It’s common for venues to claim to be one-size-fits-all, but most are equipped for one type of event and ill-suited for others. So how do you find the ideal venue for your group’s needs? To help you navigate the labyrinth of offerings, the expert planning team at The National Conference Center has put together a comprehensive list of key factors any planner should consider when selecting a venue for a meeting, training or event. Click below to download this White paper.

As a training program manager, you likely spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to increase employee participation to ensure impact, value, and return on investment. Check out BizLibrary's "A Reason For Learning Every Season" resource to foster marketing & awareness for learning and development, so you can help your people take it upon themselves to learn something new and improve efficiency. Click below to download this White paper.

FASCINATING INTERVIEWS BY KELLY LEONARD, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSIGHTS & APPLIED IMPROVISATION AT SECOND CITY WORKS There is a growing amount of evidence that shows how our own expertise can become a trap. We become accustomed to our success and patterns and this leaves us, sometimes, unprepared for change. There is also evidence that when you expose yourself to new thinking, new ideas and new perspectives, you are making yourself more change-ready. These interviews will give you some unique and unusual insights across a variety of fields and experiences. A mixture of academics, executives, artists and thought leaders whose combined wisdom will give you some practical information that you can parlay into your own working lives. Enjoy! - KELLY LEONARD, Executive Director, Insights & Applied Improvisation at Second City Works

Sales is in an effectiveness crisis, with 47% of sales professionals failing (according to CSO Insights studies). It's easy to blame outside factors. But the truth is, if we're going to turn sales performance around, we have to take a good, hard look at sales process.  To achieve consistent results, your sales team needs an actionable and measurable sales process consisting of your best practices. It needs to be repeatable and easy to follow. Download this white paper to: Learn why mapping out a formalized sales process is worth the effort. Get practical guidance on how to do it successfully. Learn how technology makes effective execution achievable for any sales organization. See inside an organization that increased their profit margin by 50% by better executing their sales strategy.

The training industry is one that sees changes in methodology and technology constantly. Some organizations are quick to pick up on new trends and try them out, while others prefer to wait and see which ones survive the test of time and prove their value. In this BizLibrary ebook, we’ll look at some of the top trends that are continuing to prove important for workplace learning, along with those that have a lot of potential to impact the way we train through 2018 and beyond. Click below to download this eBook.

Company experts are retiring at a record pace. Read this excerpt to learn some tips on how to best capture and share their knowledge.

According to a study by Bersin by Deloitte, organizations with senior leaders who coach can effectively and frequently improve business results by 21% compared to those who never coach. This infographic will cover the seven skills needed to help managers and leaders improve their ability to coach their teams. Click below to download this Infographic.

How investing in human and creative skills drive your business forward In-demand skills are evolving more quickly than we can keep up. Baseline skills—such as communication, problem solving and creativity—already represent one in three skills requested in job descriptions, and by the year 2020, more than one third of core skillsets will be made up of skills not considered crucial to the job today. Use this resource as a starting point to develop innovative, creative and productive teams that push your business forward. Click below to download this White paper.

A New Look at Sales Onboarding Sales organizations onboard new employees differently now than they did just five years ago. This transition to modern learning practices reflects exciting new opportunities for today’s professionals in Sales Enablement and Training as well as Learning and Development to transform onboarding into an organizational capability that drives growth. We’ve helped over a hundred organizations build out successful modern onboarding programs and gained perspective on themes that consistently emerge among top performers. We’ll illustrate these throughout this guide while giving you tactical recommendations for driving better and faster onboarding today Click below to download this White paper.

Does your onboarding process create positive first impressions that set up new employees for success in their roles, or is it simply a list of items to check off and call it done?  This ebook will take you through seven aspects of the recruiting and onboarding process, teach you how to connect with your employees starting on the first day and discover where to automate the process so you can focus on making a new hire's experience personable and engaging.  Click below to download this eBook.

chapter 1 The Truth There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. —Warren Buffett, most Successful Investor of the 20th Century THE STAKES ARE HIGH. You are the coach of a five-man basketball team battling against another team. But this isn’t just any game. It’s the Olympics and it’s all for the glory. You are leading the team who is gunning for Gold in the men’s basketball final. hundreds of thousands of sports fanatics—representing virtually every country in the world—hover above their colorful stadium seats shouting with all their might in the hopes of inspiring your team to victory. You are about to begin the fight of your life … battling for the title of "best in the world." As the ball is tossed in the air at center court, one of your star players grabs it and races down the wooden planks as fast as he can, gunning for the competitor’s net. Just imagine, three of your five starting players are standing at center court waving to their family and friends in the stands. Your final starting player is watching ESPN SportsCenter on a TV in the locker room as he sips lime green Gatorade and roots for the opposing team. Is it real? Absolutely! Leaders, this is your workforce today. Click below to download this book chapter.

Soft skills play a key role in your sales reps' ability to successfully turn a prospect into a client. This ebook discusses how if your sales team can put themselves in their prospects shoes emotionally, they can overcome any objection thrown at them and close the sale. Click below to download this eBook.

As HR investments become more data-driven, coaching must deliver on its ROI evidence gap. At BetterUp, we’ve created a model that can effectively measure the impact of coaching on the bottom line. Download our paper to learn: How coaching ROI has been measured in the past, and why these methods are flawed Which inputs are factored into our ROI algorithm How we map the ROI of coaching to tangible business results

New managers can develop into high performing future leaders. Or, they can flail and fail-costing your company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Learn what you can do to ensure new manager success. Download our paper to learn: The 3 major problems most companies have with new managers Which 4 critical management skills should be developed How coaching new managers can lead to dramatic improvements in new manager performance

Company cultures that value and celebrate diverse perspectives not only support, engage and advance underrepresented groups, but also benefit by making better decisions and achieving broader innovation. We believe inclusion is a hallmark of strong leadership and should be a core skill for all leaders. Download our paper to learn: Why most diversity and inclusion programs fall short on their promises How to develop skills that foster an inclusive workplace with BetterUp coaching How BetterUp unlocks the potential of emerging leaders with career coaching to build leadership behaviors at scale

We have identified five potential areas of failure in sales process/sales methodology implementation in the midst of data-driven sales transformation.  These areas are broad and multifaceted, but we have explained them within the context of the business issue, and their effects on process implementation, as well as the way that shifting process implementations can affect business issues.

Across the nation, sales managers are struggling. They struggle to keep up with deadlines, with reporting, with setting and hitting goals, and with managing and motivating their sales teams. SalesFuel hears these sentiments at every conference, at every training session, and every day from our own clients. There is not enough time. And most definitely, there is no time for sales coaching. The developers and researchers at SalesFuel were tired of hearing sales managers say, "Oh, I'm swamped with bazillions of things to do. I don't have time to sit down and have hour-long conversations with each sales rep every week." So, they created a tool specifically to address this no-time epidemic and to disrupt the way we think about managing sales forces forever. It is time for a sea change in sales management. And, it's time for adaptive sales coaching.

What Are the Obligations of Managers? The answer to this question varies from organization to organization based upon several factors such as industry, culture, department, skill level of the team, etc. At your organization, for instance, managers may be expected to meet with each employee every week and discuss their career. At another organization, management might only discuss issues with employees as they arise. Regardless of the organization, every manager faces the same challenge, in some degree: should management be confined within an organization to a strict set of expectations and achieving KPIs through a set of clear guidelines, or should managers have the freedoms of higher leadership to help create culture and achieve KPIs by virtue of their leadership skills? Click below to download this white paper.

It's time to face the hard, data-driven truth that your corporate learning programs are likely serving your men better than your women.    Many organizations unknowingly perpetuate the gender leadership gap by giving more time, energy, and resources to helping men rise. In doing so, intentionally or not, businesses deny women opportunities to gain the critical leadership skills necessary for advancement—opportunities to which many men have always had access. This eBook provides actions companies can take to remove barriers preventing women from advancing, and highlights five core areas where women need increased access to learning and skill-building opportunities.  Click below to download.

Gone are the days when advanced degrees and decades of experience were the only indicators of a stand-out candidate. Today, 80 percent of CEOs seek a much broader range of skills in their company ’s workforce. New research from the Institute for the Future, in conjunction with Cornerstone OnDemand, shows that candidates now must possess not only the technical skills that enable them to engage with constantly evolving technologies, but also the social skills that make them forward-thinking, team-oriented and goal-driven. To attain these skills, workers at every level must become lifelong learners, constantly self-evaluating and finding opportunities to gain new skills. For employers, hiring or nurturing these workers internally presents challenges. From a recruiting perspective, knowledge gaps are making open positions increasingly difficult to fill. According to a new report from Deloitte Insights, more than half of employers say they consistently can’t fill open positions, because without a minimum number of years experience or the right certifications, applicants are simply not qualified enough on paper. Internal candidates face a similar obstacle—they often lack the skills needed to make the leap to a new role. Still, HR teams have to somehow fill over six million vacant jobs. To do so, they’ll have to rethink not only how they hire, but also how they enable learning and development within their organizations. They’ll have to start evaluating internal and external candidates based on their potential, seeking workers with a combination of soft and hard skills that make them adaptable to change, eager to learn and full of promise. How can employers identify and nurture these individuals? In this guidebook, you'll learn what to look for in new workers, and how to help your current workforce develop the skills they need to thrive. With seven articles on everything from hiring the most auspicious candidates, to helping employees build skills for stepping into open leadership positions, our featured articles will enable your organization to cultivate your existing team, onboard promising talent and stay ahead of the skills gap by embracing the idea of lifelong learning. Click below to download this guidebook

For training content to be effective and engaging, it needs to be continuously adaptive to your company's and your employees' changing needs. Download this infographic, and learn the questions to ask content providers to ensure they are the right fit. Click below to download.

How to use video in your sales enablement practice to help your reps ramp up more quickly, sell more efficiently, and share best practices more easily. Click below to download this White Paper.

The world is experiencing a monumental shift in the way we work and learn. New technology is disrupting nearly every industry. We’re already seeing the impact in healthcare, finance, manufacturing and logistics. Are you ready to navigate to the future? Click below to download this Infographic.  

The Fourth Industrial Revolution We’ve entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where cars drive themselves, robots are more than a sci-fi storyline, and the line separating biology and technology is increasingly fuzzy. These are not unrealistic statements. LYFT’s CEO projects no need for car ownership by 2025, and 3D DNA printing is already a reality.­­­1 According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), this revolution is happening at an exponential pace, and the "speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent."2 For industries, organizations and employees alike, the Fourth Industrial Revolution offers tremendous benefits. However, within these very benefits lie the revolution’s most complicated — and sometimes frightening — challenges. While AI and robots aren’t making the human workforce obsolete, they are forcing employee roles to change. And that means organizations must begin to modify departments, staffing, training Click below to download this White paper.