Learning at the Point of Attack

Imagine you are a sales professional sitting in your car juggling a cup of coffee and a wireless notebook computer. You are about fifteen minutes early for a critical sales call and will have a maximum of ten minutes in front of the prospect to “make your sales pitch”. You completed your new-hire product training provided via a box of CDs six weeks earlier, but the new product released last week (and just so happens to be the perfect solution for this prospect) was unfortunately not yet available in any of the training materials. Now is the time for training. There is no time to participate in the Product Manager’s virtual meeting taking place later in the day. There is no time to get back to the office and go through the mail for the new product training CD. And to be perfectly honest, you don’t really want nor need “training”. You simply need a competitive matrix, and you need it now.

This little scenario resonates with many sales professionals because it exemplifies the difference between ineffectual formal training and much desired immediacy of informal learning found in the form of readily available information. As predicted in 2001 by Dr. Jonathan Levy, then of Harvard Business School Publications, up to 85% of learning will take place in the context of the job within five to seven years. That’s today. “In the context of the job” translates to sitting in your car at the point of attack and needing an informal learning object “just-in-time” to be effective. You don’t want or need a formal training solution, and you don’t have time for a synchronous learning opportunity by the Product Manager. You need an information object that is downloadable and designed for display on your notebook screen. Oh yes, almost forgot – and you need it right now.

Find It

Product Marketing at HQ released a new competitive matrix comparing your new offering with the top competitor’s products early last week. In your email, you read that the Product Manager has planned a synchronous, virtual meeting for this afternoon to review the new matrix. Great! That virtual meeting is scheduled for 2:30PM, and your appointment is at
11:00AM. Rescheduling the appointment is not an option because the incumbent sales rep is coming in at 1PM to renew the existing contract for three more years. You either sell your product now, or you do not; at least not for three more years. Quota-bearing sales professionals do not like to be in that situation when they know they have the superior solution. So what’s left to do?

You now have ten minutes to go before your all-or-nothing shot at a $150,000/year contract.

You log onto the company Intranet with your notebook and type the new product name into the learning portal’s search engine. Immediately, you see your options for learning about the product. The search brings back three learning categories:

Training – which includes formal learning in the form of scheduled synchronous events and notification of a new product training CD recently distributed in company mail.

Information – which includes short product descriptions and point-of-sale collateral that has a competitive matrix.

Knowledge – which includes best practices in the form of summaries of several successful positioning tactics used by a couple of other sales professionals in different regions.

Select It

The search renders choices based upon the three primary categories critical to supporting the concept of continuous learning. By providing these options to the learner, we are empowering them to select what they need when they need it. By providing these options we are enabling improved human performance. Was training the answer? No. The learning solution had nothing to do with training, but it had everything to do with enabling effective performance through informal learning – through just-in-time access to an information object authored by someone who is not even a part of the training organization.

You select the matrix, download it and save for sharing with the prospect. Seven minutes to go before the appointment begins. You notice a best practice under the knowledge category and read a short blurb posted by a rep in the southern region that highlights an objection encountered from a prospect using the very product you are trying to displace. The advice is absolutely perfect for your scenario – forewarned is forearmed.

Apply It

The sales call goes well, but you do not close the business. The prospect’s business partner was called away to attend to broken water lines at his home and could not be present. You did not get the sale, but you did gain a verbal commitment that they were not going to renew their existing contract later that afternoon. You also gained a follow-up appointment for next week to return and replay the meeting as a courtesy to the absent business partner.

Back in the car, you write a short email to the missing partner, and attach the competitive matrix along with a short interactive narration and a couple of annotations related to why your solution is far superior to the current vendor’s product. Actually, you’ve just authored an information object of your own and sent it electronically to your prospect. It seems that informal learning can even be a sales tool when reflected toward the prospect.

You do not get the opportunity to return the following week, because the prospect extracted the validation necessary to proceed with the transaction, and you receive a three year contract in overnight mail two days later.

Believe It?

Sound far-fetched? Actually, it’s not far-fetched at all. With the appropriate mix of technology aligned with the business mission and the competencies to leverage it, this is how business could be accomplished in this scenario. Granted there are myriad business applications that will not fit a selling scenario as I’ve described in this paper. But... I challenge anyone to find an opportunity to learn that would not benefit by leveraging the personalization offered through seamless, frictionless, ubiquitous access to the three categories of continuous learning.

Does your organization embrace continuous learning? Can it? Does it have the right mix of technology to do so? Do you have a strategy that enables the learning needs of different stakeholder groups with this powerful concept? Have you aligned learning with the performance outcomes critical to achieving the corporate mission?

If not, I welcome your call.

This is a concept that exceeds the limits of traditional training strategies and offers a holistic approach to both learning and performance. Organizations who provide the right learning – to the right people- in the right moment – in the right amount – and in the right format will be the winners in this ever-increasing competitive world.

Gary G. Wise
Founder/Principle
Human Performance Outfitters, LLC.
(317) 437-2555
http://www.humanperformanceoutfitters.com/
g.wise@humanperformanceoutfitters.com