Professional Education

We recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Hunter, the author of High-Profit Selling: Win the Sale Without Compromising on Price. Hunter is a sales expert who helps teams increase their sales profitability and has valuable insights into the role that training can play in driving sales.

Below are his responses to some of our questions on sales training technology and best practices:

Question 1: What role do you see sales training playing in delivering better outcomes for sales teams?

It’s huge because the role of the sales manager has shifted. Sales managers are now doing everything but working with people.  Sales training helps build confidence by being able to show the salesperson what “best practice behavior” really is.  Sales training, when done right, allows the salesperson to test for themselves the skills they need to exhibit on a regular basis.

We all know that metrics matter in sales.  It is critical that sales teams leverage data to increase the conversion rate on leads, shorten the amount of time it takes to win a sales, and boost the value of those wins. When it comes to training, sales teams must continue this culture of “looking at the numbers” to both capitalize on successes and to find areas for improvement.

 

In the social enterprise, where sales training and implementation is enhanced by increased social collaboration, metrics still matter. I recently read a great article on the Radian6 blog entitled “10 Key Sales Metrics to Track,” which highlights ways sales teams can quantify the value of their strategies in the social enterprise.

Here are five of the metrics discussed the article that best apply social sales teams:

One of the most prevalent trends in higher education today is the increasing popularity of online classes. Today, about 30% of all higher education students take at least one class online, and demand for online courses exceeds demand for traditional courses across all institution types.

But online learning isn’t something to be taken for granted. When moving their classes online, instructors need to account for the absence of face-to-face interactions while integrating tools from an array of digital learning technologies. This presents a unique set of challenges, especially for classes that require a high level of interaction with the professor or those that are asynchronous in the online environment.

At this year’s Professional Colleges and Universities Summit, Steven Birmingham (IT Director at Central Penn College) discussed his experiences with transforming brick-and-mortar classes to online learning. Here are some of my favorite takeaways from Birmingham’s presentation:

Exploring Lean Corporations: “Simplify, standardize, automate” The idea of a “lean corporation” isn’t new.  Though the term is used to describe many start-up and high-tech firms today, Lean has long been used in reference to the manufacturing principles of the automaker Toyota.  By removing wasteful, inefficient practices throughout their production and supply chains, Toyota has historically been able to minimize costs to their customers – making them the textbook case for Lean. But as we all know, Toyota isn’t the only company that seeks greater efficiency for economic benefit these days.  So what does it mean for businesses to be truly Lean, and how does Lean impact the learning and training environment in those companies?

Adopting Lean at Bayer Last year, Greg Babe of Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) wrote a piece for the Harvard Business review that answers many of those questions.  When Babe was “blindsided” by his company’s global executives with a proposal to shut down the company’s North American headquarters, he used it as an opportunity to leverage Lean for the benefit of the entire company.

Guest Blog Post by Dan Lim, Ph.D., Vice President for Educational Technology and Distance Learning, Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (linkedin.com/in/danlim01). Dan will be presenting “De-angelizing Synchronous Distance Teaching: Collaborate To Enhance Online Education Quality” at Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012 on Thursday, July 12, 2012 from 2:50-3:45PM.

Once upon a time, it was popular to angelize.  Now it’s time to de-angelize.  At Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (FHCHS), our plan to de-angelize is still on track though the ANGEL learning system has recently been put on indefinite life support.  Although ANGEL has served us well, its unscalable chat tool has been the Achilles’ heel since the beginning when we used it in the synchronous distance delivery of our three distance degree programs.

The transition to Blackboard Collaborate this year is a timely and critical change.  If your institution is experiencing various challenges in the quality of distance delivery, there are ten reasons why you need to attend our session, seven of which are on how Collaborate is a great solution to distance education challenges and three reasons why the transition has been smooth and quite painless.