After the short video introduction, please consider this post and leave your comments...

If you’ve been around sales and sales training long enough, you’ve seen and heard pretty much everything. But in the end, growing revenues is the ultimate proof of results.

And really, you’re still just qualifying, recommending, overcoming objections and closing...so what really changes?

Maybe it’s not the what that changes; maybe it’s the how.  In this case, I’m talking about how you prepare, to improve sales results.

With our clients, the change in how has become familiar, but for some it may be relatively new. You see, we’ve thrown out linear, page-by-page e-learning and replaced it with the one-two punch of exploration and experimentation.

Working from this approach, 76% of over 1,000 sales managers recently told us our courses had increased their sales by an average of 12.5%. Based on client revenues of approximately $8 billion, that would be an increase of another cool $1 billion. That’s exciting, but let me be quick to add that this is anecdotal data. Still, as I like to say, even if they’re half right...

Learning, naturally.

The way we naturally learn is by exploring the possibilities, and then experimenting and trying things out. In short: learning by doing. And learning by doing is at the heart of the approach we call PowerSims™.  Through PowerSims, our learners gain valuable practice by applying new knowledge within a simulated selling situation.

Practice...mistakes...feedback. The sims are a safe place to learn and build confidence. And I think they’re particularly appealing because of the avatars we use. The avatars lip-synch to the audio. And the emotion in the voices, combined with their body language, make the experience very real...very social and engaging.

From the same survey mentioned above, sales managers also “agreed or strongly agreed” that our courses helped salespeople to:

• 96%...recommend the right solution or product,

• 93%...overcome customer objections to close the sale

• 95%...avatar, simulation-based courses help salespeople overcome specific objections and close the sale

• 81%...characters and simulations increase the learning in a course

• 85%...actually meeting the customer characters made them more real for me

• 89%...it was helpful to observe the retail sales character’s approach to selling

• 92%...the avatar coach provided useful insights and advice on customers and selling

• 89%...it was useful to actually practice selling to the customers

After the short video introduction, please consider this post and leave your comments...

We aren’t taught to learn. We grow up doing it naturally: through exploration, example, and experimentation. Think about it: ever since that first time...you’ve avoided hot stoves, right? That’s because you’re an awesome, natural born, mean, lean, learning machine!

Now think about your e-learning program. Does it let your learners naturally explore new information? Does it allow them to practice applying that information, until they’re confident they can get the right results in the real world?

Or is your program more e-reading than e-learning? Maybe you’re getting sucked into that vortex of page-by-page, PowerPoint-like courses! If you are, that really does suck...and it's wrong, because your learners aren't getting all they need to perform at top levels.

At w/ we refer to that natural process of eXploration and eXperience as X-learning. When we formalize it, digitize it and put it online, we call it a PowerSim™.

Want me to give you a quick run through on how it works?

• In a PowerSim, we generally start by exposing learners to a category of products or services. We include strategic sound bites about markets and customers, but we don’t overdue it. This category overview module provides greater context and meaning, as learners move on to a non-linear exploration of feature/benefit information.

• In the feature/benefit module, we utilize engaging, full-body avatars to demonstrate good selling techniques. All of the feature/benefit information from all of the products is included, so learners can visualize how they would do the same thing.
  

• Then, in the simulation module, learners apply the information gained from the first two modules, to practice selling. This is how they internalize decision-making skills and new behaviors. The results are an increase in sales and satisfied customers.

Why do PowerSims work?

Each selling scenario in the simulation module is purposefully designed around a critical risk area. These risk areas are key elements of sales and business strategy where your people are likely to falter or fail, without practice in making the right decisions. Focusing on these critical issues means your learners are getting the highest-value training available.

The PowerSims approach is effective because it takes advantage of the way people naturally learn. But you know what I think is even cooler than that? Because PowerSims go the extra mile in making your learners successful, these same learners turn around and go the extra mile in promoting your products and building your brand. Now that’s a return on investment!

What results do we get?

In a recent survey, over 1000 sales managers “agreed or strongly agreed” that our courses helped their salespeople:

• Recommend our customer’s brand over the competition, 93% of the time

• Recommend the right solution or product, 96% of the time, and

• Overcome customer objections to close the sale, 93% of the time

Remember, by declaring war on ineffective e-learning, we’ve rejected linear, page-by-page organization as the default method of delivering content. It’s maddening that these outdated habits, and every converted PowerPoint and webinar have become the de-facto standards for e-learning. So please, help us keep making the distinction between x-learning and all that other stuff. Almost everyone can use some variation of x-learning to improve their results. And we intend to keep pushing the front line in that direction.

X-learning, as you may remember from other w/ blog posts:

• Allows learners to eXplore content at a pace, and in the order, of their choosing
• Provides avatar-driven eXplanations and demonstrations of successful approaches to common problems, and
• Builds eXperience through practice in a safe, simulated environment

• Their construction is based on business risk areas, where employees are likely to falter or fail, without additional training support.
• Risk areas represent top- and bottom-line strategic objectives related to brand, sales, marketing, customer service, leadership, management and production.
• We design a PowerSim to provide practice in differentiating between good choices and better choices. This helps learners to improve their decision-making...and results...when faced with the real situation.

• Served more than 11,000 learners (nearly all of whom are non-employees)
• Chalked up more than 100,000 successful online course completions, and
• Put the cost of learning at just dollars per course completion

The best part of these numbers is that 43% of 500 sales managers surveyed, told us that they believe our courses have improved sales from 11% to 18%. That’s anecdotal information, but even if they’re half right...

Some more numbers.

Each year we complete a program survey, at no cost to our clients, because we want to know what learners can tell us about how we’re doing. Here are some convincing numbers and comments, where learners “strongly agree, or agree”:

• 84%...Actually meeting the customer characters made them more real for me.
• 88%...It was helpful to observe the retail sales character's approach to selling.
• 92%...The coach provided useful insights and advice on customers and selling.
• 89%...It was useful to actually practice selling the products to customers.
• 88%...It was helpful to go through the selling scenarios more than once.

• This survey was done as part of launching the first avatar course in a long-established program of traditional e-learning.
• The learners’ ages range all the way from 20-something to 50-something.
• 650 of the first 700 learners to take the course voluntarily participated in the survey...and with a response like that, they were obviously eager to share their experience with us.

• 40 relevant options or points of view
• 14 learner inputs or decisions
• 16 expressions of customer preference
• 8 demonstrated coaching tips

We build an incredible amount of learning into our PowerSims. That's why, at first, they seem really complicated to put together. But once you understand the pieces and parts, they become much simpler. And then...what stands out...is the knowledge and value that learners pack away from all of the well-focused practice.

What the learners gain is:

• In-depth product knowledge
• A better understanding of the customer
• How to make the right decisions to be successful
• What common mistakes to avoid, and
• Confidence in selling your products

Each PowerSim is designed around some risk area, where you might expect a salesperson to falter or fail. We typically use them to help learners differentiate between two or more products, so that they become confident in recommending the right product for a specific customer need.

A simple simulation offers eight different paths for learners to work through. And they're designed so that learners discover something new and valuable from every path. A simple, two-product PowerSim presents:

• 40 options or points of view
• 14 learner inputs or decisions
• 16 expressions of customer preference
• 8 demonstrated coaching tips

And of course, if the number of products you're training on requires two or three different selling scenarios, you can double or triple the numbers above.

Now, here's where I want you to compare the difference between the typical e-learning you're used to and what w/ calls X-learning:

With X-learning we're not just putting learners though a page by page course and asking them to recall a bunch of product facts in an assessment. C'mon...that's not learning!

What we are doing, is providing learners with:

• Opportunities to really eXplore product information
• Avatar-driven product selling eXplanations, and
• Unmatched eXperience, through valuable customer interaction and insightful coaching

And the result is, learners gain enough practice and experience to be a confident success on the sales floor. Isn't that what you want out of your training?

In the past few weeks, my posts have covered:

• 2 Things To Avoid For Effective e-Learning
• 4 Ways To Improve Your e-Learning Strategies, and
• 5 Reasons To Declare War On e-Learning 

Introducing w/ x-Learning^TM And PowerSims^TM

At w/, we contend that e-learning is mired in old paradigms of instructor lead training and page-by-page, PowerPoint delivery. It's really better described as e‑reading. Learners are stuck with a boring cycle of click-read-yawn...click-read-yawn. And companies? They're stuck with ineffective results.

To win the war, it's time to break out of e-learning and into x-learning through what w/ calls PowerSims. PowerSims give learners:

• Options to eXplore content in the order, and at the pace, that they choose
• Critical eXplanations concerning features, benefits and customers
• Opportunities to eXperience new skills, within carefully designed simulations

With PowerSims, it's critical to understand that the design starts by identifying risk areas where learners are most likely to falter or fail in real life. This approach results in the most valuable training possible.

PowerSims eXplorations & eXplanations

The eXploration and eXplanation elements provide an interactive overview that incorporates brand, customer, category and product information. They give maximum control to learners, allowing them to soak up new knowledge in the order they prefer, and at whatever pace they choose.

This part of the PowerSim is designed to replicate how learners use the Internet to learn, every day. And it helps them discover the relationships between similar products and solutions, so that they can choose the right one for any situation. For powerful eXplanations, we use a friendly, knowledgeable avatar to demonstrate good sales techniques for each important feature, benefit, or application.

We collect all of this information through a detailed template that's specially designed for each client. The template allows subject matter experts to provide maximum value in minimum time, while screening out non-essential information. This approach helps us to rapidly complete very high-quality modules.

PowerSims eXperiences

Simulations are the fastest way for learners to improve sales results. Each scenario provides a safe environment for learners to practice, make mistakes, and get the right feedbackto become more successful. This learning-by-doing approach is both familiar and effective. And it's always been the most natural way of learning.

The number of different selling scenarios required to complete the PowerSim depends on how many different types of products and customers are involved. And again, scenarios are designed around the risk areas where salespeople are likely to falter or fail in real life. In fact, we believe that if learners don't have a chance to fail...they don't really have a chance to learn.

And you know one of the most satisfying results we've found with PowerSims? Even the busiest people will go through these practice scenarios more than once, so that they can learn by trying different approaches. This proves that, when the value is there, so is the time, effort...and the results.

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here. 

In the past couple of weeks I've complained about some questionable e-learning practices. Now I realize I'm ready to declare war. Ready to declare war on ineffective e-learning. Not all elearning, mind you. Just the bad stuff.

In one recent post I spoke out against rapid e-learning being faster and cheaper, at the expense of being better. In another, I warned about turning out courses that don't have enough of a strategic foundation.

But here's the real problem: too many elearning professionals are working from a disadvantage. They're being held responsible for results, but they've either got too little time, too few resources, or too little e-learning experience to be as successful as the wish they could be.

So please, for the moment, allow me to continue to complain on behalf of all elearning professionals. And next week...I promise...we'll start talking about how to win the war against ineffective elearning.

Here's my top five complaints:

1. Missing out on better, by concentrating only on faster and cheaper (read)
   
2. Churning out tactical solutions, without the strategies for ROI (read)
   
3. Designing training without understanding the vision of your customer
4. Continuing to use the page as a measure of learning
5. Expecting learners to be successful, not through practice, but by reading
   

Now, you can check the posts on the first two declarations (click on the list above) but I owe you some explanation on the last three.

The Vision Of Your Customer

Our customers (internal and external) see the world through the prism of their own problems, for the most part. Okay...that's human nature. So why then, do we continue to design e-learning from our point of view, rather than theirs. Why do we put things in terms of what the company needs, or bury important buying information in techno-babble? We need to design and write from the other person's perspective.

The Page As A Measure Of e-Learning

Pages began with books and fliers and newspapers...all methods of communication, for the most part. PowerPoint borrows from that same linear progression of ideas. Why? Okay, for assembly of a complicated widget, sure. But for anything conceptual? Linear is too often an impediment to learning.

Reading, Not Practice

Why do we think reading about something should automatically make it clear. Why would knowledge suffice for experience? The natural way we learn from the time we're born is by doing things. Try. Fail. Try again, fail better. Bad e-learning does not incorporate learning by doing, or practice.

Okay...that's my war on ineffective e-learning. I could actually list a lot more complaints, but let's keep it simple for now, and next week we'll move on to a  solution that we call x-learning.

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here.  

It's easy for our jobs to get in the way of what we do. There's so much work to be cranked out! But as always, work should be about quality, not just quantity...and ultimately it has to be about results. We can't afford to put as much time and money into e-learning as we do, if we don't get a good return on our investment.

ROI is the WHY behind strategy. So your first checkpoint on effective e-learning is: are your courses supporting a well articulated strategy? Unfortunately the usual answer is, at best, only a partial "yes".

Check your own experience: is 90% or more of your sales training just product information? Or is it focused on how to sell the right product to the right cusotmer? Too many times, that's not the case. And while sales training is an easy example, we could be talking about any course that's fat on what and lean on how, why and practice.

This post would be way too long if I were going to cover HOW to incorporate strategy. It's more about WHAT you can be doing strategically, to improve both quality and ROI. But I promise, week-after-week in the coming months we will be talking a lot about the HOW-TO of integrating strategy into your courses.

Let's return specifically to sales training as our example for implementing e-learning strategy, allow me to introduce these additional questions:

• Do you understand your customer's point of view and are you training from that direction?
• Are you reusing e-learning content to help customers sell themselves?
• Is part of your effort working to create word of mouth (WOM) in the marketplace?
• And finally, does your e-learning support brand preference that leads to repurchasing?

If it never occurred to you that these strategies should be driving your e-learning efforts, that's okay. But when you're measured on the results of your program, as more and more of us are, this might be just the improvement you've been looking for. See you next week!

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here.  

Seems to me that faster and cheaper were the focus of much e-learning in 2009. But NEWS FLASH...faster and cheaper are NOT learning outcomes.

If you believe all the ads and emails, then webinars and converted PowerPoints are the pinnacle of e-learning. And I get it, there are a lot of managers out there who think the results they want are faster and cheaper. But they're taking a short-sighted approach to business outcomes, and while they may be getting communication results, they most certainly aren't getting the learning results that they're looking for.

Most communications are meant to inform employees. But it takes real learning to change behaviors and drive business results. So, in your company, are you just using up resources to inform people...or are you making the kind of investments that literally improve the organization?

Think about your own experience. Isn't this the improvement a webinar makes over instructor lead training? ...no one knows how many phone calls and emails you took care of during the presentation! And when you get online to read page by page in that converted PowerPoint, don't the drag and drop memory exercises make you feel a bit like a chimp in a learning experiment?

I thought e-learning was the next wave. I thought it was a giant improvement over classroom. If that's it, why does so much e-learning seem more like e-reading and e-listening?

In 2010, let's hold off a bit on faster and cheaper, and set our sights on BETTER. Let's take a look at how we can develop immersive simulations and game-like content that:

• Allows learners to explore well-organized content in the order and at the pace of their choosing, rather than being linear.
• Provides a chance to experience new information and concepts in a way that lets them practice, get feedback and learn in a safe environment.
• Focuses on changes in behavior and business results, rather than simply communicating.
  

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here. 

Once a year, we like to ask our different groups of learners what they think about our courses. We ask them what they like and what they don't like. We also ask them what improvements in performance they've seen as a result. Then we go one step further and ask their managers what results they've seen. That's level 2 and 3 feedback...the best we can do without imperical measurments, which are tough to come by. So many factors come into play, it can be next to impossible to isolate the results of our elearning. Still, the feedback we do get can be valuable in helping us deliver the most effective solutions possible.

Recently, we asked a group of learners about the 3D immersive simulations and avatars we develop for sales training. Here's the data...

Nice results. The avatars and sims are valued. But what other results can we put our fingers on? Well, this is what managers told us they see in the behaviors of salespeople, as a result of our training:

Now, the big question: Did the courses actually increase sales? Again, this is the managers talking (with almost the same response as the salespersons themselves):

On average, the increase in sales is just over 8%. Even if this is half right, that much increase in sales turns out to be a great ROI. Now, let's turn to one more question, about what learners like best about the avatars and simulations.

To us, these numbers are pretty satisfying. It says we're on the right course, and we'll use the feedback to go even further in this direction.

We'd love to hear what results you may have gotten with simulations. Or, if you've got any questions we can answer, we're here to help. What's the right strategy for using avatars? How is the instructional design different in simulations? How can we take these results and apply them to our specific needs? Just post a comment here, or connect with Jack, at the phone number or email address below.

I recently had a client who had been reviewing different avatars tell me that they all seem the same. Granted, this person is in purchasing, not in learning, but the comment does bring up an interesting issue. What makes a good elearning avatar?

We've learned by experience that characters that are too photorealistic are creepy. That's because the rigging and animation always fall way short of the visual features, causing a distracting Max Headroom kind of dissonance.

Simpler characters compliment learning, rather than distract from it...and yet, too simple also gets back to being a distraction. So not photorealistic, and not the rather crude talking heads you sometimes see. And while there is certainly a place for 2-D characters, we prefer 3-D, for most applications.

Just as the voice can convey important emotional cues that add significant depth to a message, so can body language. That's why we like to see a character that can walk and gesture, and of course lip-synchs with the voice. 

When it comes to production, a good avatar is easy to work with and keeps ROI in mind. That's one of the main advantages to the Codebaby characters we use. We can change clothes and hair pretty easily...and they come already rigged, with a broad selection of movements and gestures for us to plug in.

Bottom line? The avatar is there to help create a more human experience. They make practicing a learning objective much more real and powerful. You need them to do that job without being a distraction, and without causing you more work than the project is budgeted for.