Interesting Articles on Training and Development This Month

ATD: 6 Critical Design Elements for Digital Sales Training

According to Gartner, “Today’s technology makes it easier for instructors to simulate face-to-face training in an online world, but too often enablement leaders focus on the technology and overlook the training design.” The guided digital training environment weaves in skillful design elements—videos from executives and sales leaders, discussion boards and chats, real-world practice, peer-to-peer coaching, and more—to deliver the context and information that sellers need to be successful. Here are the 6 design elements that are a must for digital sales training.

Element 1: Setting Strategic Content

Give sellers access to the top of the organization, and they’ll show up. When executives and SMEs participate live or in recorded messages, a signal is sent that the training is important and worth a seller’s attention. Understanding the context helps sales reps take the training into their everyday actions.

Element 2: Immersing the Seller into Their Real World

Accelerate the application and adoption of any sales training. Reflect the seller’s specific challenges and opportunities at every opportunity. Use local scenarios, language, and business examples. Using in-region facilitators levels the playing field across geographies.

Element 3: Connecting with What Matters to Them

Digital training is perfect for addressing the What’s in it for me? (WIIFM) question. Sellers face time constraints but want personal attention. Custom digital designs can accommodate specific work environments down to a granular level.

Element 4: Getting Them Talking and Working Together

Many sellers have limited face time with their leaders and managers, and that’s even more common in this era of remote work. But they’ve also lost connections with their peers during the last couple of years.

Element 5: Promoting Relationships

By weaving relationship-building elements throughout an online training event, sellers, managers, coaches, leaders, and executives can engage with each other, embrace the learning, boost morale, and help everyone feel like they belong.

Element 6: Being Careful with the Time

Strategic implementations of digital sales training never lose sight of the fact that time is a precious commodity. For a recent project, employees worked with a company to deliver an online sales bootcamp for 2,500 remote global sellers. It took just three weeks from concept to delivery. And once the training event ended, sellers returned to the marketplace using the new sales content.

Full article: https://www.td.org/atd-blog/6-critical-design-elements-for-digital-sales-training

Have Some Fun and Watch These Old Pan Am Training Videos

These retro airline training videos on YouTube are a mix of funny, cringy, and eyebrow-raising. In each video, you first see how a customer interaction shouldn’t be handled, and then you see how it should be handled instead. If you need a break and a good laugh, look no further.

Full article: https://onemileatatime.com/insights/pan-am-training-videos/

Experiential Learning and VR will Reshape the Future of Education

Education is the foundation of a strong economy. It increases human capital, drives productivity and boosts economic output. For individuals, education paves the way to acquire new skills, develop critical thinking and analytical know-how, contribute to economic welfare, develop a sense of purpose and shape one’s career. Therefore, its impact on individuals, societies, governments and the world is undeniable. Yet methods to educate people have not always kept pace with technological developments. That said, change is imminent and will come faster over the next decade as costs to produce advanced learning experiences come down.

The article examines the subject from the following perspectives:

  • Evolving education technologies for experiential learning
  • Disruption and innovation
  • Maximizing VR’s impact for experiential learning

Full article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/the-future-of-education-is-in-experiential-learning-and-vr/

Live Science: Learn Physics at Home from Expert Tutors

Whether you’re a curious adult who wasn’t paying attention to sciences in high school, a student wanting to get clarity on more complex areas of physics, or you just want to learn from renowned professors and scientists at the top of their respective fields, these are the best online physics courses you can have at your fingertips. Pair this with the best physics books and you’ll be swimming in knowledge! These resources will boost your knowledge of the study of energy, matter, its motion and behaviors through time and space, and the mystery of our known universe.

Full article: https://www.livescience.com/best-online-physics-courses

ATD: Creating a Learning Organization is No Longer an Option

A learning organization now is a must-have. If your organization does not continuously upskilling, it falls behind. The reality is that the lifecycle of skillsets is decreasing. For example, in technical areas, the half-life of skills is as little as three years. The tighter labor market that has emerged from the pandemic makes the learning organization even more valuable. Your company is competing on the ability to attract and retain the talent that you need to grow and execute your business strategy. Research shows that job seekers want opportunities to grow; therefore, your ability to find and keep talent depends upon you creating learning opportunities for them.

Full article: https://www.td.org/atd-blog/creating-a-learning-organization-is-no-longer-an-option

eLearning Company Blog | June 19, 2022