Five key insights into the new talent development environment

When “non-travelers” would hear about my 250,000 miles of air travel a year they inevitably would say, “Oh, you are just like that George Cooney character in that movie.” Nobody ever remembered the title (Up in the Air), and although I look nothing like George Clooney, I always understood what they meant. It was really just “all about the miles.”

Fast forward to 2020 and everything has changed. Most of the core everyday business travelers, such as myself, who delivers award-winning corporate training engagements, haven’t been on an airplane since last March. However, the ability to travel to reach global audiences with powerful learning programs and tools like digital business simulations has never been better, easier, or more importantly… impactful and effective.

One of the most requested topic areas for skills development that I have been working on during the last few weeks has been on the topic of Strategic Business Selling in the virtual world. Many of our client organizations have finally realized that things will never get “back to normal” and now they are scrambling to get “selling-in-the-virtual-world” training programs for their sales teams in place before it is too late.

Hopefully it’s not too late and I wanted to take a few moments to share some of our findings and skill training solutions.

There are literally millions of sales professionals in the United States and around the world who are giving up hope that they will be able to hit their targets and / or survive.

The good news is that selling in the virtual world can be better than the “old way” of taking a customer out to an expensive steak dinner. Virtual selling provides the opportunity to do things in a different way that is actually,

• More personalized
• More intimate
• More focused on customer needs
• More controllable in terms of delivering the right solution to the right customer
• More controllable in terms of managing the pipeline

The pressure is increasing for companies to embrace and execute a sustainability strategy. For some, it will be nothing more than a few words on a website. They will just do it because others are doing it and a box needs to be checked. For others who take it seriously, it will be a disruption that changes the entire future of the business.

Society has created a global expectation that businesses are more than just making products, delivering services, and generating gobs of profit. The new reality is that there is an increased expectation that businesses should go beyond their operations and revenue generation and include environmental and social sustainability at levels equal to or above the levels of investments they are making in future product development.

Last week, I published a blog post detailing one of the biggest discoveries we’ve made during our evolution to fully virtual, simulation-centric learning. It was one of the most popular posts I’ve ever published, and the comments and feedback have been warm and supportive.

The basic gist of the post was to share my thoughts on a key element we overlooked when transitioning to remote program facilitation: that virtual learning creates a consistency of capabilities never seen in our industry. Over the past few months, I have personally been able to deliver the same core content and consistent message on six continents in the same week to the same company on how they make money and what better decisions they can make to drive the metrics that matter. The consistency of message is making a real difference and key Talent Development leaders are recognizing the profound shift in capabilities and decision-making.

After six months of living through the most incredible disruption of business processes in our lifetimes, it is hard to fathom that we missed the most important value proposition of delivering virtual learning.

During this time, I have shared insights gathered from the design, development, and delivery of simulation-centric workshops. These insights include:

• Greater absorption of concepts because you can space learning out over time in smaller chunks
• Ability to fit learning like simulation workshops into the work-learning balance
• A deeper intimacy with learners via virtual breakout rooms
• Improved comprehension of concepts because participants can hear clearer and can ask questions in a variety of modalities
• Integration of learning tools such as polls, shared whiteboarding, animations, short videos, and instant translations
• No travel, food, or lodging budgets required