Your world is about to change. Training, developing and optimizing your channel workforce will never be the same. Whether you're selling through dealers, franchises or distributors you can now significantly improve sales, drive down warranty costs and improve customer satisfaction using the next revolution in channel management--"Contextual Performance Improvement!"
This posting of "Changing Channels" will introduce you to this exciting new phase in channel management. It is the first of a three-part posting. The next posting will present the enabling technologies that make it all possible. The third posting will present the performance methodologies necessary to ensure your success.
Forrester Research http://www.forrester.com/ in a recent study tells us we are entering the fourth phase of learning. Forrester calls this phase "Contextual Learning." At LogicBay http://www.logicbay.com/ we call it Contextual Performance Improvement, or CPI, because we believe that it goes well beyond the commonly used definitions of "learning." But whatever you call it, it's about to change the way you manage your channel.
CPI is the seamless integration of performance improvement into the context of a person's job. It's a web-based environment where knowledge and learning are never more than "one click away" from a person's work.
Let's take a fictional scenario, although one closely based on reality, to illustrate the application of CPI. In this scenario imagine yourself as a sales person for a heavy equipment distribution company carrying the ACME line of products. It's mid-afternoon...
You confidently place a call to one of your largest customers in an effort to close a big deal that you believe is yours for the taking. To your surprise, the customer tells you that he really likes the energy efficiency offered by your competitor's product. A sense of urgency fills the air. You are about to lose this deal to Apex if you don't move quickly. You tell him that you think he's basing his decision on inaccurate information. You ask him to hold while you do a quick lookup. He agrees. You quickly turn to your computer screen which is already open to the ACME Sales Performance Center, a fully-functional CPI website. As you move your cursor to the "Marketing Tools" menu the drop down menu displays a list of marketing support tools. You follow it down with you cursor to "Competitive Info" and hold your cursor there for a second while the menu cascades out to reveal all competitors, including APEX Equipment. With a single click, and within a few short seconds, you are scanning the data for APEX efficiency ratings vs. ACME. You see that you really do have the advantage here. It's a very slim one, but it should be enough to win the deal. Your confidence returns. You go back on the phone and set the record straight with your customer.
Accessing this support for your call has taken you 60 seconds.
Unfortunately, your customer says that the efficiency ratings are so close that he may still favor APEX because he's getting a lower price. You ask him to hold on a decision until you get back to him. He agrees to wait 24 hours before pulling the trigger on APEX.
You don't want to lower your price. ACME has been stressing value-based selling vs. price-based selling. They want to increase their margins, not reduce them! So, you turn back to the ACME Sales Performance Center and drop down on the menu "Sales Best Practices." A series of courses, job aids, FAQs, and collaboration links is displayed. You open the FAQs and find a few items related to similar challenges experienced by others in the field. A couple of these point to a specific "value-based" selling module that is part of your sales certification program. You launch the course and are pleased to see that it's a short module packed with information on how to position the value of ACME products in the minds of your customers...without lowering your price. You close the program after completing it in 20 minutes confident you are closing in on a strategy that can win the deal without lowering your price. To complete your preparation you now click on the collaboration link. After quickly browsing current postings, you post a question to the product expert at ACME explaining your specific situation with this customer and asking for any tips or further differentiators that may close the gap considering the narrow lead you have with those efficiency ratings.
Now you return to your home page and are stung by some bad news: There's an alert in your "News & Alerts" section informing you that shipments are being pushed back a month on ACME products! Temporarily stunned by yet another obstacle, you recall, as your value-based selling course has taught you, that this can be a winning strategy and not a loosing one. After all, ACME's products would not be back ordered if they weren't in such demand. And they wouldn't be in such demand if they weren't the best products on the market.
That night you decide to continue your progress on your ACME certification program from home to further prepare for meeting your customer's objections in the morning. You log onto your ACME Sales Performance Center and take a short product knowledge module and two additional sales modules: one on opportunity management and another on how to effectively close a sale.
First thing the next morning you log into your ACME Sales Performance Center and see that the product expert from ACME has provided some roadmap details that can help you gain some further advantages here.
You then prepare your strategy by combining the best of what your peers and company experts can offer (harvested into valuable FAQs and in current forums), the techniques you've learned from the value-based selling course, a bit more competitive research and a quick search through your marketing resource database where you access the right PowerPoint slides, data sheets and the most compelling closing letters.
By mid-morning you visit your customer with a winning proposal and you close the deal without lowering your price.
In this scenario, everything you needed to prepare for and close this deal was available with a single mouse click...from a single location. Some of it was event-based, such as the value-based selling course, some was collaborative such as "ask the expert" and the peer-to-peer email threads, some was in the form of communication such as the alert on shipment delays, and some was in the form of performance support and knowledge transfer such as the PowerPoint slides, data sheets and the winning cover letters. And, most importantly, all of it was available within the context of your job.
Congratulations on your successful deal!
At this point it's important that I mention that CPI also applies in similar ways to Service Training, Customer Training, and many more performance improvement applications throughout a dealer, franchise or distributor.
Now, let's take a step back and examine Contextual Performance Improvement in the context of Forrester's Four Phases of Learning (see diagram below).
- In Phase I: the "Separate" phase learning was primarily instructor-led, classroom based, technical and tactical.
- In Phase II; the "Online" phase learning moved to the Internet for access anywhere at anytime. It consisted primarily of moving classroom materials to the web.
- In Phase III: the "Blended" phase learning became a blend of ILT, WBT and Virtual Classroom.
- In Phase IV: the "Contextual" phase, learning is integrated into the way people work and never more than a single click away from their job. This phase, according to Forrester, is the next phase of learning.
Curiously, if you look at the four phases as presented by Forrester, you'll notice that the first three phases consist almost entirely of what I call "event-based learning," i.e. learning was an "event" that occurred outside of the daily experience of work. Learners had to either physically leave their work to attend a classroom event or mentally leave their work to attend an online training event. It is important to understand and embrace this difference. Event-based learning, whether it's web-based or classroom, has limited long-term impact on performance. Studies have shown that retention deteriorates rapidly soon after the learner returns to the workplace. But, if the information is available within the context of a person's work, and accessed on-demand when the learner really has the "need to know," it is applied immediately and retained indefinitely.
Forrester goes on to say that this "Fourth Phase" of learning features the following five characteristics:
- Integrated into the work environment
- Informal
- Learner in charge
- Real-time need
- Collaborative
We agree with Forrester Research entirely. We do want to stress, however, that CPI is not just about learning; it's about communicating more effectively, aligning the channel behind corporate goals, delivering motivation, providing collaboration, and presenting relevant information on demand, all in a singe place and all just once mouse click away from work. After all, would you have succeeded with your ACME sale without this full spectrum of CPI materials?
For the past six years LogicBay has been working with DaimlerChrysler's Commercial Vehicle Division to perfect CPI (before it actually had a name)! Working with three business units: Freightliner Trucks, Sterling and Western Star Trucks and the corporation's used truck division called FMDC, we've been building a solution that truly delivers on the concept of CPI. Today, we're implementing CPI globally for several Fortune 100 companies. This gives us a unique perspective on the concept of integrating all facets of performance improvement into a single, web-based environment where all performance resources are never more than one click away from a user's work.
In my next posting of "Changing Channels" I will present the enabling technologies that make CPI possible including the one-to-one performance methodologies that improve usability by filtering the available information by audience type, so a user only sees the information and resources specific to his or her job role. The third and final posting on this subject will cover the performance improvement methodologies that must be incorporated into these web-based solutions to ensure success.
Until then, I wish you the best of success managing your channels and winning against your competition.