Able, adjusted, all systems go, apt, equipped, fit, in order, organized, planned, prepared, primed, qualified, rehearsed, set. These are all synonyms for the word ready. The question is, can you really be sure that these words apply to your sales team? To help you not only shift the way you think about sales readiness, but actually take steps towards ensuring your own sales organization’s readiness, we have compiled 22 tips to guide you.  

As we adapt to a new working norm, organizations are struggling to keep their workforce productive, engaged and delivering on corporate objectives. In this eBook you’ll get 5 modern learning strategies that support higher employee engagement and retention, as well as help build a more agile and higher performing organization. You'll gain insights into: The top three reasons to revamp your learning strategy Five modern learning strategies to guide your way Tips and resources for creating a more people-centric approach to learning and talent development

Organizations are finally realizing that people learn more of what they need to be effective at their job through informal channels, on-the-job experiences and coaching than they do through more formal means. When it comes to developing and executing the learning strategy, however, companies continue to look at things completely upside-down. The vast majority of the learning delivered within organizations is through formal classrooms and e-learning courses, which only accounts for about 10% of the learning that occurs. Even within that 10%, retention rates for single, formal learning events are abysmal, with most learners forgetting close to 90% of what they learned over time. What opportunities are companies missing to help people retain more of what they are learning and discover new knowledge through other, more informal channels?  

THE 70:20:10 FRAMEWORK More and more businesses are adopting 70:20:10 to help build organizational strength. However, a question often posed is whether the approach is a theory of workplace learning, a way of cutting down on training costs, or a mantra to be followed slavishly. Alternatively, is 70:20:10 simply ‘old wine in new bottles’ given that most Learning and Development (L&D) professionals think they already combine learning and work? Some ask ‘why bother with 70:20:10 at all’? Additionally, ‘what is it with this neat formula - 70, 20, 10’? People are suspicious of nice round numbers. Surely the reality of learning and performing is much too complex to be described in terms of simple ratios? Despite all these criticisms, there’s a worldwide movement of L&D professionals who realize and acknowledge the value of 70:20:10. This is not because it’s a mantra, an ideology or an end in itself, but because it enables them to connect more quickly and effectively to what really matters: learning and performing at the speed of business. Their work isn’t just about providing formal learning solutions. By using 70:20:10 as a reference model, more and more L&D professionals are co-creating solutions with their business colleagues. This ‘movement’ and new way of working with 70:20:10 makes L&D more relevant to their organizations.

You want your managers to deliver results. Not just any results - you’re looking for breakthrough results. In order to get that done, they must be viewed by their teams as smart, likable, hard working, and caring. But there’s another quality that can make or break a manager’s pursuit of success. Managers can only get their teams to execute the strategy successfully if they start with themselves. They must understand the strategy itself and see how internal/external forces and trends impact the business. They must know the customer needs and requirements, as well as be a role model of the culture, behaviors, and values of the organization. This paper will help managers discover, synthesize and internalize these critical qualities. Download Below.  

Content is the backbone of learning. Without the right pieces in place, your learning efforts — no matter how well intentioned — will fall flat. View this Lightpaper and learn how your organization can: personalize the learning experience, efficiently author content, be more agile, and drive performance.  

A Perspective on Competencies by Hale Associates.

Experiential learning presents a highly unique growth opportunity for participants, as well as a tool that planners can use to achieve a specific outcome. Differentiated from more traditional team-building, experiential learning uses a blended approach to learning, integrating activities, exercises, adventure elements, quiet time and ongoing post-event coaching to create powerful programs of leadership development, strategic planning, mentoring and coaching, communication, feedback and observation as well as enhancement of behavior styles.  

Beyond the Sales Process focuses on the frontline of engagement with customers. It is specifically intended for salespeople, account managers, their managers, and sales leaders, as well as others who have responsibilities and pressures associated with developing and winning business, and those who are tasked with extending and expanding their relationships with customers.

"Performance management" sounds wholly positive. After all, who can argue with better performance? And effective performance management (PM) programs can deliver significant, tangible benefits such as: Increase in time spent on strategic priorities Improvement in employee productivity Jump in project completion rates More decrease in turnover

Managers are the connective tissue of your culture, creating a series of invisible, interwoven links between individuals, leaders, the business, and the strategy. When managers are living, promoting, and celebrating your culture, they are bringing it to life every day at the team level. This is critical because that’s where the real employee experience takes place.

In this white paper we examine valuing alternative futures and the use of qualitative probability theory to weigh the consequences of different actions.  We'll show how to use a common platform to engage their clients in the process of identifying assumptions, weighing the risk of those assumptions materializing or not, and valuing choices based on the probability of possible outcomes. Benefits: The benefits are participants will receive a set of tools and decision models that encourage logical thinking, discipline, and consideration of organizational realities that, in turn, will help them:   Save time.   Avoid unnecessary costs.   Increase their confidence.   Be perceived as having business smarts.   

The employment market is fragmented and diverse. Every sector of business requires instructional designers and developers. Many employers prefer Instructional Designers (IDs) with experience in their business sector. This means that subject/content experts with a talent for teaching often move into instructional design using their field-specific knowledge as the key to open the door to course design and development, but with little or no formal preparation for quality instructional design and development. This paper discusses the practice analysis process, including survey results that generated nine primary skill set domains for IDs.  

What are the 3 Steps to Success YOU can take in your first 90 days to facilitate your own success?  We often have the tendency to look around us and see how others are doing things, and then assume, often wrongly, that that is how we must do things. Here are steps that every successful consultant, either knowingly or unknowingly, has followed in achieving success.

This paper is focused on the mobile virtual classroom but don’t worry, we’ll be covering the other concepts (globalization and social networks) in future publications. (The concepts are useful here to help explain the context in which we will be discussing the mobile virtual classroom and its place in the modern virtual classroom.)

Discover the impact of a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA) world on current and future leadership requirements.    Learn how thinking agility will help you and your leaders adapt, focus and get more done in a rapidly changing and increasingly noisy environment. Explore four specific steps you can take to build your own and others’ thinking agility. Create your own action plan from the provided checklists to start putting better thinking to work for better performance and results.

This report looks at the implied promises to the instructional design field which include:  -Promises to the instructional designers/developers that they are valued not only financially but also as a professional.  -Promises to the instructional designer/developer’s organization that instructional designers/developers get better, deeper learning and show results through learning transfer.  -Promises to learners that their learning experiences are valuable use of their time and support their current and future work.  Finding ways to reach into organizations for these measures required tapping the instructional design industry and market. A series of focus groups or interviews was planned. This report summarizes the interview process, data, and projected next steps based on interview results. Data gathered about these promises will become part of the ID Certification application process of 2016. 

Successful leaders think differently. They think intentionally about where they are and where they want to go. They think strategically about how they can get there from here. And successful organizations are made up of successful leaders. Can changing your thinking really change your life and how your organization functions? Consider this: after studying successful people for over forty years, John C. Maxwell believes they are all alike in one way: how they think! That is the one thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

Do you wake up every Monday raring to go to work, full of new ideas, confident that you’ll be able to implement them, and passionate about what you do? If so, would you like to stay that way? And if not, doesn’t that sound pretty great?

After spending close to 30 years in human resources and organizational development, and participating  in  countless  retention and succession planning initiatives, I’ve  come to the conclusion that employees are not primarily fired or promoted because of their education, skills, or even amount of experience. Of course, those things are important in their own ways; you are expected to be informed, up-to-date, and capable of doing the job, whatever that might be. However, it’s often the intangibles that define an outstanding employee (or conversely, the less-than-outstanding employee). Companies increasingly understand this shift, and have implemented behavior-based interview techniques during the candidate evaluation and selection process. This approach aims to match the key behavioral and / or trait competencies of an applicant to those that define success in  a  particular job - or in a broader sense, in the larger organization.

Large, global organizations typically operate disparate business systems around the world - increasing information technology costs and impacting service consistency for customers. To increase efficiency and performance, many enterprises choose to optimize their operations based on globally standardized ‘core’ systems. Implementing core software applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft, SalesForce, Maximo, WorkDay, etc., takes a major investment not only in the technology infrastructure but also in preparing the end-users to operate within the system. Business cases are prepared to forecast the potential savings resulting from the installation of the new application. Assumptions are made on how quickly and thoroughly the users of the application will be able to use it efficiently and effectively. These expectations can be jeopardized if the technology roll-out is delayed or slowed because the users are not ready to meet these assumptions. If a company wants to achieve its business case goals, they need to ensure they get maximum end-user adoption with skilled, competent users.

Today’s dynamic global economy has increased the need for organizational training across all industries. Efficient, cost-effective training and employee development are necessary for day-to-day operations and for meeting strategic business objectives. Many organizations turn to online meeting tools to meet their needs, and there’s no shortage of options. Simple and free. Low-cost/low-feature. Enterprise-grade offerings built for business. But online learning and collaboration require more than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Do you wake up every Monday raring to go to work, full of new ideas, confident that you’ll be able to implement them, and passionate about what you do?  If so, would you like to stay that way?  And if not, doesn’t that sound pretty great? Best-selling author, keynote speaker and bona-fide expert on employee engagement, Bob Kelleher has researched and reflected on these issues deeply.  In his new book, I-Engage:  Your Personal Engagement Roadmap" Bob offers valuable insights and even potential solutions.  Click below to download the first chapter of this latest revelation.  It begins... Engagement is the key. Back in 2003, global consulting firm Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson) identified and defined an intriguing concept that would go on to revolutionize the way companies thought about their most important asset: their employees. Called "employee engagement," it was originally loosely defined as "the capture of discretionary effort." Discretionary effort, simply put, means going above and beyond at one’s job, or putting in additional effort, because one wants to do so. 

Just as B2B sales strategies must adapt to increasingly savvy buyers, sales training must change too. This brief discusses how newer training content and methods can result in a better, smarter sales force.