A better understanding of client and his eLearning requirements is very crucial to visualize his expectations. Here are 5 questions that can help you.
Every organization has its own training needs and project scope. Hence a better understanding of the client and his eLearning requirements is very crucial to visualize his expectations and produce the best output. But then every time a new prospect comes to us with their eLearning need, they really don’t have a great idea of what exactly they want.
In my previous blog I wrote about 25 different questions that are asked by prospects/clients. Being in sales for the last 6 years, I have been helping many of my prospects in this regard asking them the right questions. If you wish to get the right information then you should pose the simple and right questions that he or she can answer – Isn’t it simple? Here is a list of 5 basic questions that I ask them.
1. Do you want to blend these eLearning courses with your existing classroom trainings or replace them?
Some stakeholders may want to use eLearning in their classroom trainings as a recap or just to present some important content. In that case, we will have limited liberty to use our expertise in developing the eLearning.
But if they want to replace the entire classroom training with eLearning, we can use our creativity and develop engaging and interactive eLearning courses.
2. Do you have any content you wish to convert – classroom content, learning guides, instructor manual and PowerPoint?
Many times prospects don’t know that they can use their classroom training material to develop eLearning. So it is very important that we tell them about it and also ask why they want to convert their classroom training into eLearning for example – they may want to reduce the cost, time and energy by hosting the courses online and doesn’t need highly interactive courses.
If the prospect has all the material that can be used as a base and scaled up, then we can just convert them into online using authoring tools without having to work more on the project. It is always better to have a look at the inputs to decide or analyze what exactly the client is looking for.
3. What kind of training material do you want to convert into eLearning and who are the target audience?
You should ask about what kind of eLearning course he is looking for. For example, if it is an induction training course, prospects may not know what to cover in the course and how the content can be presented. With the understanding of training and target audience, we can help them to understand the different ways of presenting induction training and how it can help their employees to know about their company.
It will help us to come up with appropriate instructional strategy that can be apt for their specific requirements.
4. Do you want to translate the courses into multiple languages?
If we know in advance that they are also in need of translations, we can take care of content and images right from the beginning and this can also help us to choose the authoring tool that can support translations.
If possible we should also make a note of the multiple languages that they want to convert.
5. Where will you host the eLearning – LMS, eLearning portal or intranet?
Understanding these requirements will help us develop compliance files that can run on the LMS. For example, if prospects are using Moodle LMS, we need to develop SCORM compliance course and if they are using cornerstone LMS, we should develop AICC compliance. If it is a only a portal, then you need to just create a course and embed the tracking features within the course.
So this is how we pose smart questions to better understand the requirements of the prospects. Do you have any similar experience?
These are some broad questions that we ask them at the first level. In my next blog, I will share with you some specific questions on eLearning requirements. So keep reading!
