re-learn:

77% of

buyers are more likely to buy from a company if its CEO is active in social media.

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Patience If there’s one thing that has come to define the digital age, it’s speed. High-speed internet, instant video streaming, Wikipedia-style informational databases, online shopping with next-day delivery — all seem to promise customers everything with instant gratification. Businesses believe that by rushing potential customers through the sales process, they’ll have more time to devote to acquiring new leads. However, there’s something to be said for taking a more leisurely approach. When companies and clients are able to move slowly through the sales funnel, the extra time allows for better mutual understanding. Of course, many customers may still insist on a quick resolution. It’s the responsibility of the business to ensure the customer fully understands what he or she is committing to. When necessary, explain to hurried customers that in order to provide the best customer service, there are important steps that can’t be rushed. Most customers would rather invest the time to ensure competent service, than be quickly rushed into something they may end up regretting.

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Knowledge Few things are more frustrating for a customer than having to deal with unknowledgeable company

representatives. A nightmare situation many consumers have experienced happens when a customer is transferred from department to department, having to reexplain their situation again and again to representatives who either don’t have the proper authority to address the problem or the understanding to make things right.

The majority of employees who work directly with customers are often situated at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder.

It’s become even more prevalent as many businesses are now choosing to outsource customer service departments in answer to their growing customer bases. But while it may make sense financially to spend less on customer-service specialists, it makes absolutely no sense at all when you consider the customer service implications.

Your customers are your company’s most important resource, and without them your business ceases to exist. So, spend necessary time, effort, and money to ensure that those within your organization who work directly with your customers have the training and authority necessary to give them a positive experience. Think of these added expenses as investments: 55 percent of customers would be willing to pay more for a better customer experience, so go ahead and charge a little bit more to make up for the added training.

55% of

customers would pay more for better customer service.

The benefits of this kind of connection have been well documented: 77 percent of buyers are more likely to buy from a company if its CEO is active in social media, and 46 percent of web users visit a company’s social media pages before committing to a purchase. Also, organizations that deliver customer support through social media achieve gains of seven percent, in comparison to the nearly three percent gains seen by those organizations that do not.

The digital age has opened up an entirely new universe in which businesses are able to generate new leads and establish customer re-

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Understanding When you have the opportunity to meet your customers directly and communicate with them face-to-face, it’s generally less difficult to understand them. But as more and more customer interactions are taking place on the virtual stage, the ability to accurately ‘read’ customers is diminishing. This is because there are many more layers to conversation than can be conveyed through words. Body language, voice inflection, and a thousand other details that are vital to communication are garbled when businesses and customers attempt to communicate through text, telephone, or video conferencing.

These limitations can be circumvented, however when it comes to accurately conveying intentions, feelings, and ideas, there is no substitute for honesty.

If customers and representatives can communicate openly, they’ll be more likely to reach a favorable outcome.

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Approachability Customers don’t simply want the best products for the best prices; they want the best people working with them. Personality has always been an important aspect of the customer-business dichotomy. But with the necessary automation of sales processes, it’s becoming more difficult for customers to connect with businesses. As a result, businesses become faceless, uncaring entities in the eyes of the consumer. The remedy: A simple name tag.

A name tag shows your customers that you welcome their questions, concerns and anything else. Of course, when operating over a digital medium, a physical name tag becomes somewhat ineffective. You can make up for that via social media pages that are well-maintained and give your customers a place to connect with your organization.

lationships. Unfortunately, it has also played a part in driving a wedge between consumers and organizations. However, by identifying the aspects of customer service that are routinely being neglected and training employees to focus their attention on repairing these breaches, your organization can take advantage of the increased speed and reach of the 21st century digital landscape.

Don’t let customer neglect separate your business from the people on whom it depends. Recommit to customer retention and satisfaction through building customer service skills, and you’ll find that as you make their happiness your priority, your customers will respond accordingly.

— Stuart Leung is manager, Salesforce and authors monthly blogs on trends in sales enablement and CRM.

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TipsSocial Learning Tips 3 Lessons Learned from a

Social Learning Launch Failure

BY JOHNNY HAMILTON, ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER, PROVIDENCE HEALTH & SERVICES Providence Health & Services recently launched a community of practice — a group of individuals who collaborate to fulfill both individual and group goals — and this group needed an online platform to reach members across several states about instructional design. I learned about Path2X during a workshop several months ago.

Path2X incorporates numerous helpful features. I was excited about implementing the enhanced tools and I understood how these tools matched the organic ways in which people learn such as finding, sharing, and discussing articles or asking for help with a particular skill from an experienced peer. The failure was not due to Path2X, it was due to factors that should have been considered when launching any social learning initiative, regardless of the platform used.

bers became lost in the amount of information about the tools and were quickly turned off to using them.

The lesson I learned was to first focus on the users’ needs.

I should have identified their high-priority needs, then I should have identified and used the tools that supported those needs. I later found that they primarily wanted to download templates, learn how to use specific skills, and discuss best practices with particular authoring workflows. These needs all stem from a desire to increase their production capacity on their current and upcoming projects. They did not want to learn about the latest trends nor how to track their progress.

I would have initially focused solely on file sharing, lessons and tutorials and group discussions since they matched the user needs. Hold off on introducing other tools until there is an interest or an organic way to introduce them.

LESSON #1:

START SMALL AND FOCUS ON USERS’ NEEDS I made the mistake of explaining how each tool in Path2X worked immediately, rather than focusing on the purpose of the group — instructional design. Many group mem42

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LESSON #2:

COMMUNICATE THE BENEFITS IN A WAY THAT USERS WILL UNDERSTAND When I first started this initiative, I had spent some time configuring the site so it would best support the group’s learning needs. I made examples of how the mentoring would work, aggregating more than 5,000 relevant blog articles, tutorials, templates and discussion threads. In a very real sense, I was completely focused on how the features worked rather than identifying what the benefits were and how they supported the goals of the group. For example, the group said they wanted to have templates to help them author their projects faster to meet their deadlines. The benefit of being able to access and use templates is reduced production time which results in less stress and greater ability to meet due dates. If I could redo the Path2X launch, I would have explained a basic tool by explaining its benefit then shown how it can be used to decrease production time.

LESSON #3:

BE CLEAR ABOUT EXPECTATIONS During the set-up of the online forum, I often thought about the vibrant social learn-

ing that could occur including the exchange of timely questions and thought-provoking answers, feedback on projects and developing valuable relationships.

The lesson I learned was how important it is to clarify expectations. I did not explore with key stakeholders and explain to the users what was expected of them, me, and of the whole project.

Before implementing social learning, be clear about how often users should participate in online discussions, and the frequency that facilitators will post templates and other resources.

Looking back, instead of thinking about what could occur, I need to be thinking about clarifying what should occur.

Avoid this by having discussions early with key stakeholders about expectations of the users, host, and project.

A FINAL WORD TO THE WISE The Path2X launch was an implementation failure, not a technical one. It doesn’t matter how good whatever social learning platform you use — you’ll be three steps ahead of the game if you learn from my mistakes.

— Johnny Hamilton is Online Instructional Designer at Providence Health & Services. He is a 2016 Learning! Champion for extraordinary contributions to the learning industry.

NewLearning Platforms ELEMENTS WAYPOINTS IN-LINE TRAINING TOOL GAINING GROUND Elements WayPoints provides an in-line training experience that can work for any web-based software. The major portion of WayPoints courseware involves a unique learning experience in-line with the product and it provides simulations through guided workflows that have the learner directly interfacing with the software. Using xAPI, Waypoints also provides competency based assessments and training activity data.

Riptide Software is adding an authoring feature to allow training workflows to be created directly by the end user very rapidly to complement the Waypoints product.

This authoring component makes Waypoints accessible to non-technical authors allowing them to create their own workflows. In addition, the author can create different types of overlays from popovers, transitions, to models.

—Learn More: http://learning.riptidesoftware.com/products/ INTELLUM LAUNCHES FIRST OPEN ASSET LMS Intellum, a technology company that builds employee learning, collaboration and performance tracking tools for the modern workplace is launching an up-

date to the Exceed Learning Management System (Exceed LMS). The new release allows learning professionals to leverage and track any type of file or asset, including items curated from the Internet, to

quickly and easily create or supplement learning activities.

Intellum’s Exceed LMS eliminates the need to strictly adhere to course authoring or file output specifications (like xAPI) or invest in additional, complicated infrastructure such as a Learning Record Store. Learning professionals can now mix and match a wide variety of file types including documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDF files, traditional e-learning assets like SCORM or AICCcompliant courseware, and non-traditional resources like links to YouTube videos, TEDTalks or blog posts. The result is a more modern enterprise learning experience that mimics the way users learn in their private lives.

—Learn more: intellum.com ZOHO CRM GAINS CLOUD FUNCTIONALITY Ytel, a cloud communications company is partnering with Zoho CRM. Text messaging functionality through a native integration with message360° is now available to

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NewLearning Platforms ject matter experts in the review process. All project assets are stored in one central location so authors in the same office or across the globe can access or re-use content from anywhere at any time. Three authoring modes are available: responsive authoring, traditional e-learning and software simulations.

—Learn more: www.dominknow.com

Zoho customers due to the partnership.

A Ytel solution, message360° is a Cloud Communications API that integrates Voice, Text, Email, and Direct Mail functionality into any web-based application.

—Learn more: https://www.ytel.com/solutions/message360/ AUTHORING TOOL, DOMINKNOW, OFFERS WIDE RANGE OF ASSISTANCE FOR BUILDING SALES TRAINING MATERIALS The dominKnow Platform is a webbased authoring and publishing solution that helps teams collaborate in real-time, share and re-use content, and easily engage subject matter experts in the review process. Content is ready for delivery from virtually any location — all from a single-source. It offers all of the features needed to create engaging, media rich learning experiences for sales staff, including customizable testing, flexible interactions and animation 44

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creation, advanced variables, branching, audio/video recording, software simulations, system and author-created templates and more. Teams can collaborate in real time, share and re-use content across projects, and easily engage sub-

CLOUD-BASED TRANSLATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, UNIFY, ASSISTS WITH GLOBAL GROWTH UNIFY, a product of InWhatLanguage, is a powerful cloud-based translation management system (TMS) developed to put users easily manage multilingual assets across departments, vendors and linguists internationally. UNIFY gives users the power to translate collaboratively in real time with linguists, making the process easier, faster and better.

The platform is designed to cut out the middle man such as Dropbox, Google Drive and email attachments. UNIFY cuts out the need to adjust files after linguists send them in different versions and allows users and translators the ability to work from start to finish.

The scalable translation platform allows users to consolidate and manage all international content in real time helping them focus on business and make better decisions for global growth.

—Learn more: inwhatlanguage.com

NewSales Training more than 5,000 micro-video lessons covering a variety of business training topics.

The short video format, combined with the availability of post-training reinforcement through boosted content, is designed to maximize learning retention and help learners apply knowledge in real-life circumstances. Managers, supervisors and employees can use The BizLibrary Collection anywhere, at any time, on any device.

There is no limit on the number of video lessons a user can view.

—Learn more: http://www.bizlibrary.com/ free-trial/

IMPROVING SALES WITH GRAVITOCITY AND SALES GAUGE Gravitocity, Inc., a pioneer in sales outreach and prospecting technology, is partnering with Sales Gauge, a leading sales training and sales e-learning company. Together, the two will enable salespeople to improve sales velocity by identifying and reaching new sources of senior-level prospects and closing business with them faster. Gravitocity’s platform, LeadLeaper, gives its subscribers unfettered access to LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, and Data.com, a division of Salesforce.com, providing verified contact information that allows salespeople to conduct immediate outreach to the right prospects. In conjunction with the technology, Sales Gauge teaches salespeople how to gain attention, engage and negotiate with these prospects through a mix of tested techniques that are presented via live training and e-learning modules.

—Learn more: http://www.gravitocity. com/

tion, the largest library of online training content, can now be used by small and midsize business leaders to help their company grow and reach goals through effective training.

Some specific small business challenges that can be addressed through online training include new employee onboarding, compliance training, manager and supervisor training, customer service skills and more. BizLibrary’s online library contains

GC LEARNING SERVICES CELEBRATES 20TH ANNIVERSARY BY LAUNCHING NEW E-LEARNING LIBRARY GC Learning Services, LLC is launching a new library on the Coggno platform offering universal, affordable, off-the-shelf generic training courses for sale in celebration of its 20th anniversary. A discount is being offered to companies who purchase a minimum of 10 licenses.

The new platform enables companies to easily download licensed courses for immediate use for one, ten, or hundreds of employees at a time at discounted bulk rates.

The first course, titled Effective Meeting Strategies, takes the learner through a fivestep process on how to conduct an effective meeting. From creating an agenda to assigning action items, participants learn how to have successful and effective meetings. Courses include audio, video, offline activities such as worksheets, graded assessments and printable certificates upon passing completion of each course.

—Learn More: gclearningservices.com

BIZLIBRARY OFFERS NEW EMPLOYEE TRAINING SOLUTION FOR SMALL AND MIDSIZE BUSINESSES BizLibrary’s latest release specifically addresses small business challenges and their ability to implement practical employee training programs. The BizLibrary Collec

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NewSales Training

SITECORE LAUNCHES NEW OFFERINGS FOR BUSINESS USERS Sitecore is launching its new Sitecore Experience Platform 8 e-learning offering, which is specifically designed for business users and .NET developers. Users can purchase e-learning courses online and start taking them immediately from anywhere in the world. Sitecore XP 8 Content User Basics for Business Users is a course for content creators, communications or user experience professionals, and marketers who will create, edit, and design web content on the Sitecore Experience Platform.

The second offerine, Sitecore XP 8 Website Development for .NET Developers, is a new course that enables developers to gain the knowledge and skills they need to create customized web solutions using the platform. They’ll learn data infrastructure and presentation concepts, work with data and rules, and utilize the Sitecore API. As with all of Sitecore’s developer courses, this e-learning course includes a certification exam that recognizes the student as a Sitecore Certified Developer after he or she passes it.

—Learn More: http://www.sitecore.net/ INTERACTIVE SERVICES RELEASES NEW VERSION OF COMPLIANCE LEARNING CENTER Interactive Services is releasing a new 46

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version of its compliance learning center.

Compliance training is essential for many businesses, and the improved compliance learning center will provide better tools to design learning and improve mobile capabilities.

When it comes to corruption and other problems in the workplace, it’s important for companies to ensure they are up-todate on the latest compliance training.

Interactive Services allows businesses to customize their compliance training to address the specific issues they encounter the most. The new compliance learning center allows businesses to provide this training through either mobile devices or computers. Businesses will be able to choose from a vast array of topics, including anti-money laundering, information security training, workplace conduct training, anti-trust and fair competition, anti-harassment and discrimination and much more.

Interactive Services has created training modules for all of the compliance topics they cover. However, these solutions can also be customized to suit the needs of each individual business. In most cases, as little as 20 percent customized content can add a unique impact that will help employees better absorb and apply the information to their specific situation.

—Learn more: http://interactiveservices. com/

IMPACT TRAINING SOLUTIONS LAUNCHES IGNITE ELEARNING Ignite eLearning training courses are enhancing safety, loss prevention, compliance, operational, and employee development programs for Impact Training Solutions.

The Ignite eLearning service provides courses for clients without long-term contracts. Customers can also customize training programs by uploading their own content directly into Ignite, further streamlining the distribution of training materials and compliance management.

Ignite eLearning includes a wide range of courses for professional drivers, office personnel and technicians. As an option, Impact offers the only fully managed online training program in the transportation industry. Impact currently manages online training for more than 90 fleets. CarriersEdge will be powering the courses.

“With Ignite eLearning, we are building on the comprehensive services we offer our customers,” said Kelly Anderson, President, Impact Training Solutions.

“The CarriersEdge approach to interactive online training helps our clients improve their training and compliance programs by offering a better learning experience and content, including the information and techniques needed to help make our customers successful today and proactively prepared for tomorrow.”

—Learn more: http://impacttrans.com/

NewMobile Learning access the learning material.,” says Sue Brett, CEO of learningonline.xyz, parent company of Cudoo. “Our aim is to provide quality courses and that won’t be compromised as the app uses a responsive design that will alter according to the device used and yet remain uniform across all platforms.”

—Learn more: http://cudoo.com/

HTC LAUNCHES VIVEPORT APP HTC is opening a dedicated virtual reality app store called Viveport which will host non-gaming content separately from Valve and its Steam store. The Viveport store will be available in Vive headsets, web browsers, the PC app and a mobile app.

The Viveport store will focus on nongaming verticals including education, design, art, social, video, music, sports, health, fashion, travel, news, shopping, creativity tools, and more. The store will also support in-app purchases and subscriptions in addition to a pay-to-download model.

—Learn more: http://blog.htcvive.com/ us/2016/08/introducing-viveport/

employees use mobile learning tools when travelling and the Cudoo app will help businesses ensure that neither the business and nor the training is affected when employees are on the move.

“The Cudoo App will take the convenience and ease of e-learning to the next level and provide the learners with the option of using the device of their choice to

GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS APP OFFERS VR FIELD TRIPS Teachers can now take their students on virtual reality field trips through Google’s new Expeditions educational virtual reality app. The app works with Google Cardboard, the company’s virtual reality viewer.

With more than 200 expeditions to choose from, students can experience historical landmarks, diving underwater with sharks, visits to outer space and more. Teachers act as guides using curated descriptions, talking points and questions for students to get the most out of each experience.

A higher-end version with premade viewers, a teacher device and more is available for those who have a larger budget for their classrooms.

—Learn More: https://vr.google.com/cardboard/apps/

CUDOO LAUNCHES MOBILE APPS FOR IOS The Cudoo application, currently available on Android and coming soon to IOS, will help enterprise businesses and learners by offering courses with the same features as those present on the website on-the-go. Users will be able to access all content at the touch of his or her mobile or tablet screen anytime and anywhere.

Cudoo’s mobile app keeps up with the moment of need mobile support trend and aids learning as and when it is required — whether it be outside of the classroom, on the job or when traveling. According to Michaels and Associates, 74 percent of

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NewMobile Learning BoostHQ connects to Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube, Box and many other platforms that allow for the exchanging and storage of information. With highpowered encryption, documents are secure. BoostHQ works on all iOS and Android devices.

—Learn more: boosthq.io

NITROSPARK’S GAME-BASED LEARNING PLATFORM EMBRACES MOBILE DEVICES A new version of Nitroworld, the Nitrospark’s 3D learning simulation software is available for 3D virtual worlds, simulations and learning programs to be made available across all modern devices.

Nitroworld now simply runs in the browser meaning that Nitrospark’s learning programs can be easily accessed on all desktop computers and many modern iOS and Android devices. Nitroworld has full support for WebGL browsers, the emerging industry-standard technology behind Webbased 3D graphics. Other new features in this release of Nitroworld include a greater and easier ability to edit content without a high level of knowledge of 3D software.

—Learn more: nitrospark.com UDEMY OFFERS ON-THE-GO LEARNING Udemy offers thousands of on-demand courses hosted by experts and the app allows users to watch lectures on their commutes, during lunch and from home. Offline viewing allows for access the courses when they don’t have an internet connection — users simply chose the lesson and save it to his or her device before losing 48

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the network connection. Course playback also allows users to adjust the speed of the lesson.

—Learn more: udemy.com BOOSTHQ ALLOWS FOR CROWDSOURCED LEARNING FOR TEAMS, BY TEAMS BoostHQ, a free mobile app, allows team members to share and access information needed for group projects.

DESIGNJOT APP ASSISTS WITH BUILDING BETTER TRAINING DesignJot is an iPad app that assists instructional designers, trainers and performance consultants build better training. Meant for those of all skill levels. DesignJot includes two independent yet interrelated components —Analysis and Design. Leveraging ANSWER, a high-impact, rapid needs assessment methodology, the Analysis tool ensures that instructional strategies align with your organization’s unique needs and opportunities. The accompanying Design tool includes a flow chart builder, a training objective builder, an activity sketch pad, and a content readiness form.

This dual approach that combines rapid needs analysis and high-level design helps training development professionals gather and evaluate key factors of design before developing a training solution.

—Learn more: http://www.allencomm.com

LastWord Using Social Learning to Improve Employee Engagement

I

BY KATHY BRIES n today’s digital economy, converging job roles, evolving technologies and the continued growth of digitization have significantly changed the face of the workplace. In addition, we now have the most multigenerational workforce in history, which means great diversity of needs and expectations.

This constellation of changes requires business transformation. To navigate this transformation, organizations require an agile, high-performing workforce. Current and projected talent shortages and skills gaps make this goal difficult to achieve, yet achieving it is essential. Organizations must find ways to enable employees to gain the skills that the organization needs. Employee learning and development must be reimagined and redefined because, in today’s workplace, employees must be empowered to drive their own careers and development.

Organizations, then, need a new paradigm for how to develop and nurture employee engagement, using a multifaceted approach that includes social learning as part of its core.

What exactly is social learning? It’s an informal mode of learning in which participants interact either in person or via a variety of electronic means including blogs, social networking, videos, podcasts and more.

Social learning creates an interactive, interconnected experience for employees. People who might never otherwise have met are able to work together and learn from each other, strengthening teamwork and furthering personal engagement in the organization’s goals.

Engagement is no longer a once-per-year problem, but rather, it is a continuous and always-on issue — and social learning provides the answer for this pain point.

According to the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2015, learning and development issues rose from No. 8 to the third spot on the list of the most important talent challenges. Despite this demand, capabilities in learning dropped significantly. Social learning can fill this gap, creating an educated and engaged workforce agile enough to grow with the future.

—Kathy Bries is Senior Director-General Manager at Cisco Systems. She brings her team more than a decade of networking market knowledge, Business Unit P&L experience, product/engineering management and operations support and cross-team project management leadership.

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Do You Make the

Grade?

2

Results:

6-7 correct makes you Mensa material.

4-5 correct means you are a skimmer — and can learn oh-so much more.

Fewer than 4? This issue is your Sunday reading assignment. Try again!

1

According to brain science, sales people are encouraged to balance logic with what when closing a deal? a. Emotion b. Integrity c. Flexibility d. Humor

What percentage of customers have cut ties with a brand after one bad experience? a. 48 b. 54 c. 65 d. 72

5

Jack Phillips updated Donald Kirpatrick’s model of evaluating training to conclude ROI. How many levels are in the new model? a. 3 b. 5 c. 7 d. 9

3

6

4

7

Amazon Web Services launched how many new releases in 2015? a. 462 b. 536 c. 722 d. 840

Organizations with extended learning in place found what percentage greater year-over-year improvement in revenue per full-time employee? a. 2 b. 10 c. 12 d. 17

Which area of IoT will grow the most? a. Heathcare/Pharma b. Agriculture c. Energy/Utlities d. Transportation/Distribution Who does Coupa train with their certification program? a. Employees b. Customers c. Partners d. All of the above

Editorial Index 451 Research https://451research.com/ 500 Startups http://500.co/ Aberdeen Group aberdeen.com ComScore http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/ mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketingstatistics/ Facebook, Inc. https://code.facebook.com/ posts/268598690180189 Gartner, Inc. http://www.gartner.com/technology/home.jsp Hewlett Packard Enterprise http://bit.ly/2btmcOr

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/ Kallidus https://www.kallidus.com/resources/whitepapers-reports/ RightScale http://www.rightscale.com/ U.S. Department of Education http://bit.ly/2bhUPGV Verizon http://vz.to/2aXitte Vodafone http://bit.ly/2aPyhiq ADVERTISERS Cloud Coaching International pg 2 cloudcoachinginternational.com

Elearning! Magazine Subscriptions

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2elearning.com Enterprise Learning! Conference Online pg 3 www. ELCEShow.com Learning! 100 Applications

pg 37

http://www.2elearning.com/awards/learning100-awards Learning! Champion Applications pg 15 http://www.2elearning.com/rss2/item/565492017-learning-champion-awards-application Litmos by CallidusCloud

pg 52

litmos.com Tony Robbins Live

pg 13

www.tonyrobbins.com/sanjose16 Answers: 1a; 2) c; 3) c; 4) d; 5) b; 6) c; 7) d

Elearning! magazine is published bi-monthly by B2B Media Company LLC, 44920 W. Hathaway Ave. #1794, Maricopa, AZ 85139. Application to mail Standard Class is filed with Sheppardville, KY Post Office. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to: Elearning! PO Box 1794 Maricopa, AZ 85139. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals in the USA. All international or non-qualified subscriptions can receive Elearning! e-zine complimentary by ordering at http://www.2elearning.com/reg/choose. Elearning! magazine is a trademark of B2B Media Company. All rights are reserved.

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