Business Tips Guides

In the wider commercial and government world eLearning, or online training, is often represented by an abundance of glorified Power Point presentations. Back and next buttons rule supreme, and while this type of training can provide some visually interesting content it doesn’t necessarily engage learners for long. However, if you’re prepared to spend more on eLearning a whole new teaching and learning opportunity is uncovered.

NBFS was a term I coined recently. Well it was a term I’d never heard before so I’ll stand by that claim albeit tentatively. It stands for Next Button Fatigue Syndrome and although at the time it was a joke I realised it did articulate a large concern related to eLearning.

In the wider commercial and government world online training is often represented by an abundance of glorified Power Point presentations. Back and next buttons rule supreme, and while this type of eLearning can provide some visually interesting content it doesn’t necessarily engage learners for long. Now, without demonising this further, I do agree that it has an important place in certain forms of online training. It is particularly useful for rapid eLearning where budgets are limited or content is restrictive in its capacity for instructional design. However, if you’re prepared to spend more a whole new teaching and learning opportunity is uncovered.

So what can be gained from increasing an eLearning budget? Perhaps the best way to expand on this is to look at the rise, and rise, and rise of computer gaming.

Computer gaming has captured a huge portion of the entertainment market by creating stories and environments that immerse the user, allowing them to freely explore, engage and choose their own fortunes. Unlike movies where the narrative is controlled and the exposure limited, computer gaming is far more absorbing for far longer.

If you take this concept of using stories, environments and user-control to immerse learners- or immersive eLearning as we refer to it- you’re somewhat closer to understanding where a more expansive budget can lead.

Take, for example, a large business that operates a syndicated gambling game throughout clubs and pubs. If we imagine that each staff member within each establishment is required to operate and understand a ticketing console that facilitates this syndicated game — and the associated customer service — it wouldn’t be stretching reality to suggest the learner population would be massive and very widely spread.

In this example, the learner base is 30,000 people spread across a region the size of France. Prior to considering online induction and online systems training, the business would spend time and money sending trainers to the far corners of the region. The cost for one such ‘training mission’ could quite literally translate into thousands of dollars of travel and accommodation costs — and even then not every trainee would necessarily be available for training at that particular time. Spread the cost, say $2000, over forty employees and you’re spending $50 on training per individual. Calculate that cost over an estimated 30,000 learners and it rises to an astronomical $1.5 million per annum.

This begs the question “what’s the eLearning alternative” for a business case like this? Well firstly, we considered the model that face-to-face training would have employed — lectures, training around the ticketing console and actual on the job training. Secondly, we considered the fact that face to face training was a limited resource that relies upon learners digesting content within a fixed time frame. Thirdly, we knew that eLearning training would be consistent and standardised across all learners, something that would be difficult to achieve under a face-to-face model.

The answer — enter the animated and interactive world of a fictitious club, full of helpful staff, trainers and eager customers wanting to play variations of the syndicated game and all with different questions, spending options and problems. Add to this a computer generated version of the ticketing console and the learner has the ability to actually partake in a fully functioning, yet fictitious, version of the club and game with multiple customer scenarios unfolding before them.

Sounds expensive? Well it is true effective eLearning doesn’t come cheaply. But let’s compare it to the original training costs. In this example the total cost of this project was in the vicinity of $250,000 — one sixth of the original face to face training costs. Furthermore, when we consider that this training will be suitable for at least three years the cost differential is even greater. Bundle this eLearning with an LMS, a Learning Management System, and every one of the 30,000 learners can be tracked and assessed on an equal footing.

While training of this calibre may not always be an organisation’s first thought, it’s certainly worth calculating the costs between differing training models. So don’t be afraid to consider spending in eLearning. If you choose the right provider, with demonstrated creative abilities, you may just find you’ve solved your training needs and helped to change the perception of eLearning.

Aframe provides comprehensive eLearning, learning content development, compliance training, and learning management system solutions across Asia Pacific.

eLearning offers a range of educational outcome and cost reduction benefits for contact centre training delivery. These include reductions in training delivery time, increased agent skill sets, continuity in training delivery and greater content engagement. Through the use of eLearning technologies, agent skill sets can be greatly enhanced by allowing the trainee to learn at their own pace, and in their own style.

Today’s contact centre agents are expected to know more and more products and services than ever before, all in the name of first call resolution. It is a difficult task to expect contact centre agents to understand all of the features and benefits of your entire product range or the services you can provide.

The majority of contact centre agents will have access to an extensive knowledge database which will house all of the information they need to provide to their customers. For today’s Gen Y contact centre agent who has grown up in the age of Google and Wikipedia, and is accustomed to having information at their finger tips, these knowledge databases can be a very empowering tool.

Much of the new contact centre eLearning being developed focuses on these agent knowledge database tools, providing agents with the tools to find the information they need to help service your customers while avoiding the sort of information overload that often overwhelms new recruits.

The focus of this style of training is to familiarise new agents with the tools they will be using once they are on the phones. However, another key component of this training is to give an understanding of the products and services of your company.

It is important that the agent is not in the realm of ‘they don’t know what they don’t know’ (unconscious incompetence) and that they are in the sphere of ‘they know they don’t know’ (conscience incompetence). Meaning that the agent will know that they don’t know all of the details of an offering and will know to use the knowledgebase before attempting to assist your customer. Or ‘they know they know’ (conscience competence) where the agent will be able to respond to your customer enquiry and effectively use the knowledgebase to further their understanding of the topic.

The benefit of this approach is that the agent is conditioned through their training to use the knowledgebase tool as a first point of contact. Rather than placing the customer on hold and seeking assistance from a team leader or other resource, increasing their average handling time, and lessening the customer experience. A further outcome from this is that the team leader is freed from constant questioning and call escalations and better able to provide mentoring and coaching to support agent development.

In a recent implementation of eLearning to replace the entire induction training for a contact centre, Aframe was able to cut the time taken to deliver the training in half, delivering massive cost savings to this contact centre. In comparison to the previous Instructor Led Training (ILT) these agents were emerging from the training showing a significant improvement in their assessment results (71% ILT vs. 91% eLearn). Not only did the agents undertaking the eLearning complete the training in half the time, with greater assessment outcomes, their on-phone performance and speed to competency was greatly enhanced.

In this sales based contact centre, agents completing the eLearning experienced a whopping 9% reduction in their AHT on their first week on the phone. These agents also saw an astronomical 11.1% improvement in the sales conversion during the same period. With reductions in training time, greater knowledge retention, and more efficient and effective conversations this contact centre saw a remarkable return on their eLearning investment.

Salmat SalesForce, winner of the Hewitt Best Employer Award for three consecutive years, recognises the importance of performance managing, training and optimising the skills of their staff. Salmat SalesForce founder Kevin Panozza is convinced that staff training is crucial, stating that “well trained — and empowered — people can identify and resolve issues and so eliminate time-consuming call escalation that frustrates and irritates customers. The bottom line is you can’t train customers — so you have to train staff.”

Aframe provides comprehensive eLearning, learning content development, compliance training, and learning management system solutions across Asia Pacific.

A LMS can no longer rely on it’s effectiveness as a learning medium to deliver, track and monitor training. It now needs to fend for itself and clearly demonstrate how it adds value to a business’s bottom line.

Previously, a traditional LMS has been able to provide sufficient value and worth to an organisation, by delivering and tracking training in a more cost effective and flexible method. However, as technology improves, and new technologies emerge, the humble LMS doesn’t quite cut it any longer.

The new breed of Learning Management Systems, provide organisations with the ability to target the delivery of training to those who require it, driving better business performance through better employee performance.

It is a worn out cliche that people are an organisations best asset. However, they are also an organisation’s greatest expense. That’s why it’s so important to ensure employees are kept up to a level where they’re able to perform to the best of their ability and provide the organisation with the best possible rate of return.

To measure this performance and to ensure skills and knowledge are attained, a level, or standard, must be set on an individual basis, with each employee given a specific set of goals.

This level, or standard, is directly proportion to the specific role or function that the employee has been hired to perform. However to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to fulfil this role, every employee needs to undergo training and further development. It makes sense then, to ensure that there is a specific process surrounding the training and development of the employee. Thus ensuring the employee not only learns the basics and fundamentals of their role, to perform it at an optimal level, but also continues to increase their skills, knowledge and abilities, which ultimately brings further benefit to the organisation.

So how do we do this without hiring a team of HR consultants who will want to change your entire organisational culture and put more fish tanks around the office?

Say hello to the new breed of Learning Management Systems — all inclusive solutions that provide the identification, mapping, training and tracking of employee skills and knowledge.

Such solutions (like Aframe’s Skills Optimiser) allow for the creation of role profiles that are matched against each individual employee. These role profiles consist of individual skills, skill sets and knowledge components that are specific to the role and then customised for the individual employee. Once an employee begins their training, a training needs analysis is conducted. This matches the employee’s current skills and knowledge against the created role profile, identifying training gaps, thus producing the employee’s development plan.

These Learning Management Systems are then able to schedule the appropriate training to the employee, whether it be online training through the LMS, instructor led training which is planned, scheduled and managed by the LMS or a combination of both.

The end result is a system that helps businesses ensure their staff are provided with training that is specific, relevant and timely.

On top of this, is the reporting and analytical benefits provided by such a system. With uniform role profiles, skills and skill sets already defined and mapped to training, Learning and Development Managers now have the ability to dive deeper into the skill and knowledge attributes of those employees who outperform their peers. It also allows HR to search for employees who may fit certain skill and knowledge criteria for job roles, allowing more comprehensive internal recruitment and screening capability.

Effectively trained and better skilled staff will benefit any organisation in striving to become a better performing business, however the method, efficiency and speed at which it can be done, has been changed forever.

Aframe provides comprehensive eLearning, learning content development, compliance training, and learning management system solutions across Asia Pacific.

New members of your downline will look to you for training and advice or assistance to help them get established in the business. They will be keen to succeed and highly motivated to learn. Here are some important tips to help you be effective in training your distributors.

The effectiveness of training sessions depends largely on the trainer. A trainer who simply stands in front of the group and delivers information without interacting with the students will not teach as well as someone who gets involved. To become a top notch trainer you will need to:

1. Create Rapport

Before the training session starts, mingle with the participants and get to know them.

By meeting attendees ahead of time and chatting with as many of them as possible, you will have broken the ice before the session begins. This will create an immediate warmth between you and your audience when you begin to train them.

Avoid sensitive topics in this “getting to know you” phase, as you are trying to build rapport, not get into an argument. Stick to topics like good restaurants in the area, or traffic on the way to the venue.

2. Give More Than Expected.

If you deliver only content that is expected, you are really not giving value for money.

Make an effort to provide a more valuable and interesting experience than participants expect. Do extra research or locate additional resources that help people gain more from the experience.

You can share your own, or other people’s stories and perhaps even get the attendees themselves to share personal experiences that are relevant. You will find that you can also learn a lot by involving your audience.

Make the learning as interactive as possible. In other words, get the trainees as involved as possible. The easiest way to get their cooperation is to make the whole process fun. If you create a friendly, safe environment in which people feel comfortable getting involved, you will find people much more willing to interact.

It is also important to keep learning yourself. You can improve your training skills by attending seminars for trainers.

3. Use a Variety of Training Methods

It is important to move between different training techniques in order to keep trainees interested. Standing in front of people and lecturing them with straight information is likely to cause them to lose interest and stop paying attention because it is so boring.

Instead, use a number of training techniques that encourage interaction and move the learning forward quickly. It is important that training has a practical purpose and active learning is the best way to achieve it.

It isn’t hard to make your training sessions interesting. Here are some strategies you can use:

- role play
- group discussion
- case studies
- trainee presentations
- telling stories
- short quizzes
- fun games

Presentation aids such as Power Point presentations, video clips, audio, flip charts, posters and other training props can help convey information and keep the audience’s attention.

Adjust your approach depending on the time of day. For example, during the afternoon when people may begin to get tired, keep them alert with interactive strategies.

4. Use the Right Amount of Variety

The aim of training sessions is to give attendees the ability to actually do what they are being trained to do. This means that it is very important to reinforce learning throughout the session. A good rule of thumb is to provide three different activities for each specific topic so that learning can be reinforced.

One way you can do this is to introduce a case study with a video clip that gives a detailed view of the subject. You can then divide the participants into small groups to discuss the information and come up with some solutions to a problem. Afterwards, the groups can designate someone to present their information to other attendees.

Learning retention is significantly greater when you include group activities and multi-sensory training techniques.

5. Keep Them Interested With Surprises.

There should be no surprises for the trainer of course, because the training session should be very well planned.

However, the participants are another thing altogether. A good trainer plans to surprise the trainees.

You can surprise them by using a range of different and interesting training strategies. Participants may be aware of the course content but find the techniques new and interesting.

You can also use rewards to motivate them. Small rewards like chocolate bars, pens or notebooks can be enough of an incentive to get people involved. When you divide participants into teams during the session, you can award points to teams. This is a great way to get people excited and involved.

6. Train to The Objectives.

It is easy to get off track when you create an interactive learning environment, so it is essential that you have planned the course carefully. What are the learning objectives of the training? What topics must be covered in each session?

It is important to constantly reiterate these objectives during the course so that it stays on track.

It is common for groups to want to spend more time on topics that interest them but if you do that you will find there is insufficient time to cover the other topics in the course.

Next time you need to run a training session, apply these training strategies for the best learning outcomes. Keep in mind the rule of three as you plan and deliver the training: repetition, recall and retention.

Discover Kevin Sinclair’s system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

How do YOU communicate with your people? If you need to let your staff know something - the latest pay offer, when the office party is, that their department is being restructured - how do you do it?

If yours is a fair-sized business, chances are that you leave it to the HR department to fire off a memo or an email. And often, that’s just fine. You don’t need a leadership training course on how to organize a party.

But you’re missing opportunities to influence and inspire your staff if you leave ALL your communication to word-processed notes and email messages.

And you’re opening the door to misunderstanding and resistance if the really big changes are not communicated in a very particular way.

Let’s take a step back for a minute. If your day consists of meetings, more meetings, phone conversations, business lunches, staff negotiations, media interviews and board discussions, then you’re doing nothing but talking and listening all day.

Now, yes it’s a cliche, but knowing how to communicate effectively IS the most important task of a successful leader. For a successful leader, talk IS action.

But many managers get communication wrong. For instance, most leaders believe their main role in communicating is to make decisions for everyone else, and then tell everyone about the decisions.

Sorry, but this is a myth. Not only that, it doesn’t work. (How many times have you told everyone what needs to be done in a meeting or an email only to have nothing happen?)

The second myth is that you have to decide EVERYTHING. Managers who believe this create a rod for their own backs.

Why is that? Well, if you decide everything, then no one will ever take any initiative or show the slightest ounce of energy to do anything without your rubber stamping everything. Even the tiniest project will grind to a halt unless you have the final word.

But your time is far more precious than this. You should use your time more wisely than in rubber stamping it.

So how do you know when a decision absolutely has to be made? Well, let me tell you.

The most effective way to find out if there is a real decision to be made is to start a debate. By debating the issue with your peers, your staff and other stakeholders, you can decide whether a particular change is necessary or not.

Now, to start the debate you need to ask your people what they think is going on in a particular situation. And then you can test their answers against your own opinions.

This process helps you significantly in gathering as much intelligence as possible. And it makes it more likely that you will make the right decision for the company. But it also helps all those involved in the change.

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, explains this well: “Through the process of presenting their own opinions, the participants will refine their own arguments and facts so that they are in much clearer focus. Gradually all parties can cut through the murkiness that surrounds their arguments, clearly understand the issues and each other’s point of view.”

So the successful leader is courageous and encourages widespread debate - even from people who disagree, as well as from supporters. And this helps you make the best decision for the organization.

Not only that, but it will help all those affected by that decision - they will know that they played a part in making the decision.

If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”.
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Sales training is perhaps the single greatest resource you can give to your employees. It is a means of teaching them the best techniques for today’s business world. It is also a means of giving your employees the right tools to boost sales and profit margins.

Sales training is being used more and more by businesses because of the proven methods of training that can inspire your sales staff. By implementing these methods you are giving your employees the opportunity to exceed at their jobs.

Whether you set up in house sessions or online, sessions for just a few employees or many, Sales training is taught by seasoned sales professionals who have been in sales field for many years and know what methods are effective in today’s market place.

Although these methods are developed for salespeople, any staff members who have contact with your customers can benefit from them, making it a very cost effective way to conduct your business.

Many business owners are skeptical of the cost that is associated with these types of courses. However, it is nothing compared to money that is lost in revenues from customers that got away.

Business owners who have tracked their sales after sales training have found that their profit was raised substantially, allowing them to give bonuses to their employees for a job well done.

Sales training can be conducted in many different ways. It can be set up at orientation for new hires, or you can hold an all day training session in your office. The trainers develop a method that is tailored to your business and will assist all personnel who attend the sessions in honing their skills on many levels to turn them into selling machines.

Sales training for outside sales staff and virtual offices has always been very difficult to schedule. No one seems to have the same time available and traveling to one location was nearly impossible, especially if the company had worldwide salespeople.

Today, it is possible to hold sessions online, where your staff can log in with their own username and password to attend the training sessions at a time when it is most convenient for them.

Sales training can teach your sales force many different aspects of sales and how to perform them with accuracy and ease. A trainer can instruct your employees on how to prospect and close a sale. He or she is specially trained in the fine art of sales and each has a lot of knowledge to offer.

Sales today are very different from sales in past years. Many of the techniques are outdated and obsolete. The business word today is fast paced and aggressive and if a business does not keep up to date, they will end up failing.

Each business is unique and sales trainers understand this. They bring to the sessions proven methods of sales protocol and teach your staff how to implement each aspect of it.

When your sessions have finished, you will find that by initiating the training that has been provided, your sales will increase substantially.

Peter Geisheker is the CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm

Peter develops and implements strategic marketing programs as well as sales training for businesses of all sizes.