Chances are sales people are busy, marketing resources are limited, and training is considered an expensive burden. It is unfortunate for most business-to-business firm that they believe this way, because employee training and development is the most cost effective way to increase productivity.
Trend for smaller shorter training sessions spread throughout the day makes sense, even for business-to-business firms. This concept is now being called “nano training” could save you thousands in lost productivity each year.
I've called this “micro lessons” and for a long time in manufacturing have used a similar methodology for training line workers. Long time clients know I've advocated repetitive training interspersed with application. Each training cycles are reinforced by the physical implementation, overall people learn faster and gain a more complete understanding of the subject matter.
Using today's pod-cast and blogging software, it's now easier than ever before to access small focused training materials specific to your current needs. This is something you should be familiar with in these lessons, each are quick 4 minute reads with at least two ideas you can implement right now. (Each educational tutorial is also designed with mini-lesson plans.)
If you are considering such a program, follow these guidelines for maximum success:
- Small intervals of learning followed by longer intervals of implementation,
- Use feedback and performance measures to help individuals monitor their own performance,
- Provide a library of materials the cover multiple aspects of an individual role,
- Use self assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses to improve,
- Ask each employee to create their own lesson plan around improving high impact weaknesses,
- Utilize solution oriented tutorials for quick sales or marketing meeting exercises,
- Encourage discussion about lessons learned from implementation (instead of opinion of training,)
- Open training to anyone on staff including managers and non-selling professionals,
- Measure results created from training, not number of programs completed,
- Reward improvements around individual performance as factor of overall team objectives,
- Make learning resources portable and available on the road,
- Keep staff on track by using progress as discussion topic in sales and marketing meetings,
Nano learning fits more easily into your busy schedule and with todays technology can take it with you anywhere. That means between calls a sales person can learn new engagement behaviors, and during downtime marketing can improve copywriting skills.
What you'll experience is a higher level of sales and marketing productivity because new knowledge is implemented minutes after received. Each lesson is reinforced immediately by relevant action. You get an almost immediate return when you follow these guidelines.
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