Map our your unique sales process in minutes. A well-designed sales process allows the replication of best practices, introduces a shared sales language, discipline, and minimizes risks for both buyer and seller. It's a powerful concept. But, where to begin? Download this interactive Excel tool to: 1. Define your ideal customer profile. 2. Identify which prospects to pursue (and which not to). 3. Capture knowledge and best practices from your team. 4. Outline qualifying criteria, milestones and steps that build value. 5. Sequence steps and milestones to ensure pipeline momentum. In short: plug in your information and get some inspiration from this tool - finish with a killer sales process to increase win-rates and deal sizes! Click below to download this tool.

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

At a time when financial capital is cheap and readily available, but human capital isn’t, there’s an urgency to increase Employee Lifetime Value. But to do that, we have to understand the employee journey.  In this ebook you will learn:  The fundamental elements of the employee journey The building blocks of employee success How to diagnose disengagement How to detect emotional distancing How to architect intervention opportunities Click below to download this eBook.

If you ask your executives what your organization's most valuable asset is, their response will probably be "Our people, of course!". And yet, when an opportunity to invest in leading talent programs presents itself, that level of enthusiasm seems to suddenly disappear. Womp-womp. Many C-suites still see learning and development as cost burdens, even though improved talent management strategies have been shown to drive growth in revenue time and time again. This eBook will equip you with winning strategies to get the leadership buy-in you need and elevate the role of talent management in your organization. Click below to download the Making the Business Case for Talent Management eBook! It's everything you need to get executive buy-in and ongoing support for your proposed talent initiatives.

This ebook addresses how to approach the dramatic changes involved in moving to a digital workplace, using cloud-based applications and document management. As Millennials flow into the workplace with their technological savvy, we’re going to continue to experience the drive toward more virtual workplaces. This ebook covers issues around virtual leadership, digital communication practices, and how to resolve conflict often emerge in these disconnected settings. Click below to download this eBook.

The first time I immersed myself in a video-based simulation, I felt like something was off, uneasy, or just plain awkward. For those musically inclined, it was like hearing a half cadence or a sequence of incomplete notes. To help instructional designers avoid half-cadence simulations, designers should follow this 12 key guidelines. Click below to download this guide. 

We're experiencing the biggest talent shortage since 2007, and businesses feel more pressure than ever to improve learning programs. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the idea of creating a more evolved learning program. It’s easier still to revert back to tried and true (and often tired) training content. But as someone who contributes to growing and retaining top talent, you can lean into this opportunity to inspire and champion innovation across your organization. In this eBook, we cover three steps to building a modern workforce through learning:   STEP 1: Increase access to essential, high-value skills for work and life  STEP 2: Focus on skills that inspire people and drive business forward STEP 3: Design reporting that captures tangible benefits of your learning programs Download today, it could change the way you think about developing your workforce.  Click below to download this eBook.

Learning and development isn’t a once-in-a-while activity. It’s a business-critical priority for increasing performance, staying competitive and improving employee engagement. To deliver the personalized and continuous learning experience your employees expect, you need to make development planning more effective and enjoyable for your employees. But you also need to ensure learning and development drive individual, team and organizational performance. Use this handy template to identify appropriate learning activities based on your employees' needs and the learning outcomes you want them to achieve. Click below to download this job aid.

DO YOU WANT TO DEVELOP A BEST-IN-CLASS SALES FORCE? Frontline sales management is one of the most challenging jobs in business today. There's constant chaos that distracts managers from the important work of being a sales coach.  In this ebook, we provide simple yet highly-effective methods for getting the most out of your sales talent. At the end, you’ll have what you need to follow a proven-effective path to develop sales coaching excellence, and as a result, develop a best-in-class sales force. Click below to download this ebook.

Why Your ROI Story Is Stronger Than You Think If you’re in charge of training a sales team, you know how hard it is to ensure they properly receive and retain training while in the field. But since organizations often treat sales training as an unavoidable cost of doing business, you may find it even harder to justify investing in technology that would improve your learning program. Sales, sales enablement, and sales training leaders often don’t realize how much investing in sales training technology contributes to a stronger ROI. That’s because most companies haven’t instituted best practices for identifying the business impact of better sales learning. Most limit their tracking to activity metrics like usage and adoption, or they capture anecdotes about how a recent training contributed to closing a specific deal. Quantifying the full return on your sales training investments helps you more effectively champion your initiatives and win more resources. That way, you can improve your team’s performance and create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. Here are four sources of ROI you’re already delivering that you should capture to demonstrate how sales training contributes to the bottom line of your organization. Click below to download this eBook.

With the fast faster fastest pace of life today, finding a shortcut can be a big help. And the Internet has opened a world of resources to help us in our personal and professional lives. But: searching…copying…pasting…sending… can cause you major problems—maybe even land you in court!  Content is OWNED by someone. They OWN the copyright to that content—and can control how it is used. This includes the exclusive rights to: copy/reproduce distribute create other works from that content display or perform the content publicly give permission to others to use the content in certain ways (often by granting a license for a fee) pursue those who use that content without permission. Most of us don’t pay attention to the Copyright Law, so we are setting ourselves up for expensive and time-consuming legal nightmares; we could be sued for using someone else’s content and images without their permission. Getting a letter in the mail from an attorney—who’s not our attorney—makes the heart pound! Or Maybe we discover that content we have created has been taken and used by someone else—without our permission. Then we have to pay an attorney to straighten that out. That could lead to Very costly and time-consuming litigation—and the death of a business. Click below to download this eBook.  

If you're ready to see success in your employee training program, you first have to understand what success looks like. Seeing positive results from your program requires dedication to individuals achieving goals, which translates to the organization achieving its goals. What goals are you trying to reach, and how are you measuring whether or not you've reached them? Rather than trying to come up with strong goals out of thin air, we've outlined ten steps that will take you through the process of creating goals and metrics for your employee training program. These steps will help you think through how your program is aligned with the business, and how your employees are positioned to boost business results through various training initiatives.

Business leaders look for predictability. They seek insight from mounds of data to get just a glimpse of the future. They demand their sales and marketing executives put the business on the right path to meeting or exceeding sales and margin goals. Sales executives create detailed business plans to identify new opportunities and retain existing customers.  They train sales reps and channel partners on product benefits and teach them to overcome objections. They develop compensation plans aligned with corporate goals to encourage growth. Marketing leaders identify competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. They define buyer personas and construct profiles to ensure the right messages reach the right prospects. They carefully map out every step of the buyer’s journey to know when and how to influence behaviors. All this to increase the likelihood of success, to gain more certainty and predictability. Shouldn’t your sales incentive program work this hard to engage your participants? Knowing how and when to nudge your participants could mean the difference between blowing past your goals and scrambling to explain a disastrous failure. This eBook maps the sales incentive journey which participants embark upon when engaging with a program. We’ve developed it from insights gained during almost 50 years of observing and influencing participants, and it can help put your program on the road to predictable success. Click below to download this eBook.

What challenges are your organization wrestling with? Revenue growth? Product and service innovation? Profitabilty? Change management? Agility? Complexity? No matter what issues you're dealing with, you have the internal resources to address them. You just might not be taking advantage of them. Click below to download this eBook.

Due to advancements in technology, there's been a shift in the way employees have wanted to receive their training. That has left organizations with the task of developing new learning methods that support the science of learning. Whether your organization already has a program in place or you’re just jumping into the deep end, there are sure to be a lot of questions around strategy, goal alignment, becoming a learner-centric organization, how to tackle low engagement, and more. We’ve identified the top three challenges with training a modern workforce and how you can use on-demand training to overcome those challenges and have a positive impact on your organization. In this ebook, you’ll learn: How microlearning can help combat long training times Tips on gamification and how it can boost engagement Strategies on boosting information retention through learning boosts

Do your employees really know what you're trying to accomplish as a team and an organization? New research links organizational underperformance and failure to meet key objectives with rampant employee confusion about Key Results. 85% of organizations say Key Results are not clearly defined such that employees at all levels can engage. Download "Clarity Is Key" to discover the impact that clear communication has on results--and use this information to guide your team effectively, boost results, engage employees, and reach goals faster than ever.

Microlearning is a treatment for instruction. Microlearning can be used to deliver a wide variety of subject matter, and the primary decision guiding the implementation is the scope of content to be covered. Microlearning is meant to be easily consumable in short periods of time (e.g. less than 10 minutes). The microlearning solution should address one learning objective ONLY.

Microlearning is the trend of the moment, yet it is the most commonly misunderstood. This infographic from Shannon Tipton will help dispel two of the most common misunderstandings, and then give you 6 key markers to use as guidelines for ensuring microlearning success. After downloading the infographic, hear/watch Shannon explain in the recording of her webinar on the topic below.

AirClass partnered with InSync Training to bring you a guide to going virtual. Many organizations are transitioning existing face-to-face learning programs to the virtual classroom. Most would assume that this project would simply include taking existing content, and dropping it into a new format. That's far from the reality. During this evolution, we identified seven challenges that we needed to mitigate for a successful virtual classroom implementation. The learning environment wasn't the only major change - facilitators, instructional designers, and participants all needed specific support.

If your sales team isn't producing the results expected, the pressure is on you to fix the situation fast. One option is to replace salespeople. A better option is for you to optimize your performance as a sales leader. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, sales management consultant Kevin F. Davis offers 10 proven and distinctly practical strategies, skills, and tools for overcoming the most challenging obstacles sales managers face and moving your team ahead of the... (click to download excerpts from this eBook)

Coaching and leadership are about people. People are unique and to compound the situation they behave differently under varied circumstances. So is it not an overstatement to suggest that there is a framework that can be applied to achieving greater success with people and through them? I will answer with my standard mini-exercise. Assume you are a recruiter. You are asked to identify a Field Commander for a hot war zone as well as a Guidance Counsellor for an all-girls high school. Did your mind automatically paint different pictures as to who will fill the roles? Intuitively, you recognize the differences but what are the factors that brought you to that conclusion? Also, what if the roles were not so far apart, could you intuitively distinguish among candidates? That is role and the value of a reliable framework. For decades, as a member of member of the Extended DISC™ network, I have been using an approach that I call DISCerning Communication to drive healthy interpersonal relations among a cross-section of groups. When people experience others communicating with them in a manner that is comfortable for them the opportunities for positive cooperation increases exponentially. Someone referred to it as communicating from inside the head of the other person. Course after course, webinar after webinar, article after article I receive encouragement to present DISCerning Communication principles in a concise publication to a wider audience. This is your invitation to join the mission and make a positive difference in how we communicate and relate to others.

Simulation Studios Free eBook Series Business Simulations: Getting Started Business simulations are confusing and overwhelming. Hopefully, this guide will help. Created By: Bill Hall, President of Learning and Strategy 888-908-SIMS(7467) | Linkedin.com/in/wphall

Coaching is NOT managing. This is often the biggest misconception we have with clients. They assume weekly staff meetings or one on one appointments with employees can be classified as coaching. WRONG! A true coach drives performance for individual employees as well as employee teams, while a manager is often content with sustaining the status quo. Coaching can be further described as the ability of the leader to inspire and motivate employees to improve knowledge, increase skill levels, and alter behavior to be more positive. In order to create a coaching culture, it must be understood that coaching is about driving performance and should not be mistaken with traditional management techniques.

What is time management? A useful definition of time management might be, The ability to use one’s time effectively and efficiently. Now that’s sounds simple, right? If only accomplishing our goals was truly simple, all of us would likely be in better places both personally and professionally. However, the reality of our lives tends to create demands on our time that get in the way of effective and efficient uses of time. A fact that is inescapable about time is that it is finite. We simply cannot "manage" more time out of our day or lives. A day comes and goes, and no matter how much we’d like things to be different, each day lasts only 24 hours.  Therefore, in a very real sense, we can never "manage" time the way we manage other factors that influence our success at home or at work. We have to think about time differently if our goal is to be more effective and more efficient.