Sales Trend 11 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2023 is about Learning and Development.
By Jens Hartmann // Head of Learning and Development at Barrett
In 30 seconds
In the corporate world, the focus of learning and development (L&D) initiatives is shifting. Traditionally outcome-driven, organisations are now emphasising human-centred learning. With the advent of technology, training methodologies have diversified, offering online and remote options. While online learning can be effective, challenges like “online fatigue” and isolation persist. Human interaction remains vital, particularly for topics like communication skills. Studies show that a blend of online and in-person elements fosters higher cognitive engagement and better completion rates. In essence, a human-centred approach, incorporating personalisation and interaction, leads to more engaged learners and superior outcomes.
In 3.5 minutes
What’s at the centre of your sales efforts, products or customers?[1] When training people you can ask a similar question:
Who is at the centre of learning?
This may sound like an odd question, as ’the learner’ seems to be the obvious answer. How can learning not be human-centred by definition? In corporate learning environments, however, there often are other priorities driving the goals, design, and delivery for learning and development:
- The drive for better skills and capabilities leading to better business results
- The need for compliance with regulations that require organisations to follow a set training protocol
- Eradicate gaps in knowledge and skills
All these are legitimate Learning & Development (L&D) goals. But this primary focus on outcomes, combined with a cost-effective execution can also be explained in certain environments, for example in industries with high staff turnover, or low to medium requirements to skill sets.
What has changed?
These three considerations, inexpensive, effective, and human- centred are not necessarily exclusive of each other when it comes to training initiatives. It is helpful to look at the changing range of training methodologies, their delivery, and the medium and/or location where they take place.
The easy part is looking at cost: Online training can generally be considered the least costly training option while being very versatile. Learners can pretty much learn whenever and wherever it suits them.
This is followed by (live) remote training, not least because it does not require travel and other overhead. Classroom, face-to-face, instructor-led training (ILT) is most likely the most expensive option while providing the least flexibility from a logistics point of view.
Human-centred learning, however, does not mean sending everyone back into the physical classroom. The changes in technologies and the opportunity for remote and online training, micro-learning, or self-paced learning are appreciated by many learners.
From our perspective a human-centred learning approach incorporates three elements:
- Focus on the learner, including their professional as well as personal aspirations, learning preferences, capabilities, needs, and expectations
- Finding the right mix of learning approaches, methods, timeframe, and pathways to create effective and sustainable outcomes
- Integrating learning in the professional environment that is not seen as disruptive but rather immediately providing solutions that can be applied in the real (work)life context and lead to change and results.
The third element can be seen as the bridge between the first two: Ensuring that training does not remain an isolated event; that connects the reality and needs of the organisation with the capabilities and engagement of the learner.
What are the effects of human-centred learning?
Even when online training is well designed and creates the desired learning, for example around academic, theoretical, or technical content this might not suffice.
Studies considering remote learning or blended approaches with all three elements (face-to-face, online, remote) find that the human interaction element of workplace blended learning is “linked with more active behavioral engagement, higher cognitive engagement and stronger and more positive emotional engagement than where human interaction was absent.”
This is particularly relevant if the training content is focussing on communication skills, like in your typical sales or customer service training.
In our own experience, a blended approach also leads to significantly higher completion rates in online courses.
We assessed the completion rates across our Sales Essentials Online courses since 2013, and while the overall completion rate is above the average of online courses, there is a significantly higher completion rate when the online training is accompanied by local/internal support (from 30% to between 85% and 95%).
A human-centred, interactive, personalised approach not only creates higher participant engagement but also renders better outcomes for the organisation. Such an approach can and should utilise the best of all learning worlds. This diversity in training options should not lead to an either/or consideration but inspire facilitation designers and leaders to broaden their perspective on the opportunities all these training methods can provide to their teams and organisations.
[1] Barrett’s position aligns with that expressed by Peter Drucker in The Age of Discontinuity, 1953, “The purpose of business is NOT to make profit but to satisfy the needs and expectations of customers. The consequence of satisfied customers is incremental profit.”
To read this full trend plus other human-centred pieces, you can download the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2024 here.
Stories from the field
Since our workshop yesterday:
Steph sold 80-100hrs this morning with his customer.
Robert has followed up 3 or 4 leads and booked a number of customer meetings.
I sat in a meeting and did a WWW with a customer, got 3 Fs out. Got another one in 30mins.
And it’s before 11 am.
A little confidence goes a long way eh. I’ll need more delivery capacity…
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