Optimizing Your Sales Workforce through Mobile Learning
By Christopher von Koschembahr
M-learning is a solution that opens new possibilities to already existing technologies.
During the past decade, a proliferation of wireless technologies and new mobile devices have emerged in response to increasing demands from corporations to enhance the productivity of their workforces. While a mobile device can be used for making a phone call, sending an email, or organizing a calendar, wireless technology can extend well beyond these applications.
For years, wireless devices have provided sales workforces with instant communication to colleagues and customers, solving the problem of staying connected while on the road or away from a desk. However, the need goes beyond email and voice communications. For example, sales forces across several industries, including retail, transportation, and pharmaceutical, face an ongoing challenge of accessing important information whenever and wherever they need it. The retail salesperson must know the features of every product in a store’s inventory, as well as stay abreast of new product introductions and changing prices. The pharmaceutical representative must know the important differences between their products and the competition, and understand and communicate to doctors vital information, such as the side effects and dosage amounts.
In fact, the sales team can use mobile devices to access important information in the form of mobile learning (m-learning). Companies that already recognize that learning is a business priority are embracing the convergence of enterprise applications and wireless devices to enable m-learning.
Recognizing m-learning opportunities
E-learning revolutionized the learning experience by making vital learning material available on-demand via the web and a company’s intranet. Now the same content can be offered using familiar wireless tools, making the learning experience even more convenient and flexible. Unlike so many technologies that are foreign to an IT novice, or require a person to learn new skills to operate, m-learning uses tools that most professionals already have in their pocket—mobile phones, PDAs, and Smartphone handhelds.
This is technology that is tangible, familiar, and virtually ubiquitous. According to IDC, a technology analyst firm, more than 180 million Americans will have mobile phones by 2007. Further, almost every mobile phone supports short message service (SMS), also known as two-way text messaging, which is the lowest common denominator of m-learning.
Indeed, m-learning is a solution that opens new possibilities to already existing technologies. For example, if a train conductor already uses a handheld device to collect fares and check-in passengers, adding wireless capabilities to provide a learning function would be a natural extension and enhancement. Then, when the conductor has downtime between stops, he or she can use the device to read a recently changed travel or HR policy.
When a company appreciate how m-learning can fit into its business and learning plan, the potential is endless. M-learning becomes a competitive advantage as companies send product updates, executive communications, and even application upgrades with the relevant enablement to its mobile sales force.
M-Learning addresses sales challenges
According to the July 2004 IDC report, “U.S. Handhelds in the Retail Industry 2004-2007 Forecast: Queue Busting and Shelf Stocking,” the retail industry is concerned with cost savings, providing enhanced customer service, and offering better selling opportunities—all challenges that m-learning can address.
Cost savings. Training and prepping a new employee can cost a retailer thousands of dollars. Yet, turnover rates are as high as 40 percent per year. Why? Among other reasons, a salesperson who feels ill-prepared to answer a client’s questions, becomes frustrated and lacks confidence. With better training, accessible at the point-of-decision, salespeople will feel empowered, job satisfaction will increase, turnover will drop and money will be saved.
Enhanced customer service. As frustrating as it is for a salesperson not to be able to answer a customer question, the customer is likely to be even more irritated. To remedy this, an organization can equip a sales associate with a mobile device that provides ad hoc learning when servicing a customer. If a customer expresses interest in two products and asks about differentiators, the sales associate can use the device to scan the bar codes, observe differences between the products, and help the customer make an informed decision with this information.
Better selling opportunities. While classroom learning is important, an employee cannot make a sale while sitting in a classroom or accessing e-learning material online. However, if the salesperson is equipped with a mobile device to take onto the store floor, they can use downtime to take a five to 10-minute training module.
The lines between a traditional front office process and customer service are blurred with sales force training. Everyday work activity merges with e-learning to create a situation that benefits the customer, employee, and overall organization.
Extending learning objects to the mobile sales workforce
For a corporation that is already developing learning content and delivering it through classroom training or web-based e-learning solutions, the next evolutionary step is to consolidate it to fit onto a mobile device. However, to achieve the most cost effective content development, a corporation needs to create learning material once, and then deliver it many times to a diverse workforce. Adopting this approach will dramatically save the company money. M-learning complements the classroom learning experience, because the content provided on the device can either cover issues that arise less frequently, and thus do not require face-to-face explanation, or can be used to reinforce what was already learned in the classroom.
If a company’s sales team either attends a face-to-face training presentation or listens to a lecture via a personal desktop to learn about new products, these presentations and lectures can be transferred to a mobile device to allow salespeople to access byte-sized learning nuggets. An hour-long lecture can be broken down to six easily digestible 10-minute segments, making the learning experience more flexible and more valuable. Clearly, on-the-go working professionals will find multiple 10-minute chunks more useful than full hours to learn. Indeed, these learning nuggets enable a company to make the learning process seamless. Before long, an employee will not even be able to differentiate learning from other every day job functions.
M-learning also allows employees to benefit from accessing company material they may otherwise ignore. For example, a salesperson waiting in an airport during a layover might tap the company’s best practices database and learn how a colleague grew a small, regional account into a multinational, multimillion dollar client. At this point the employee decides to request a meeting with this colleague to brainstorm ways to grow his or her latest customer win. Even though the information may not be urgent, it is very important. Delivered in byte-sized portions to a mobile device, a salesperson can use otherwise unproductive time to stay engaged and relate the information to his or her specific activity.
Customizing the m-learning experience
While a company’s sales workforce has one mission—to sell—each individual is offering unique products and services to different clients and industries. To address this, companies can consider having salespeople customize their learner profile based on their individual needs in regards to their current job function and line of business.
Learners create a self-prescribed profile, based on their specified interests, business unit, management level, and job role. The learner then indicates what type of material they want based on geographic region, customer accounts, subject expertise and current industry challenges. This is then combined with
an existing database, perhaps created from HR material, corporation communications, or industry news. Known as profiled notification, when a new piece of learning material becomes available, the learner is instantly notified, either through an email or an SMS to their mobile device. And, if their devices have the technological capabilities, learners can also download audio and video versions of the material. Anytime learners are sent a notification, they know there is important information waiting for them—information tailored specifically and relevant for their interests and needs.
For example, a salesperson in a cab on the way to a new business meeting may receive a profiled notification, with information relevant to winning the client’s business. Perhaps an upgraded version of a product has suddenly become available. The salesperson has the opportunity to quickly access a 10-minute web lecture on the improved product, adjust the selling points accordingly, and provide the potential new client with a first look at a brand new offering. Just-in-time learning could be the difference between winning a new account or increasing sales, and failing to a competitor.
The future is wireless … and endless
The bottom-line results of m-learning cannot be denied. If a company can do 80 percent of its training in the classroom or via e-learning and then provide the rest via a mobile device, the sales team is meeting with clients sooner, thus generating new business and increasing revenue more quickly. In addition to these hard financial results, m-learning also gives the company a competitive edge, produces a workforce with high job satisfaction and reduces employee turnover.
The potential of the wireless industry and all its innovation is virtually limitless; m-learning is only in its infancy. Although millions of workers already have mobile phones, as they begin to adopt more advanced devices that can support the Internet, Media Player for visual and audio effects, or Macromedia for Flash, the type of learning material that can be provided to mobile professionals advances. Not limited to text-only messages, learners in the future will be able to download interactive courses and learning modules from the backseat of a cab or in an airport terminal. And as bandwidth speeds the wireless connections to these devices, m-learning will continue to excel. Future mobile technology will make multimedia functions more ubiquitous and less expensive.
Because so many corporations already have the tools to deliver m-learning, combining that technology with a commitment to learning excellence provides a company with the capabilities it needs to initiate m-learning. Companies can start m-learning today—simply and slowly—and as wireless technology advancements continue, the future of m-learning will continue to grow.
Published: April 2005