3 Skills Every Employee Can Now Have Thanks to Virtual Learning

I’ve known this client for about 10 years and have never seen her to be so emotional. “This really works. I can’t believe it. This is a dream come true for the talent development team as we can take this wonderful Business Acumen program around the world and scale it to over 3,000 people by the end of the year,” she said with tears welling in her eyes and a lump in her throat. The “this” that she was referring to was the a foundational business acumen program that was run in corporate headquarters about 6 times a year which is no going global at a fraction of the cost and without expenses for travel.

As the business world plots its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are huge challenges ahead that many organizations will be unprepared to deal with because of a lack of business acumen skills. Based on our current research, the 3 biggest challenges facing the business world are:

• Replacing Lost Revenues
• Managing Rising Costs
• Generating More Cash Flow

Up until the pandemic, only the best and highest potential employees were able to go to powerful and prestigious corporate training events. Now, they can have the same experience or even better utilizing virtual learning platforms and tools such as digital business simulations to build specific skills. Here is an overview of the approaches organizations with transformative business acumen skills can take to address the business challenges they face:

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As many people across the country take some time today and this weekend to reflect and take inventory on where we are as a country and business leaders, there is a lot to think about. Everyone who has lived through the past 3 months has a perspective and points of view regarding the global pandemic, racial injustice, the geopolitical issues in every region of the world, and of course the business world which has shown tremendous resilience as evidenced by the strength of the equity markets.

This week, at the request of several clients, I began advanced research on a new digital business simulation to help leaders lead in the new business normal. Based on the research and some of the preliminary work we are creating, here are 3 even newer tips about leading in the new business normal. This content is written for leaders within business organizations who lead teams, work with peers across functions, and work for a couple of managers.

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During the past couple of weeks, I have been conducting an increasing number of virtual Strategic Business Selling virtual learning journeys to client organizations aggressively transforming themselves from in-person selling organizations to virtual selling organizations.

Most of the large F500-type companies I work with have had a tough time of it but are feeling positive that things are getting better. Interestingly enough, most of these organization also understand that this current state of selling isn’t a temporary thing and that there will be no “going back” to the way it once was in selling. And for many, that’s ok, because the way it once was really wasn’t that great or productive.

As sales professionals continue to adapt and show great resilience in the sales process, I wanted to share some of the high-level concepts and tools that we have been training the best sales professionals on which when used effectively can increase the pipeline in a virtual selling world.

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The group of frustrated leaders looked at each other as one of them said, “I don’t think we spent enough time on our Marketing decisions or increased the marketing budget enough.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, just as long as you have enough salespeople it will be fine. Marketing is just a waste of money,” shared a team member who also happens to be a sales leader back in the “real world” of pharmaceuticals.

The team did very poorly in the simulation workshop and one of the reasons was they had the worst performing marketing team as measured by the Marketing Efficiency metric of 64, which was 46 points behind the best performing team’s index of 110.

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The words hung in the air for what seemed like a week even though it was just a couple of seconds. And I didn’t speak until it was really uncomfortable.

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