Virtual training
If your sales team is strewn across the country, get them on the same page with virtual launch events.
Problem: Your sales force dots the countryâ€"or the globe. But getting everyone together in the same place for strategy sessions isn't in the budget.
Solution: Virtual launch events cut costs and keep everyone on the same page.
In 1995, IBM started developing its e-business product and services line. By 1998, it was ready to send its sales team out to deliver the hard sell. Except for one thing. There's a big difference between knowing how an e-commerce server works and knowing why a business needs it. The company had to make sure its global sales army was equipped to tout the products in terms CEOs could understandâ€"profit and loss and competitive advantage.
The clock was ticking. All 43,000 members of Big Blue's sales force had to be trained in just a few months. Face-to-face training would require flying groups to hotels in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and booking them rooms for a week, says Ralph Senst, vice president of e-business training for IBM Global Services. Then Senst did the math. At $4,000 per person, it would have cost $172 million.
The expense was out of the question. So IBM turned to the Internet, which seemed the only way to train so many employees in so little time. But the company didn't think a ready-made e-learning package could handle the job. However, IBM's software division had already developed Web lectures, which blend PowerPoint slide presentations and voice-overs. At first, Senst wasn't sure using the Net to train salespeople would work. "Traditional salespeople are a different breed," he says. "It's hard to hold their attention in an e-learning environment." He didn't trust them to learn without prodding from managers.
Then Senst discovered that he could incorporate testing and tracking functions into the Web-based system. That way he could identify which employees were taking the tests, how well they were doing, and which managers were actively encouraging their staff to take the online courses. Three months after introducing Web lectures to the sales force, all 43,000 employees knew the drill. The old way "would have taken us three times as long and cost us 20 times as much," Senst says. Plus, IBM's e-learning solution is padding its bottom line: Web lectures are now another product in IBM's e-business line. For $200 per student, you can create a one-hour Web lecture that will train as many as 1,000 people in three days.
Caliber Learning Network takes a similar approach, but it also adds video. At a recent launch event the e-learning developer staged for 3Com, pie charts flashed across a screen, guys in white button-downs and ties explained product specs onstage, and group leaders threw out hypothetical customer questions. The cutups were there too, hamming it up in the back row, waving their hands to get the sales director's attention.
Sure, just your average launch event. Except that 3Com's sales force wasn't packed into the same auditorium. The presenters were in one state. The audience sat watching on big-screen TVs in other states. Those who didn't have a Caliber studio located nearby caught the presentation on the Internet.
Caliber helps companies like 3Com, Salomon Smith Barney, and Bristol-Myers Squibb save time and cut down on the expense of flying everyone to the same meeting place. Salomon Smith Barney, for example, saves almost three-quarters of a million dollars every time it stages a Caliber training event rather than flying empoyees to a central location. And SPSS, a software developer, shaved the amount it spends training its staff by $1,580 per person. At $99 a pop, Caliber's solution nets SPSS a 94 percent savings.
Caliber has more than 52 learning centers in 46 North American cities equipped with videoconferencing gear and PCs. Microphones in the classrooms give participants a chance to talk backâ€"and with video cameras you might catch someone snoozing in San Francisco. After every presentation is over, Caliber archives the session online. If employees miss the live meeting, they can always review it later.
Key to the success of this approach is the fact that participants can still interact with presenters. "The students see the instructor, the instructor sees the audience," says Monica Cojocneanu, channel marketing manager at 3Com. "The technology does not completely eliminate the human factor. This environment simulates instructor-led training more than any other form of e-learning."
Brett Wimmer, channel account manager at 3Com, likes the Internet-based product rollouts better than the old way where "everybody's gone for how many days at a time, bringing everybody across the entire country." In fact, he'd like to reduce travel time even moreâ€"by not trekking to the nearest Caliber classroom. "I'd love to be able to do it on my desktop [and also] in a conference room, not just alone." That way, Wimmer says, "everybody's asking questions and learning."
