The post The Ultimate Guide to Sales Enablement Training: Formats, Use Cases, and Best Practices first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

The big shift to WFH

The year presented many new challenges with the COVID-19 outbreak catching us off-guard, forcing us to adapt quickly and efficiently to manage the new normal by working from home to make sure that the show goes on.

Adapting quickly and efficiently sounds easier than it was. While we were preparing to shift to working from home model, a sudden notification from the local government to immediately shut offices, meant we had no option but to shift immediately. A three-day holiday was declared for the staff which enabled the IT teams to set up systems enabling all of to be able to WFH. The IT and the HR worked tirelessly to enable minimum infrastructure and to achieve business continuity in a very short period. We’ve elaborated on the COVID-19 challenges and our victorious combat here.

Expanding the sales footprint

The year will however be more memorable owing to some major milestones at Upside Learning. We turned 16! …and with that, we got new blood on board – 2 AVPs for US region, Vikram Tayade and  Amit Yakhmi, and Sushant Gore as Manager for Business Solutions Europe. This aided in better foothold in the Europe and US markets.

Getting recognized

2020 was also special because we won two Brandon Hall HCM Excellence Awards. The Brandon Hall Group’s Human Capital Management Excellence awards were a testament to our expertise in developing custom content and engaging learning solutions that deliver real outcomes to help organizations achieve performance improvements aligned with business objectives.

“Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards Program has recognized leading organizations for the past twenty-plus years for the latest trends in Human Capital Management,” said Rachel Cooke, Brandon Hall Group COO and leader of the HCM Excellence Awards Program. “The initiatives that were honored are not only innovative but fit the unique needs of the business and create truly remarkable success stories.”

The list of achievements and accolades has only begun. We were listed in two Top 20 companies Watch List. One was ‘Inc’s – Top 20™ Custom Content Development Company Watch List’ and the other was ‘Top 20™ Training Outsourcing Company Watch List’. This is the fifth time that Upside Learning has been recognized as a leading Content Development Company.

“This year’s Top 20 Custom Content Development and Training Outsourcing Companies are creating unique solutions by developing customized training that aligns with an organization’s business objectives,” said Ken Taylor, president of Training Industry, Inc.

These recognitions and accolades reassured us that our steady and zealous efforts have indeed been in the right direction.

At Upside Learning, we believe that a big part of honing our craft lies in keeping ourselves updated on the latest in learning design, trends, and technology. In a world connected through social media, it is not enough to passively consume content; it’s important to engage with our community of readers, learning practitioners, and the eLearning industry at large by sharing content, initiating dialog, and forming relationships based on shared experiences and collateral.

This year too we have been actively contributing to our online relationships. As a result, our viewership has grown consistently. Not only that we are proud to announce that we ranked 1^st in eLearning Learning’s MVP Awards in associations with The Learning Guild. The award-winning entry was LXPs are possibly the Dungeons & Dragons of the Learning World authored by Shreyas Korad in the #eLearningTools category. We also came 4^th on another blog The overly abused and rarely understood world of leader boards.

As the year was nearing its end, we got another boost by being certified as Smartchoice® Preferred Provider by Brandon Hall Group. After an extensive review, Brandon Hall Group confirmed that we are living our mission—to help L&D make a business impact: one learning experience at a time.

The analyst team at Brandon Hall Group has spent years understanding us as a solutions provider as well as the market in which we operate. The team had conducted in-depth briefings with our product teams, reviewed case studies, and collected customer feedback to certify that we deliver upon our message. To have victoriously passed that test we were overwhelmed and humbly gratified.

Upside Learning – a great place to work!

We did not know then what more surprises the year had in store for us, as, we received Great Place to Work – Certification™ for the second year running. So, not only were our clients and industry gurus happy with us, our people were happy too. And that matters most!

We had scored a brilliant 78 on the TRUST INDEX© Score which is an increase of 6 points from last years score of 72.  TRUST INDEX© is an average of five dimensions of the Great Place to Work® Trust Index© Model which are:

1. Credibility of management ™
2. Respect for people
3. Fairness at the workplace
4. Pride
5. Camaraderie between people

Learning in with Curiosity!

To ensure that our teams continue to better themselves at providing truly memorable and exquisite learning solutions, LinkedIn Learning was introduced in the organisation. We introduced it with – ‘Curiosity’, since as Sir Ken Robinson says ‘Curiosity is the vitamin of Learning’.

There was a build-up to the virtual launch event and we shipped out Upside Curiosity Box to each of our colleagues’ homes personally. It contained:
– A letter from the CEO – Amit Garg, emphasizing on ‘why curiosity matters’
– A passport to LinkedIn Learning
– Couple of sanitizers
– Couple of masks with text printed “Learning is like Breathing”
– Few chocolates

The goal was to make everyone more curious. Rest would be easier (not easy – mind you). The first step, on a long journey toward building a culture of learning here at Upside Learning Solutions, was thus taken.

And guess what? Our LinkedIn Learning launch activity was featured in LinkedIn Learning case studies by their marketing team.

If you are also bitten by the curiosity bug, then know more about our initiative here.

To continue with our curiosity journey, we signed up to being a part of The Global Curiosity Institute’s Program that would help uncover individual & team curiosity levels through two separate surveys

Stefaan van Hooydonk, the founder of the institute conducted a workshop for our team managers to share the key findings of the team curiosity survey. We were really pleased to have signed up for this as there were some great insights from there for all of us to work on.

With this, we look forward to a great year of learning in 2021.

The post 2020 – What a year!!! first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Also, salespeople are often on-the-go, so it’s hard for the organization to gather them in one place at one time for a traditional training session. Training and Sales operations need to go hand-in-hand because, in a competitive field like sales, the more knowledge that the salespeople possess the better is their probability to close deals.

If you are looking to create an engaging sales eLearning program that enables your sales reps to be knowledgeable and provide an excellent Customer Experience every time here is a new eBook Go Beyond: Super Charge your Sales Training

This eBook presents:

• State of the Industry
• Understanding the new landscape of sales
• Making the sales training work

Download the free eBook here.

Also, check out this webinar – Go Beyond with Sales Training by Amit Garg – CEO & Founder of Upside Learning Solutions, loaded with insights & strategies to help you Go Beyond the traditional approaches.

The post New eBook to Super Charge your Sales Training first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

When they came on board, apart from all the good things about the product, the trainees must have also imbibed a bit of the owner’s philosophy, the culture, and their vision as it were. Beginning to sound familiar?

Those were the times when the buyer bought not only what you sold but also what you told them. They did not have too many alternative sources of information. Fast forward to 2020 and there is no escaping the information deluge.

They Know It All And Are Not Talking
Studies say that thanks to the spread of the internet, 70% of the customers have already done their relevant research before the salesperson opens their laptop. And nearly 60% would rather not talk to the salesperson at all. One can only wonder if they see the old serpent in every sales guy.

All those figures pertain to the pre-virus era. It is a crowded market. Technology is everywhere. For the customer, the market as well as market intelligence are a swipe and a click away.

For the sales professional, more than the proclaimed USPs, it is more important to know the customers, their compulsions, and their preferences. No longer do you sell what you have, you cater to what they need. You cannot hope to sell a brand when you are blind to customer perception about the brand and (increasingly in these socially supercharged days) the brand owner.

Your new team is young, bright and smart. Great starting point! However, if you want them to go out in the big bad world and sell for you, you will have to train them fast and well. Welcome to sales onboarding!

The Train Does Not Stop
The term onboarding conjures up an image of some kind of a train in perpetual motion where everyone has to work to reach a destination. Many want to get in; some have made it to the platform, running along. You spot the ones most likely to help you keep going and extend a hand to help them aboard.

The fellow travelers (and drivers) already inside extend them a warm welcome. As the newcomers settle in, they are given a quick brief about where they are headed and what they need to do to help everyone reach there. The new passengers tend to be young and eager. They tend to have one ear in and one leg out. They need to be given a good reason to settle down and learn first.

As Jim Mikula stated in his book Sales Training, “Salespeople are active; they want results fast; and when it comes to training, they want the answers to the challenges. That’s the good news. The bad news is that these qualities can hinder adult learning.”

He goes on to point out that customers frequently make emotion-driven decisions “and later rationalize them based on explicit, logical reasons.” Clients will not reveal those but expect the salespeople to know these “conditions of satisfaction.” This requires learning and, if your team is coming from another domain, possibly some unlearning.

Mark A. Stein and Lilith Christiansen, authors of Successful Onboarding: Strategies to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization, point out that “Successful onboarding is far more than traditional orientation in new clothes; it is an innovative strategic program that can boost a company’s bottom line and improve its future prospects.”

What the authors say about all new hires is relevant to sales onboarding too: “A well-structured onboarding program can reduce turnover, increase workers’ productivity and make your company more attractive to potential employees.” They recommend that a well-designed onboarding program ought to have four elements: cultural assimilation, help with developing an interpersonal network, early support for professional growth, and strategic immersion and guidance (which should tell them how they are an important wheel and not an insignificant spoke).

In short, the sales force needs to be enabled before you unleash them to go forth and conquer. And this enablement is not a narrow responsibility of one department but an important driver of growth. It must be embedded in the macro corporate strategy.

When The Stalled Engines Begin To Rev
COVID-19 halted that train mid-journey. There is fog ahead and we cannot see the tracks and what lies beyond. We had to let many de-board because we were running out of food and water. Some got off as they were not comfortable with uncertainty. So, do we stop helping more passengers on board? Or must we continue, but be more selective?

The answer probably lies in inviting L&D into the corporate strategy den. Because we will need L&D more than ever, onboarding being one of the imperatives. Most passengers will need to quickly move up as drivers while others lay fresh tracks to new destinations.

As Ben Durst puts it, “Your team is looking for tools that will help them enter a conversation with a prospective client during this difficult time. The more customized and prescriptive the [learning] content, the better chance your sales team will have at prospecting at full efficiency.”

“Let’s be honest,” trainingzone puts it bluntly, “no one is going to fly around—or even get on the train—as much as before (if at all), so we need new ways to engage in collective endeavor and problem-solving.” The physical classroom might have vanished, but “teams and individuals still want to talk about capability issues. They still want to discuss how to do things better. Now, untrammeled by time and distance we can do this, not just with the cohort in the hotel meeting room, but with a whole bunch of our colleagues from Sao Paolo, Singapore, and Southampton. Having experienced that, why would anyone want to go back to a smaller pool of ideas, insights, and experience?”

If Eve were around, she would probably go back to the serpent for some training. Because now Adam wants more. He wants an apple that has been sanitized and can provide immunity from infection. She is welcome to call him when she is ready. And he would rather have it delivered home.

This article was first published on www.elearningindustry.com

The post All Aboard! Full Sales Ahead! first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Sharing best practices:
Sales reps are competitive by nature. But their individual quotas and competitive spirit don’t minimize the opportunity for teamwork. After all, sales teams as a whole also have numbers they strive to meet, and the ultimate shared goal of driving more business for the company is ever-present.

In her article,  Rachel Clapp Miller of Force Management maintains the importance of “best practices collaboration.” She writes, “Highly effective sales teams have something in common that merely adequate teams rarely possess: a high level of sharing among salespeople. When individual performers hoard information and best practices, it may benefit them individually in the short term, but it does nothing for the whole team.”

The takeaway? – Sales reps can be sharing stories of their wins, how they approach deals, and even recognize the key players who helped to close them  including details of the challenges they faced, and the tactics used.

Sharing Success Stories:
In Sales, a success story is a valuable learning tool to the rest of the team. The success stories may also give insights into how customers used the given solution and how it impacts their business. Hopefully, these stories will give other sales colleagues valuable insights into the sales process that can be applied by the whole sales team — and start winning more deals.

Make it Relevant:
It may be important to note that success stories are useful only if the content therein is useful and if they are delivered to sales reps in a way that they can understand easily. That’s why it is important to enable sales reps with success stories that have been well researched and delivered.

The method of delivery:
There are several ways that the success stories can be shared with other sales team members. For example: via sales enablement tools, in sales team meetings, in coaching sessions, and peer to peer meetings, etc.

Out of all the methods of delivery, the most effective way of sharing is peer-to-peer meetings. These meetings can also double as training sessions for new sales reps on understanding the process, product or services, demonstration, etc. on how deals have been won. The sales reps can then use this information as inputs in customer conversations over the call in face-to-face meetings to demonstrate the value our services can provide to a prospect and how it brings the impact to their business.

The key element in the sales success stories are the content and the tools of delivery. The content format recommendation would be to create nuggets that can be in the form of PowerPoint slides, a standalone PDF file, or even an animated video. PowerPoint slides having supporting narration can be effectively used as podcasts while travelling, jogging, exercising, etc. The duration of each method can be maintained around 5 minutes.

The actual core content of the 5-minute success story cover a quick background of the customer’s business – their revenues in the last few years, number of years they’ve been active for, divisions in their organization, and number of employees. Adding a little bit about the culture of the organization is helpful too.

The core content should also include the goals the customer had in mind. Identifying the pain areas and challenges the customer was facing and how our solution helped them provides a greater understanding of our own offerings. Including how our solution was mapped against competition offerings and how any objections raised by the customer were handled is also valuable insight for the whole sales team.

Summing it up –
Some of your sales reps may be hitting or even exceeding their individual quotas. But, as they say, knowledge not shared is knowledge wasted. To truly build shared success, communicate those wins—so everyone wins.

The post Importance of Sharing Success Stories with Sales Team first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

1. Recognize a Changed World

Many sales professionals will be operating in a world different from earlier. Sales discussions, meetings, and presentations may move away from field sales to remote selling: over the phone or video calls. Incorporate this vital aspect in your new training. How well your professionals are able to conduct sales in an increasingly online world depends a lot on how well your sales training is conducted online.

2. Involve the Instructor

Irrespective of the fact that your new online training may or may not be delivered by an instructor, their views and methods will be more helpful than ever when you move your classroom training to online environments, especially for things like devising collaborative elements of your new online training.

3. Continue To Involve the Expert

Your original sales or product expert will still have valuable insights. Their subject matter expertise will be even more relevant for guiding the creation and assembling of your online courseware.

4. Enable Interaction and Collaboration, Including Role Play

Team work, when broken up in smaller groups, breaks the monotony of one-to-many communication models and keeps the learners interested to a higher degree of engagement. Many sales professionals are tactile learners, and need their immediate environment to be augmented and responsive for an efficient absorption of knowledge.

5. Include Polls

Every learner has observations and opinions, and usually feels rewarded when these are addressed. Apart from discussion activities, polls have a unique way of engaging learners on a recurring basis with their tiny yet impactful consumable size.

6. Break It Up Into Smaller Parts

Your current day-long sessions or week-long programs may prove to be an overkill in online training environments. Feel free to spread the learning over more time—allowing enough time for the learners to adjust and assimilate in ways that are new to them.

7. Enable a Parallel Self-Paced Option

Even the best ILTs and online sessions cannot guarantee complete adoption and improved performance for all the learners. Analyze how this shortcoming can be overcome by employing eLearning tools that weren’t employed in your traditional training environments, allowing learners to select the best pace suited for their learning.

8. Build Well-Structured and Engaging Content

The number one reaction to sudden move to online training is that learners feel everything is ‘optional’. The content will not only have to address this, but also make up for any other shortcomings that can make the training appear trivial and inconsequential. Much of this can be addressed by meticulous course design and precise pedagogies.

9. Identify the Good and Bad Parts from Your Current ILTs

Use this as an opportunity to identify the strong and weak parts of your current ILTs. After you have determined, plan to carry over most of the good parts and fix the bad ones when you move them.

10. Be Ready to Adapt

Not all of your online training is going to be a runaway success. Some parts are going to work out better than others. Insert suitable checks to evaluate your training to tweak certain parts of the program: it could be some of the content, the delivery tool, or the trainer.

Online learning has been long established as a proven method for efficient transfer of knowledge and skills. Don’t hesitate to explore and to brainstorm. When converted the right way, your ILTs will turn in to a powerful tool for converting adverse conditions like these to favorable ones, and with the desired outcomes.

The post 10 Things to Turn Your Boring Sales Training to an Online Triumph first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Upside Learning has been supporting sales enablement initiatives for several global organizations for several years.

To further assist the L&D & Sales fraternity, to better their sales enablement initiatives, we bring to you a new ATD research report: ATD’s Sales Onboarding: Launching Productivity. The report examines how organizations operate onboarding programs tailored specifically to salespeople that are separate from general organizational onboarding. Based on a survey of talent development and sales enablement professionals, the report provides insights on trends and best practices in sales onboarding. Readers can use the information in this report to benchmark their organization’s practices against those of their peers.

You can also check out the highlights from the report in this Webcast that will explore the sales onboarding programs organizations provide, the benefits of those programs, and barriers to running them effectively. This webcast discussion will also include the length and structure of sales onboarding, delivery methods used in sales onboarding, and content covered in sales onboarding.

The post ATD’s new research report – Sales Onboarding: Launching Productivity first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.