It's more than an old adage: people like to buy, but they resist (even loath) being sold to.

That changes when you build a personal relationship with your customers, but before you can get to that point, there's always a lack of trust to overcome. Suspiciously  thinking, even the best salespeople can come off as shills, charlatans and naturally biased.

Wouldn't it be better to simply educate customers and let them sell themselves? That's easier today than ever before, because so many people turn almost instantly to the Internet to research important products and make their buying decisions.

So flip the elearning coin over and look at it as customer education. Don't think LMS, think marketing microsite. Give your prospects the information they need to pre-qualify themselves. Don't force it, and they may even sell themselves. Let them come to you for the order!

Most marketing pros agree that the salesperson has the most impact on a sale. Not advertising, not PR, not even pricing--but the salesperson.

However, with the right approach, the customer can be the most important piece in the equation. Consumers are smarter than ever before, and with more information at their finger tips than they can use. So control this information! Let them do what they do naturally...seek out and research solutions that work best for them. Help them come into your store or sales channel and ask with certainty for the product they want.

Give them the stats. Help them compare products. Provide third party reference and support. Help them discover what works best for their situation. And one more thing, facilitate this discovery with the help of an online character (we call them avatars) that they can relate to. Make the avatar someone who has walked in the customer's shoes. That's the start of building trust, and it makes the journey very social, and not just an exercise in Googling their way around the internet.

In short, consider mirroring your sales elearning and creating a component that's customer education. It can be some pretty hot marketing. And in the end, you've got a good chance of making your customers brand advocates. Because once they've sold themselves, that's the natural outcome.

Norman, who you see in the video below, is like the other wonderful avatars from CodeBaby. They've become a staple in our simulation-based e-learning courses and they're a perfect match for the creative approach we call: e-learning NOT as usual™.

It seems these effective avatars and our NOT as usual approach is contagious, too. At least you can say that when it comes to the training people at Newell Rubbermaid, who recently said "this is by far the best e-learning we've ever had". They asked us to go out of the box and put Norman, the avatar we created for their global sales training course, up on stage for a national sales meeting!

What can you say when something goes so right? It was a brilliant idea that the client came up with. They even wrote the script for Norman and Scott Neeley's interaction on stage! It was fun, light, unexpected and it really hit the audience well.

Why Avatars?

With the US e-learning market somewhere in the $30 billion range (not to mention the rest of the world) there's a lot of courses out there. And you may differ, but I think it's safe to say there are more bad courses out there than good ones. So you have to ask yourself, what makes a good course? What do you do to grab the learner's attention, keep them in the course, and make learning stick as they go back on the job?

One answer lies in human nature; in just how social we are as human beings. Of course I'd rather interact with an avatar, on screen, rather than just sit there by myself. And avatars aren't just fluff--though they are entertaining--they're a part of our strategy. We've found that, over time, our clients and their learners become attached to the avatars. They actually form a relationship with them, as if they were human.

But all avatars are not created equal. We've found that, if characters that are either too cartoonish or too photo realistic, they're distracting for the learner. A character design that's in the middle let's you focus on the content. And by the time you add a human voice and good body language to the avatar, you've really hooked learners and brought them into the world of your simulation. We've also found that they stay there longer, too.

We find our avatars make good facilitators and coaches. They're also excellent at demonstrating proper approaches where soft skills come into play. But because they are so social, the best way to employ these characters is in interactions, where learners role-play and can safely practice new behaviors.

When you measure success, e-learning that doesn’t create business results just doesn’t measure up.

But with more than a decade of experience in e-learning NOT as usual, w/ can share four simple design steps, proven to get you results. Think of these steps like an archery target, where each step is a ring.

You know they say an un-aimed arrow never misses its mark. But too many e-learning courses start right there, by including all the content that everyone wants delivered. And that broad focus is exactly why they fail. In e-learning, the truth is, you’ll never hit a target you’re not aiming at.

So Step 1 is the bulls-eye. It’s simply put…it’s the business results you’re trying to achieve. Take sales for instance. We don’t want to just increase sales, but preference for the product or brand as well. That’s our bulls-eye!

Step 2 is the ring around the bulls-eye, and in your planning it represents the behaviors required to successfully reach the business results. Again, using sales as an example, this would be recommending the right product, having the ability to confidently handle customer objections, and understanding each customer well enough to close the sale in a way that truly benefits them.

I believe that Step 3 is the most important one. Step 3 is designing online scenarios where learners can safely practice, fail and internalize the behaviors for success. This kind of learning by doing is a natural and powerful way to learn and make new concepts real…so they stick.

And that brings us back to Step 4: new information. Only now information is specifically focused on just the information a learner needs to understand, practice, and be successful. Now they’re ready for success! And that's your four proven steps for attaining business objectives.

Why should avatars (online characters) be part of your e-learning strategy?

Simple. They make learning more interesting, more engaging, more social and more real. The result? More compelling e-learning, more enthusiastic learners, more results.

According to a Stanford University study:

"Characters are well liked because they make online interactions more personal. When presented with only a single character for interaction only 15% of users dislike the character. When presented with a choice of multiple characters, more than 90% of people prefer interaction with the character, to no character at all."

In fact, since w/ has been using avatars we've found learners not only do enjoy our courses more, but they also spend more time in them and they learn more and remember more, too. Avatars are the perfect way for learners to practice selling, management or coaching simulations!

So, do you want your learners spending more time in courses? Soaking up more, remembering more? Of course! Here's what we've learned about avatars. In surveys learners agreed or strongly agreed:

• 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.

It's interesting to point out that these learners had anywhere from a couple of years on the job, to more than 20 years. And they raged in age from 20-somethings to 50-somethings. What you can deduce from this is that regardless of age or experience, we are all social beings and we all relate positively to the presence of an avatar in our e-learning.

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

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

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.

Prospects are always impressed by our full-body avatars, and for that reason we're quick to demonstrate them.

But as I joined in the selling process with a new client recently I was reminded that, while we're always thinking sims, that doesn't mean that we should always be thinking avatars. Here's why:

• A sim is used to, literally, simulate real life decisions to provide a learner with practice. Here, by the way, we design in options for failure. If learners don't have a good chance to fail, they don't really have a good chance to learn, either.
• But sometimes the failing and learning have to do with software or with repairing machines. When there is no interaction with people, there is no call for an avatar...no matter how powerful they are.

So, while we're always thinking in terms of sims these days, we're also quick to determine what soft skills are in play. No soft skills, no avatars.

And depending on the audience, we may choose to use avatars in only one section of the course. That would be true with boomers, more than any other age group. They appreciate working with an avatar in a role-play, but tire of having them around when it's not necessary.

This post summarizes a Stanford University study that was published in 2002. Like a lot of academic papers, it's well, pretty academic reading. But it makes a very strong case for the use of animated characters, or avatars, in online learning. And it has a ton of impressive research behind it. You can (download) this study from us, but below is the short version.

First of all, we are all familiar with the concept of social intelligence. It's well documented that the quality of facial and emotional expressions, along with speaking ability and other personal skills, result in greater or lesser degrees of engagement, trust and satisfaction during a social interaction.

According to the Stanford study, a significant body of research shows that the presentation of social intelligence is just as critical in online interactions as it is in interpersonal interactions. They make the point that people do not discount interactions as unreal, simply because they are on screen. Further, it asserts that interactive media automatically engages brain systems that are meant to evaluate social experiences. Therefore online characters that speak and interact with learners can create a more meaningful experience, increasing trust, satisfaction, memory and learning, and a willingness to return for more learning.

The study goes on to say that online characters can create a positive feeling towards the organization that sponsors the interaction, make people feel special, rather than one of a multitude of learners, and make the web less lonely. The study goes on to fortify these assertions in a list of 10 benefits to using online characters:

1. Characters make explicit the social responses that are inevitable in online interactions, giving us more control over outcomes.
2. Interactive characters are perceived as real social actors; we know they are not real, but we treat them as if they are.
3. Interactivity increases the perceived realism and effectiveness of characters, as it simulates human-to-human conversation.
4. Interactive characters increase trust in information sources, and research shows that when characters guide interactions, people trust the information more than in identical interactions without characters.
5. Characters have personalities that represent brands, create predictability and help to build relationships.
6. Characters can communicate social roles, thus making their function--as a teacher, coach, teammate, salesperson, customer service rep--clear, and improving the message and experience.
7. Characters can effectively express and regulate emotions, responding appropriately to learner interactions and adding impact and meaning to what is being learned.
8. Characters can effectively display important social manners, with polite greetings, effective encouragement, and even simple apologies...all making the interaction more human and more effective.
9. Characters can make interfaces easier to use because they make it more obvious where to find help, and more like getting help from someone down the hall than from a manual or help file.
10. Characters are well liked because they make online interactions more personal. When presented with only a single character for interaction only 15% of users dislike the character. When presented with a choice of multiple characters, more than 90% of people prefer interaction with the character, to no character at all.

The Stanford paper is well documented, referencing 36 different studies, articles and conference proceedings. It is well worth the read, if you have the time, but this summary gets to most of it. Bottom line, if you're wondering about using characters in your online learning programs...you can probably erase any doubts you previously had. Online avatars can crate immersive learning.