“I’m frustrated.  We put so much effort into the development of that on-line sales training program and the field just didn’t take advantage of it.  Less than 50 percent of our reps took the course.  What a waste of company resources.”

Sound familiar?  These are the words of a sales training manager frustrated by the field sales organization that did not use her latest training program.  How could she have avoided this poor response?  What are the keys to ensuring buy-in to get the maximum return on your eLearning investment?

 A well designed program can go unused if careful consideration is not given to gaining support at the earliest phases of its development.  Building receptivity and marketing a program starts at the inception of the project. Involvement ensures buy-in, so involve your target population and their management.  The following tips will help you ensure success:

Involve your target audience and their management in the earliest phases of program design.

• Ask them what they see as the needs
• Ask them what they believe will make the training successful
• Recruit them as subject matter experts
• If outsourcing, involve them in the vendor selection process

• Jointly determine program objectives before proceeding with costly design work
• Seek their feedback along the way
• Include their examples to help make the training relevant
• Ask them to review the prototype
• Invite them to participate in the pilot

• Meet with management in the early phases of design to review the program, solicit their ideas and ask for their support in marketing the program
• Have management announce the program to the target audience stressing its benefits early in the design phase
• Continue to build receptivity by updating the target audience throughout the development of the program
• Carefully select pilot participants who are opinion leaders
• Use feedback from the pilot to help market the program
• Have management follow up with participants to determine how they are applying the training
• Evaluate the program and provide results to management and the field
• Use testimonials of how past participants benefited from the training to generate enthusiasm for future participants

 

Debbie Friedman is author of Demystifying Outsourcing: the Trainer’s Guide to Working with Vendors and Consultants (Pfeiffer, 2006).  With 20 years at Macy’s, Inc., Debbie is Operating Vice President - The Leadership Institute, where her focus is development of the top 1800 executives.  She has held several training positions at Macy’s in which she has managed numerous complex outsourced projects.  Macy’s has been named for two years as one of the Top 100 Companies in Training and Development by Training Magazine. 

Prior to her work at Macy’s, Debbie held a variety of positions in sales and marketing education for AT&T.  She began her career in classroom teaching and also served as Assistant Director of Career Planning and Placement at Xavier University.  Debbie received a Masters in Education from Xavier University and a Bachelor of Arts from Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University.