"I just wanted to let you know how pleased I am with how the project went. The end product is wonderful! LSA has been great to work with. I really appreciate all the flexibility and the high quality."
Laurie Torres | Vice President of Human Resources | PDL BioPharma, Inc.
Background:
PDL BioPharma, a rapidly growing Biotech company that pioneered the humanization of monoclonal antibodies, had grown to over 2,500 employees. They had no internal learning and development department/function to support the increased demands of their growing employee base.
Goal:
Quickly and cost effectively establish a:
- Performance-based learning culture
- Learning and development department with an outsourced partner who could provide a turn key/one-call-access for their organizational learning and development needs
- Common baseline of “foundational” new manager and employee skills across the organization
Challenges:
- Desired a broad curriculum for all employees and all levels
- A lack of consistency combined with considerable redundancy in current “training opportunities” with contradictory and often competing models and language
Approach:
- Assess & Design
- Identified “foundation skills” across the organization to strengthen employee satisfaction and retention
- Designed company-specific role plays and case studies
- Created a simple and clear marketing and registration system that automated training setup, delivery, tracking, reporting, billing, measurement, and follow-up
Pilot:
- Successfully implemented a core group of 10 customized skill-based programs focused on: communication skills training, coaching, retention of top talent, performance management, delegation and influence, goal setting and smart objectives, teamwork, transitioning to management, conflict management, and career development
- Provided a clear picture of Learning and Development expenditures, activity, and results across the company
Results:
- Training Outsourcing Scale: Delivered over 100 customized programs across North America to over 2,000 employees
- Training Outsourcing Client Satisfaction: Overall satisfaction score 96%
- Training Outsourcing Consistency: Created consistency of language, competency, process, values, and approach across all locations
Training Outsourcing Efficiency, Time, and Money Savings:
- Created a simple and clear marketing, registration, setup, delivery, tracking, reporting, billing, measurement, and follow-up system for both participants and the HR department that “ran by itself”
- Saved time and money with one point of contact, one invoice, and one contract
- Provided access to unmatched quality and expertise through LSA’s proven portfolio of over 2,500 experts in the areas of Leadership, Management, Sales, Customer Loyalty, Project Management, Assessment, and Measurement
- Estimated outsourcing cost savings of $375k over 3 years
Compelling / Interesting Design Features:
- 100% turn-key learning and development outsource partner
- Dedicated external account team with a combined 40+ years of experience to handle outsourcing of strategy, planning, and day-to-day operations
- Only weeks to design and implement proven curriculum/solutions
- Designed client-specific role plays and case studies with tailored approach to fit seamlessly with the company’s leadership practices and values
- Custom Learning & Development Portal to market programs, register participants in workshops, and track attendance
- Provided all reporting, logistics, tracking, and administration
Are You Building a High Performance Sales Environment?
It is the Sales Leader’s challenge to create the circumstances that stimulate improved sales performance and strategy execution from their sales force.
Of course having the right sales and customer service people is critical, but once “on the bus” how does a sales leader create a sales environment that improves the performance of the sales force? That is the sales leader’s challenge and, when it is not done, it will matter little if you have the right people or not. An ineffective sales leader can greatly hinder sales employee retention. Like a great coach improves the performance of an athlete, effective leadership can improve the performance of the sales force.
Research has indicated that 46% of organizations cite creating a high performance sales culture as one of their top 3 talent management priorities and yet 61% of executives do not feel that the talent and management training processes they have today are driving greater performance from the business.
So the question is not whether you should do it but rather HOW.
How do sales leaders drive improved execution and individual contribution? How can sales leaders consistently make the right move to stimulate performance improvement? How can sales leaders ensure that performance improvement scales throughout an entire sales organization? The answer is to create and maintain a High Performance Sales Environment.
People Change When Their Environment Changes
It has long being held that people will adapt to their environment. Physically, mentally, emotionally people will make subtle and sometimes significant shifts in their behavior based upon the environmental circumstances. Driven by this presupposition our research project has been investigating the specific environmental circumstances that stimulate improved performance in people.
Through a process of interviews and analysis, we have spent the last 16 years researching human high performance and the factors that shape a high performance environment. Research subjects include: Nelson Mandela, Carl Lewis, Sir Edmund Hilary, military generals, leaders of NASA, MIT, Harvard Business School, the Juilliard School of Music, and CEOs of leading corporations among a bank of over 7,500 research participants.
Every performance population has a primary comparison. Leaders need to ensure that this comparison drives performance.
The Key to Building a High Performance Sales Environment
The key to implementing high performance in a sales organization is:
- Clarity,
- Effectiveness
Not only does a sales environment need concepts defining direction, performance status, and motivation, those concepts must be clear and effective if a performance management outcome is desired. It is the Sales Leaders’ job to provide this clarity and ensure effective implementation throughout a sales organization.
Many sales environments have goals and objectives that are not stimulating performance. Equally many sales forces have consequence systems that don’t motivate the population to perform or appraisal systems that are viewed as a bureaucratic process not a tool for performance exposure. Each concept has a set of “effectiveness criteria” that need to be met in order to stimulate improved performance in a sales force. This issue, a lack of clarity and effectiveness in one, some, or all of the nine components of the High Performance Environmental Structure®, is the cause of many of the problems with driving improved execution and enhanced productivity in sales forces today. Sales Leaders believe they have provided goals and training measurement and rewards and have engaged employees, but they are merely ticking the boxes not making those concepts “clear and effective” in stimulating sales performance.
Do Managers Really Make a Difference?
How do we get managers and senior executives more involved in management training and leadership development initiatives? With tightened budgets and increased pressure to perform, we are getting asked this question more than ever before.
The Answer:
- Relevance: Ensure that the training and development initiative is relevant to the participant, their boss, and the company.
- Make the Value Visible: Show the value in terms of behavior change and business impact.
While we have believed in Training RAI™: Relevance. Adoption. Impact for years, our recent study of 121 professionals and their managers at a major North American financial services firm, amplifies the impact of new manager involvement on the transfer of training.
Notice the extreme differences associated with manager involvement.
Insight #1: Coaching is linked to skill application. Are you providing reinforcement coaching for your critical initiatives? It could make a 20% difference.
Specifics:
- Comparison Groups:people who received individual coaching conversations versus those who did not
- Control Group: 47 participants who did NOT get individual coaching
- Coached Group: 61 participants who received individual and executive coaching – Note that the Coached Group scores were nearly 20% higher.
- Skill Scores: Each person’s average score for 38 individual skills, placed on a scale from 0-100%.
Insight #2: Coaching is linked to revenue. Are your sales managers coaching their direct reports to help meet revenue targets? It could double your revenue.
Specifics:
- Measurement: Each participant was asked for one example of how “coaching conversations with your manager have made a significant difference in a sales situation.” These were verified to include the situation, specific coaching, and results over the last three months.
- Significant Results: The Coached Group created 2x more new revenue over the same time period as the Control Group
Insight #3: Coaching is strongly linked to success. Is it worth a manager’s time? Just ask.
Specifics:
We asked, “What difference did the coaching conversations with your manager make in your success?
Significant Results: Participants in the coached group said their manager “made a significant difference” (72%) compared to “a little difference” (33%) for the noncoached group.
In Conclusion
So what?
With the majority of training programs failing to “move the needle” in terms of increased revenue, decreased costs, or increased productivity, it is imperative that companies focus on Relevant Skills and invest in Adoption to get results. Targeted coaching is certainly one of the keys to successful adoption.
These results clearly show that coaching conversations are linked to changes in leading indicators (skills) and lagging indicators (new revenue). Every change effort, training initiative, or development program must include more than the “training” of new knowledge and skills. Manager involvement is a key link to getting measurable results.
