{"id":2922,"date":"2020-09-03T15:44:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T19:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2922"},"modified":"2020-09-03T15:44:23","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T19:44:23","slug":"delivering-effective-training-5-tips-for-sales-leaders-subject-matter-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2922","title":{"rendered":"Delivering Effective Training: 5 Tips for Sales Leaders &#038; Subject Matter Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">How much time and energy do you spend in your organization delivering virtual sessions trying to train employees on new sales processes, policies and customer engagement strategies only to have nobody actually learn anything?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">How often have you experienced:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Minimal or no change in knowledge or application?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">The need for re-training?<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Costly mistakes as result?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">In our current pandemic, remote work, the need to share knowledge and change behaviours as well as learn new skills has all become very important for team and organizational success. To ensure we can collaborate and connect internally and with clients, we are dependent on virtual platforms such as WebEx, Zoom, MS Teams or Google Meet. This is not a problem in itself &#8211; these are great tools. The question is &#8211; <em>are we using them correctly?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) by definition are highly invested in their content. They deliver great presentations, but they are not trainers.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">To be successful, SMEs need to acquire some fundamental learning and development (L&amp;D) principles and practices. There is a difference between a presentation and training, and yet after delivering workshops for 20+ years, in over 40 countries, across 6 continents we are still surprised at how often \u201ctraining\u201d initiatives end up being nothing more than long PowerPoint presentations. This approach is not only costly, because it doesn\u2019t deliver a return on investment, it also doesn\u2019t engage learners and they aren\u2019t motivated to change their behaviours.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">In order to increase sales performance, employees must be able to acquire the right information, from the right people, at the right time in order to exceed customer needs. This requires a rapid transition between \u2018knowing\u2019 and \u2018doing\u2019 to be able to meet sales targets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Three key challenges exist in effectively transferring skills versus knowledge.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Often SMEs, Sales Leaders and Mentors aren\u2019t familiar with how to effectively design and deliver learning that will drive behavioural change.<\/strong> Instead they focus on their expertise and deliver one-way presentations or lectures. This doesn\u2019t engage employees and more importantly performance doesn\u2019t always improve.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Due to the impact of COVID-19, sales organizations scrambled to convert their classroom sales training into virtual workshops\u2026and it\u2019s not as easy as it looks.<\/strong> The content often needs to be redesigned to allow sales professionals the opportunity to practice, role-play and receive coaching on their performance. This can be achieved virtually, but it requires a detailed review of the program to ensure the right activities are incorporated, leveraging technology and with sufficient time allocated.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Organizations have invested heavily in content that sits on a Learning Management System and leaders and employee alike don\u2019t leverage the content.<\/strong> This investment in knowledge assets is wasted because Sales Leaders and SMEs don\u2019t incorporate existing content into their training and therefore don\u2019t enhance the learning experience by adding their own expertise.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">What can we do?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Conduct a mini needs assessment.<\/span><\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">\u00a0\u00a0 a)\u00a0\u00a0 Get to know your participants ahead of time and understand who they are. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">\u00a0\u00a0 b)\u00a0\u00a0 What is their role? <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">\u00a0\u00a0 c)\u00a0\u00a0 What do they need to know to help them be more successful? <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. This will help you to choose the right method, timing, and content for your audience. All Subject Matter Experts can easily to fall into the trap of sharing everything they know about a topic. After all, it\u2019s their expertise, their passion and represents their hard work. But learners don\u2019t care how much SMEs know; they care about how it\u2019s going to help them in their role. High impact training needs to include what\u2019s relevant to the audience and leave everything else out.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Recognize there is a difference between transferring knowledge and transferring learning. <\/strong>Knowing something and being able to apply and demonstrate new knowledge and skills are two entirely different things. <strong>When SMEs \u201ctell\u201d they transfer knowledge, when they \u201cengage\u201d they create learning.<\/strong> Learning styles and generational differences tell us that to learn we need to be involved, to participate, to discuss ideas with each other and share our opinions and to be able to practice and apply the knowledge and then gain immediate feedback.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">SMEs and Sales Leaders can create blended learning solutions by leveraging existing content and incorporating case studies, scenarios, role-plays and videos based on their expertise to be bring the content to life for employees. This ensures the learning is relevant and application focused. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Acknowledge that adults come with their own ideas, opinions and experiences. <\/strong>Adults don\u2019t like to be told what to do or talked at. Whether you are introducing a new sales process, or a new product,<strong> it\u2019s not about telling employees what they need to know, it\u2019s about engaging employees in dialogue.<\/strong> Your audience needs to be heard, they need to have a say and be able to share their experiences and opinions. This means that using virtual platforms must include time for discussions, questions and application activities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Ensure learning is relevant to their role, practical and immediately applicable. <\/strong>Sales professionals by nature are goal oriented and want to win. Learning that isn\u2019t highly relevant to their role or applicable to help them close more deals, will be less engaging to them. <strong>When creating learning sessions be sure to include activities, examples and stories that apply the concepts to real world examples.<\/strong> Too often, sales processes are presented as what to do versus how to do it. Create opportunities for learners to connect what they are learning to their individual role sand identify how the knowledge being provided will help them be more high performing and achieve greater success. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Be creative! It\u2019s possible to be creative, even when delivering virtual training. <\/strong>In fact, you can engage employees to come up with fun, interactive ways to apply learning. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Share a video, demonstration or have them record their own video clips<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Have them present what they think are the most important points for their customers<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Use online gaming tools such as Kahoot or Jack Box Games to inject some fun<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Have learners compare an old policy with the new version, identifying the differences and highlighting the benefits<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">You can engage learners to share stories about how the learning could help solve an existing customer problem<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>The possibilities are endless. The goal is to create activities that allow your participants to apply the learning and be highly involved in the experience.<\/strong> New in career and younger employees will expect highly interactive learning sessions and will be eager to contribute ideas for how to make the learning even more fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">We can all agree that learning is important, especially as we focus on maintaining employee engagement, motivation and performance in a virtual environment as we navigate through this pandemic. It is critical to spend our time, energy and money wisely on learning sessions that will deliver results to the business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Implementing the 5 tips provided will elevate your training sessions to a new level and will result in much more engaged learners that are empowered to change their behaviors and increase sales performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Giselle Kovary<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">President, n-gen People Performance<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Managing Partner, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gttworldwide.com\">Global Training Transformation<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Susan Armstrong<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Managing Partner, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gttworldwide.com\">Global Training Transformation<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"4CjeSNoHJs\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/gttworldwide.com\/\">Home<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" src=\"https:\/\/gttworldwide.com\/embed\/#?secret=4CjeSNoHJs\" data-secret=\"4CjeSNoHJs\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" title=\"&#8220;Home&#8221; &#8212; \" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much time and energy do you spend in your organization delivering virtual sessions trying to train employees on new sales processes, policies and customer engagement strategies only to have nobody actually learn anything? How often have you experienced: Minimal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/?p=2922\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2922"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2926,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922\/revisions\/2926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ngenperformance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}