I have posted the discussion question, “Which is better for Sales Training? Classroom or Online?” in LinkedIn groups earlier this week. There were more than 100 responses. I thought the combined wisdom of 100 of us should be shared.

To give you an idea of who responded, there were learning consultants, training managers, corporate trainers, directors, instructional designers, business analysts, product managers, software developers, training leaders and strategists, computer specialists, training & education executives, eLearning managers, instructors, marketing managers, writers, authors, speakers…

…from industries such as Information Technology and Services, Oil and Gas, eLearning, Training, Education, Communication, Government, Pharmaceutical, Media, Banking, Internet, Retail, Machinery, Arts & Craft and so on.

Here is a snapshot of the responses:

Each response was great, reflecting the unique expertise of the respondent and his/ her willingness to share it.

Here are some ( according to me ) relatively more detailed/ incisive/ educative responses in verbatim:

In favor of Blended Approach:

• The answer to that depends on the size, nature, and distribution of the sales force. If it is large, turns over rapidly, and is geographically disperse, then getting people together for leader-led training is cost prohibitive. The best program to have is a combination of leader-led, online, and performance support tools. The proper utilization of leader-led training, where the leader is more of a facilitator as opposed to a trainer, can and does result in improved job performance though.

• The US Dept of Education recently released a report which showed some interested findings related to just this subject. They found that the best results came from a blended approach which involved both online and class-room, instructor-led scenarios. They also found that online learning proved to have better results than just class-room learning. Address more of this report at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

• From my experience a combination of both online/audio in the car and classroom works really well. I use online/audio in the car to teach the theory and then reinforce and integrate it in classroom by doing exercises that apply it to their job and give them experiences. I have then set it up with their managers to provide ongoing reinforcement of the new behaviors being trained.

In favor of Classroom Training:

• I used to deliver sales training in a classroom which included making live sales calls in a “virtual office” environment. Although most trainees were apprehensive, being in a group environment helped them to develop and learn from each other. It is essential get sales people out of their comfort zone to ensure they develop and you cannot really do this online.
• I have taught sales for years, and taken many sales courses myself. I firmly believe the classroom/one on one is THE best way to go. Online is fine for the basics, but nothing can beat the classroom/one on one to produce a successful salesperson. Personalize the sales process, with the basics kept in view, and the sales person and company succeed. Sales is not a cookie cutter venture, but needs to draw and amplify the salespersons own character.

• I think that training sales should be done better in a classroom. This give an opportunity to some employees to ask any question they have. Also they can get better understanding on processes and procedures.

• Classroom training (with role plays as the major component) is far superior to online training. Selling is about communicating effectively. In order to learn effective communication skills, you need to be face-to-face.

• Classroom training is the best and will always be the best. The clients will learn and retain the most with a live person physically in front of them.

In favor of Online Training:

• All depends on the intensity and subject matter. Virtual classroom training can be very effective. Allowing people to ask real time questions and get answers. Independent (on demand) training can also very effective, Training at sales kick-offs for the introduction of new products, major announcements, etc….

• Online shall be preferred and it should be treated as case study example.
  

• Online training is great! Makes distance shorter, less time pressure…great for IT training, software implementation, procedures, accountancy.

• We just delivered technical training for learners around the world successfully for a very large financial institution. ILO is definitely one of the major waves of the future for learning. It’s been a mainstay for us for over 7 years as the right investments in infrastructure and workflow is KEY.

What do you think? Thank you for reading my blog and I welcome your comments and sharing of experiences.

RK Prasad

CEO

Sales Training can comprise product knowledge, sales procedures & reports and selling skills.

We have been developing sales training courses for automobile major in Europe, with market presence in Europe and Asia. During the development, we realized that this client company is using a blended approach by addressing certain aspects of training via online delivery and certain others in the classroom.

For example, the procedures and reports that need to be followed and filled in respectively are quite amenable to be put online. So the company went ahead and asked us to develop a 60-minute online course to teach their sales people various procedures to be followed which included the sales planning process. The course presented adequate opportunities for the learners to test their understanding.

Products in this case were automobile spare parts; there was nothing much to be learnt about them as they fell in some kind of consumable category. Had the product been an automobile itself, product training could have been attempted through eLearning, with ample use of 3-D animations and voice over.

Coming to the controversial component – selling skills. Can it be done effectively via an online course? As a former sales person and also a training professional, I classify learning how to sell under experiential learning – learning by doing. Usually, selling skills training is either done on-the-job (OJT) along with a senior sales person for providing guidance and feedback or in a classroom where typical sales situations are simulated for the learners to enact the role of a sales person while another learner takes on the role of a buyer. Feedback is generally given in the form of a video shoot of the process.

Given this kind of training, I think eLearning or online mode of delivery is not very suitable for selling skills training.

What do you think? Thank you for reading my blog and I welcome your comments and sharing of experiences.

RK Prasad

CEO

Want to explore how the e-courses can empower your workforce to succeed?

Actually, the similarities between these two exciting fields are amazing, including terminology – one small example, “storyboards”! The challenges are also common – fleeting attention of audience, constraints of space and time, difficulty in measuring their effectiveness…

I have started my career in Marketing and Sales and even taught Advertising Management for a while. Studying the principles and practices of advertising and relating them to the design and development of eLearning programs can be an exhilarating experience.

I think that eLearning professionals can learn a lot from the dynamic and relatively more mature field of Advertising. We all know and experienced the power of advertising!

Actually, advertising aims to change behavior and learning is defined as a permanent change in behavior. The former changes buyers’ behavior and the later changes employee behavior to improve performance (in a corporate setting). Both are a sophisticated form of communication.

I would like to share a traditional model of communication used in advertising. The AIDA model suggests that an advertising campaign should attract Attention, gain Interest, create Desire, and precipitate Action.

Another hierarchy model is particularly interesting because of its close ties with social psychology theory. It includes 6 stages – awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. The stages can be divided into 3 components corresponding to a social psychologists concept of an attitude system. The first stage, consisting of awareness and knowledge, is comparable to the cognitive or the knowledge component of attitude. The affective component of an attitude, the like-dislike aspect, is represented by liking and preference levels. The remaining attitude component is the conative component, the action or motivation element, represented by conviction and purchase levels.

If we can study these theories and juxtapose them with what we use in learning, we may come out with some interestingly new approaches.

I will be very interested to read your views. Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO

During the course of developing online training programs for some of our customers, we came to know about the principles of Lean manufacturing or Lean production, a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.

As a manager, I see that the origin of all wastage is human beings. Our productivity as individuals is directly tied to our emotional state and how we spend our time. In this context I found Steven Covey’s seven habits to be a good diagnostic as well as prescriptive tool to address human wastage and to promote effectiveness, which is the very essence of Lean.

Let’s take Time. How do we view it, in the first place? To paraphrase, Anthony Robbins, the popular motivational guru, time is emotion! How we view time is all about what emotional state we are in. If we are in a positive state, time flies or else it drags. Covey gives a useful categorization of how we spend time in terms of urgency and importance.

If we can start by eliminating or at least minimizing activities in quadrant III and IV and increase the ones in quadrant II, we will reduce the “Important-Urgent” crises in life and become more effective people, contributing value to ourselves and our organizations.

We found that if we spend more time and effort with employees to make them more productive, the systems and procedures will yield many times over.

If you are interested to know how much you know about Lean, take a free quiz.

Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO

In the eLearning field, we usually come across SCORM/AICC as the standards to which the courseware should adhere to. But how far are these standards learner-centric? Are these standards impeding learning?

I found that these standards, being of technical nature (LMS/ LCMS compatibility), do not add anything to the learner. On the other hand, sometimes I found that breaking the course into SCOs or not able to create links between SCOs can be a little bothersome.

On the other hand, I found the lesser talked about standards like ASTD’s E-Learning Courseware Certification Standards and the standards used by Michigan Virtual University in producing specifications for, and evaluating, e-learning not only learner-centric but also very comprehensive. (I am, of course, not suggesting that these standards are in any way substitutes for SCORM/ AICC)

ASTD’s E-Learning Courseware Certification Standards are grouped into four principal categories to reflect the various elements of courseware design.

1. Interface Standards address the relationship between the learner and the courseware itself. There are five interface standards.
2. Compatibility Standards address the relationship between the courseware, the Operating system and related applications. There are four compatibility standards.
3. Production Quality Standards examine the quality of the courseware’s text, graphics, grammar, and visual presentation. There are two production quality standards.
4. Instructional Design Standards examine the relationship between the course purpose, objectives, instructional content, instructional methods, and the learner.

CommLab has been one of the earliest companies in the e-learning space to adopt these standards. There were times when these standards were the deciding factor in winning a project for us.

I am, of course, not suggesting that these standards are a substitute to SCORM/ AICC but that they add value to the course. I will be interested to learn about your views on this subject. Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO

Basically, learning has been categorized into two forms – push learning approach and pull learning approach. Push is defined as the formal learning and pull as the informal learning. Earlier, in the elearning industry, the course designers just focused on delivering the content to the learners. The primary motive of this conventional mode of learning was to provide the learner with all the information on the topic. The courses lacked interactivity, irrespective of the learner finding the course interesting and engaging.

However, the technological advancement and competition in the elearning industry has led to the designing of interactive and engaging courses. People have started focusing on the pull learning approach, which has changed the structure or style of presenting the information. The courseware designers emphasize on embedding interactions in the courses, making them more appealing to the learner to pull the content.

The big question is which form of learning is best suited for a particular industry or a specific concept. For example, in security and safety industry, the learner has no other choice but to learn and memorize the legal issues and safety rules. Also, the time factor matters, the course designer has to prioritize on content delivery rather than making the course interactive and engaging. Hence, the learner has to study the course and clear all the assessments in a specified time.

Whereas, for soft skills training, the courses need to have interactivity and stimulation features to engage the learner. The learner needs to pull the content he/she requires and apply it differently. A well-illustrated scenario-based design for soft skills courses could help the learner easily understand the concepts and apply them in real situations.

I think the approach of teaching varies with respect to the type of industry, the target audience and the concepts. Besides, depending on the time factor and other requirements, there could be variations in content delivery and interaction levels.

What do you think about this evolution from push learning to pull learning?

Share your views!

Asma Zaineb

Sr. Executive – Business Development

When I first read Dr. Robert Mager’s seminal book (more a booklet), “Setting Instructional Objectives”, I had my first ‘aha’ experience in the field of training and learning. At that time, I have just changed my career track from Sales to University Teaching and Corporate Training. I did not have a formal background in Learning and Performance Management and his principles guided me through my new career like a beacon of light to explore and learn further.

The book itself is a gem, so succinctly yet so humorously written that I finished my first reading in one sitting! It is one book that practices what it preaches. Its instructional objectives are so well set and so well achieved in me that I never read the book again for clarification. But I read it many times (and continue to read it) for the sheer pleasure of reading such a masterpiece.

His almost simplistic aphorism about setting quantifiable and measurable learning outcomes is so simple yet so powerfully logical. If used along with the other two principles of conditions (under which the performance has to be done) and criteria of acceptable performance, it becomes a cornerstone for all instructional interventions, be it classroom or eLearning.

ROBERT MAGER’S PRINCIPLES AS APPLIED IN COMMLAB’S PRODUCTS

For me, Robert’s principles always helped me answer critical questions while designing training programs or developing storyboards for eLearning courses.

• What will be content for the subject?
• What will be the duration of learning?
• What will be the instructional strategy (how best can a particular topic be presented)?
• What will be the type of assessments?

I would like to hear from my fellow learning professionals what they think of Mager’s principles and to what extent are they used in today’s world of rapid eLearning.

Thank you very much for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO