by Brian Clark | crm, DOTS LMS, Marketing
You have developed a new set of marketing and sales collateral for your sales team. You load it into your CRM to enable the sales team to access it easily for email and face to face presentations. You are unsure that each member of the team will know how to access and use the new collateral. It is too risky to simply send an email to each member of the team and hope. This new collateral is part of a new product launch and the company needs consistency to maintain and develop its brand. What next?
In my client’s case this is what the Marketing Manager did. Firstly, she used a screen capture tool to show visually how a sales person accesses the new collateral in the CRM. In her case she used Camtasia and there are plenty of other tools out there including the much acclaimed Storyline. Once she captured the navigation to the files, she demonstrated how to attach them to emails and use them for both online and face to face presentations. Total time to create and edit the screen captures? About 2 hours. Next she did a voice over, it was not ‘talent quality’; it was short and to the point. Time to do the voice overs? About another 1.5 hours including editing.
Next step was converting the screen captures to SCORM, importing into DOTS LMS and configuring the course settings. She made herself the trainer so she could track the learning and interact with the sales team. She enrolled each member of the team in the course and each member of the team was alerted by email of their enrollment with a message to complete asap. Overall we are up to about 4 hours of time spent creating and deploying the course. This particular individual is familiar with Camtasia so she was productive from the start.
The course was effective and to the point. It was not intended to be a showcase of e-learning content mastery or be linked to a compliance competency. The Marketing Manager had automated what could have been a logistical headache of assembling the sales team together at the office for a presentation. She would have had to prepare the presentation anyway so she used her time wisely creating content that can be re-used both as a refresher and for new hires as part of their induction.
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, DOTS webinar, LMS
We are pleased to announce our next client webinar is scheduled for October 8. We have had enormous interest in this topic so we decided this would be our next session. These sessions are recorded so our clients outside Australia will be have access via our client portal.
Everything About Managing Your Users, But Were Afraid to Ask
DOTS Webinar Details – 8 October 2013
• 11.00am AEST (Brisbane)
• 12.00pm AEDT (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra)
• 11.30am ACDT (Adelaide)
• 09.00am AWST (Perth)
We are focused on helping you get the most out of the DOTS LMS. We know how hard it is to juggle the demands of your position as well as knowing all the features and tools in DOTS.
This webinar focuses on Everything about managing your users, but were afraid to ask.
• Keeping your user data up to date via user imports
• Adding users manually
• Displaying your user admin processes within DOTS LMS
• Searching for users and performing user actions
Kathleen Bosworth of DOTS Talent Solutions will be hosting this session.
Block out one hour in your calendar on Tuesday 8, October.
You can register by sending an email to dotsinvitation@dotstalentsolutions.com
Your registration will be confirmed by email with a link to the online webinar.
by Brian Clark | coaching, DOTS LMS, Performance
The flexibility of DOTS makes it easy to manage your coaching and mentoring activities. There are a few ways to do this and I will go through some of the elements you can use to support coaching and mentoring programs. You can then explore these and see if they suit your requirements. If you would like to have an online session to explore these with a consultant then fire an email to use at contact@dotstalent.com
The first tool we recommend using in preparation for a coaching program is eDisc. eDisc is a sophisticated online behavioural assessment tool that takes only minutes to complete and produces an extensive in-depth report. I have found that the increase of self- understanding for both the coach and the person being coached increases the effectiveness of the coaching program. This tool also serves as a cross check for any potential factors that will compromise the coaching and mentoring.
Inside DOTS LMS are the following tools I use in setting up coaching programs. These include:
- Courses and course sessions. Courses are a flexible tool in DOTS LMS that are perfect to set up a registration and tracking system that automates these processes. Courses also permits the assignment of a coach who can then use the trainer/coach tools to interact with others as well as capture notes and assessments relating to the coaching program. Course sessions include the option to permit persons to add sessions themselves so this is one option that will automate tracking if you wish to use it.
- Courses also provide a coach/mentor to create content to support their programs as well as include existing content and courseware to their programs as needed. This content may be as simple as a PowerPoint presentation or something more sophisticated.
- Development plans are perfect for maintaining and adding to a database of activities that may form part of the coaching program. The development plan tools will track actions by hours and therefore provide another way to automate the tracking of hours committed in direct coaching or actions relating to it.
- Libraries provide a knowledge repository that can be accessed by specific persons or groups of persons during a coaching program. It may be used to supply reference material of all types. Library access is permission based and linked to Reports so you can see who is accessing the Libraries and control access.
- 360 Profiling is one of the tools in the DOTS LMS that is growing in popularity. The DOTS LMS 360 permits the creation of any number of profiles question sets and the whole process is automated and secure. This is a great before and after tool for both peer and personal feedback.
- Competencies may be used to set up goals for the coaching program with the awarding of competencies being an outcome of a successful program. The competency tools in DOTS LMS permit the competencies used in a coaching program to co-exist with other competencies of any types.
- And last but not least there are Surveys. I like to use the survey tools to enable a person to report back on how they are applying new skills, knowledge or ideas that are generated from a coaching program. Surveys are fast to deploy and re-usable so you can standardise your coaching program measurement criteria.
There are other tools in DOTS LMS that help to support and manage coaching and mentoring programs. One of these is the interactive Performance Appraisal tools that automate and capture performance appraisals in a secure online environment.
If you are interested in a walk-through of some or all of these tools get in touch. We can show you some workflow processes that may help you design a solution suitable for your organisation.
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, DOTS webinar, Updates, Webinars
—-Our scheduled webinar has been fully booked. We will schedule another to ensure you do not miss out. Please contact our office asap to express your interest. +61 7 3220 2229 or 1300 726 708
We are focused on helping you get the most out of the DOTS LMS. We know how hard it is to juggle the demands of your position as well as knowing all the features and tools in DOTS LMS. This webinar focuses on how to create great e-learning content that engages your target audience.
Let’s explore the components of great design for e-Learning to ensure that your organisation’s capability development needs are met, that your employees enjoy the learning experience and that the journey results in improved performance.
Think of good e-Learning as a finely tuned sports car.
- How do you choose your model?
- How can you give your employees a ride to remember?
- How can you add turbo boosters for extra performance?
- How can you ensure they will arrive at the right destination?
Presenting this special webinar will be Richard Stubley, Founder and Director of OpenLearn Pty Ltd. OpenLearn is a multi-award winning content development company based in Sydney with a reputation for innovation and quality. OpenLearn has worked with leading organisations of all types to deliver results with eLearning.
Kathleen Bosworth of DOTS Talent Solutions will be hosting this session.
by Brian Clark | crm, customer relationship management, learning and development
Just in case you are not sure, CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management. There are heaps of CRM systems out there and there are plenty of opinions about which ones are good and which ones to avoid. There is also a wide range of pricing options to consider as well. Back to the story.
It is easy to blame software for all sorts of issues. This blame may be warranted but very often it is simply a lack of knowledge that frustrates our ability to use the software effectively. The issue we run into most frequently is the lack of diligence in the use and administration of the CRM. Our consultants usually hear things like; “we don’t have time to use it” or “it is too hard to use” from frustrated business managers and owners. These statements are usually spoken when we start asking some questions that require their looking at the data in the CRM. I usually ask to have a look at their CRM very early in the consulting project so I know what I am facing as we move to automate processes and get more productive.
Most CRM software is now pretty mature. This genre of software has been used in business for many years now and most vendors have evolved their systems to a point where they include many features and tools to make sales and marketing EASIER. Here are some of the key complaints and a bit of diagnosis. If you have one or more of these issues in your business then please get in touch.
- Your sales people are not using the CRM.
- They may not know how to use it or the reasons why it is important that it is used. I like to include competencies in the position description to ensure this is documented as an essential part of the performance appraisal process. You must train your people in how to use the CRM and you need to ensure you regularly communicate its essential status in your business.
- The CRM is too hard to use.
- I have yet to find a CRM that is really hard to use. There were a couple I used more than a decade ago that were a bit difficult but not recently. People need training and this training is best done regularly and not just once. Your new hires need to be trained and I really like to include peer to peer training and best practice sharing.
- We can’t get meaningful information out of our CRM.
- Garbage in – garbage out; remember that? If your CRM was poorly implemented with a generic configuration or one that is not aligned with your business processes then you will never leverage a high ROI. The whole purpose of a CRM is to provide your business with data that is essential to grow your sales and market share.
- We have to pay for this software every year and we don’t get any support or training.
- Welcome to the club. Some CRM vendors have terrific online help and training resources. These are all self-serve and can be re-purposed to create some internal training programs. Training and support can be very expensive and so we work to create this training to ensure that you have these training resources ready to go.
- I know we need a CRM but there are too many options and I don’t want to waste money.
- If you are looking at implementing a CRM and doing research you will already be aware of all the options. It is a jungle out there. There are so many features and options that may be named differently and behave differently for the user and this makes comparison even more difficult. Get some help.
All of these issues can be fixed. Our company ‘eats its own dog food’ and so we are a bit passionate about the power that a well implemented and managed CRM delivers to growing businesses.
