Syandus Blog

What’s the difference between tactical and strategic sales performance initiatives?

Tactical initiatives typically solve pressing needs, such industry updates, breaking news on the competition, or the latest product information.

Strategic initiatives maximize the significant investments made by an organization in training, sales processes, and coaching. Strategic needs lurk below the radar and often go unnoticed, yet when strategic needs are addressed, they can create significant performance gains for the company.

Here we will explore three strategic needs to improve sales performance. They are hard to solve, and I will describe how new technology offers a promising solution to all three.

Dr. Britt Andreatta, a learning and leadership development expert and author of The Neuroscience of Learning, emphasizes that professional learning can be broken down into three phases: Learn, Remember, and Do. She also asserts that learning programs should focus more on the “Do” phase since that is what makes the learning stick – where competence and behavior change occurs.

This message resonates in continuing medical education (CME), where the goal is to effectively change the competency and behavior of physicians based on new medical evidence. In CME, the “Do” phase means delivering educational opportunities for physicians to personally practice applying the “Learned” information in realistic situations, so that they’ll “Remember” it. 

By Ed
The Virtual Coach

Every trainer out there – including me! – is trying to battle the forgetting curve. We spend hours and hours training new hires – only to have them forget everything we’ve taught them.

Yeah, frustrating, I know.

Because few employees are able to transfer this new learning to their jobs, there’s no behavior change. And behavior change is what we are trying to achieve.

What separates top performers from average performers? Top performers apply knowledge optimally in diverse situations AND they have developed a very important skill: Situational Decision Making.

The future of learning technology is already here. It’s virtual and immersive. It embraces Learn-by-Doing methodologies, and leverages advanced technology within a scalable Platform. Its power comes from the synergistic and catalytic effect of having all five parts working together. Lets take a look at how each of these five parts contribute to an effective virtual learning environment for training. 

This article was published in e-Learning Industry on January 11, 2018 (link here) 

Learn how to use virtual game technology to enable your learners to practice in realistic situations and more rapidly learn optimal decision making. A 4-step process is described to create an effective, scalable, digital learning solution to improve performance using 3D game technology.

How do we know what we know? It’s because we construct mental models that interrelate information in a sensible way, that we can test and refine with our experience. Learning requires that we assemble a new mental model, or integrate it into one we already have. These models can be completely wrong, flawed, suboptimal; or emulate the mental models of experts. Yikes! It seems we should care about mental models!

The mental models a learner constructs can directly impact the rate at which they achieve optimal performance, if at all. Let’s dive in...

Want to know a great way to squander a sales opportunity? Let your salespeople practice proper sales techniques and good decision-making, in front of prospects. Yes, you can teach salespeople in a classroom, or through meeting-style role-plays, but is your sales training and sales process translating into real performance gains? These common problems stem from the same source — and there is a solution.

Great performance requires great coaching. Sales is no different. It’s a situational-thinking game.

Optimal performance requires both practice and expert coaching from those who’ve mastered your sales processes. We all know this, but acting on it isn’t easy: Setting up one-on-one, expert sales coaching is difficult, and expensive to scale. And sales managers often lack the aptitude to be great coaches.

Technology can help! We’re not proposing a mad scientist’s experiment to clone your best sales coaches here... the real solution is better! There is a realistic, optimal coaching strategy that can be implemented in a scalable way.

As our mothers often say, “practice makes perfect.” Where do you practice in your sales organization?

Practicing through role-plays, with a sales trainer in a classroom, or on a field ride is fine — but it’s out of context: not in the actual selling environment. Speaking of that, how much time does a sales trainer really get with a sales person, coaching in the field? The answer often is: “Way too little.”

So practically speaking, where are your sales people practicing? They probably spend far too much time practicing in front of your company’s real prospects, resulting in slower ramp-up times and lost sales. Let’s not do this!

We need to build safe, scalable environments where sales people can practice and make mistakes, without the fear of losing a deal.

Of course, the sales team wants your training program to impact sales. But is your sales training program designed to improve sales performance? Certainly you’re inclined to answer “absolutely.” It’s your job, after all.

The real question is, are you using the right learning tools to make it happen?