Gone are the days of five-day, in-person learning events at a fancy resort full of great food and even more great drinks. Here to stay are virtual 
learning events much smaller in size and nestled into a typical business day where employees are figuring out the best “work-learning-life” balance.
In those “old days” of longer in-person learning events, every possible content area was thrown into the week. Topics could range from new product training, to Business Acumen, to Business Leadership, to tips on Time Management. One of the primary reasons why everything and the kitchen sink was added to the agenda was because the meeting planners HAD TO! Because dozens, if not hundreds, of participants spent money on airfare, hotels, food, cars, golf, and so many other things not directly related to the actual training itself. Most experienced learning leaders knew the “dirty little secret” that the travel and lodging budget was typically double the budget of the learning content! The idea of focusing and isolating on one specific topic would have never entered anyone’s mind as the mantra of every learning event around the world (pre-pandemic) was, “the more the merrier.”
Jumping ahead to 2021 we now know that learning can be extremely successful in small bite sized chunks allowing learners the opportunity to learn at their own pace and focus on the learning in terms of the context of their new world that includes balancing and juggling their work and life as well.
One of the greatest areas of opportunity for smaller, singular focused learning is through the use of micro-simulations. For example, this week I am conducting a global pharmaceutical simulation for a group of emerging Marketing leaders for an Asian company. The focus of the Marketing simulation is pricing. By isolating pricing, we can develop the capability of understanding:
- Elasticities impacting demand
- The impact of discounting on the bottom line
- Competitive positioning
- SG&A Expenses
- Brand strategy and long-term brand equity
A micro-simulation is case study that comes to life. It enables participants to “learn-by-doing” because they are simulating different decisions and then learning by analyzing the differences. Here are a few of the key takeaways as summarized by the participants when asked what they are about to take back to the job:
Elasticities impacting demand
Participants learned to identify and build the capability of developing a good sense of how markets and customers will react when they raise or lower prices. Included in their analysis was the extremes on both ends and how these extremes would impact demand. Several participants developed SMART action plans to implement further analysis back in their “real-world” jobs.
The impact of discounting on the bottom line
Many organizations do a good job of discouraging discounting. They also do a poor job of explaining why. In the Micro-simulation, participants learn very quickly that discounting almost always results in an immediate decrease of dollar for dollar bottom line profitability. The sales professionals in my session experienced this firsthand and all swore they would never aggressively discount ever again.
Competitive positioning
Pricing in a vacuum is almost a difficult exercise. Pricing in a competitive environment can provide deep insights and guidance in terms of knowing what to do and how. A micro-simulation provides the opportunity to set competitive position and react to competitive changes without taking the risk.
SG&A Expenses
How does pricing impact SG&A expense? One of my simulation teams learned the hard way that pricing too high and losing share was tremendously demotivating to the sales team and they started leaving for better jobs. The cost of replacing them dramatically increased the SG&A expenses by more than 10%.
Brand strategy and long-term brand equity
The fifth lesson of the micro-simulation was understanding the relationship between pricing strategy, brand strategy, and brand equity. The lower the prices and the more price cutting, the lower the brand equity became. In other words, the lower the prices, the more commoditized. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the higher the prices, the higher the brand perception. However, participants learned that if the prices got too high, the brand equity started to drop dramatically and it became more difficult to adjust the brand strategy.
In summary, effective learning can be accomplished in short focused bites like micro-simulations. Participants have the time and the ability to focus on one thing at a time and can easily take new learnings immediately back to the job.
