Economics of eLearning
Current training schemes take sales people away from their customers.
So why no regular refresh, why no plan of continuous improvement? The answer is time and cost. The sales leader has to make the judgment about how much he or she can afford for his or her team to be out of the field and in the classroom. This is typically a maximum of two days a year. This level costs 1-2% of available selling time and can have an impact on overall sales production. The net result is individual sales people suffer skills drop off and their process becomes inconsistent.
Current business practice for sales development is for training to be sold on the basis of the number of attendees in a classroom.
The total cost for these courses is much higher once you factor in travel and accommodation. Then, the much larger expense of loss of sale team production while sitting in a classroom means that the cost of the traditional classroom based experience becomes prohibitively high. The cost of these courses is defensible once you factor in the cost of the instructor and the royalties that need to be paid. All the same, the total cost is high. One by-product of this business model is companies need to be very selective about who they have attend, rather than have everyone who is customer facing be engaged.
Since the FourThirds Total-Selling program is delivered via an eLearning platform costs are much lower. Also, since it’s delivered as a subscription service over period of time the economics make it possible for the first time to engage a much broader cross section of the customer facing team.
