Friday, 24 June 2016

Theory versus Practice in Creating More Efficient Salespeople

The dispute between theory and practicality has been going on for long when it comes to sales skills. Some people are born with natural abilities to convince others. However, many who work in the sales field cannot achieve consistent results through natural skills alone. Education is needed, without a doubt. Disputes revolve around which type of education would work best when training salespeople with superior skills.

The hired staff must follow the requirements of the companies they work for. A high degree of specialisation is therefore required. The general belief has been that this can be achieved through theory courses, which would take it all many steps further and provide the learner with the extra knowledge. In fact, what will make an actual difference and improve sales skills is nothing else but practical knowledge.

E-learning portals now offer plenty of courses meant to help one advance in the workplace. The Sales and Marketing segment is among the richest. Apart from what anyone can take up and study, there are specific modules meant for companies that wish to improve their staff efficiency. Thus, sales training has become a popular option for corporations and other organisations. It consists of public classes too, including meetings, activities and tests which group professionals from the same area or industry. Everything that is being taught here has a practical application. Attendees learn how to face real life situations and find creative and efficient solutions.

A superior sales skill can be also achieved through cross-knowledge training. Still, knowledge by itself will not make a good professional. Take the following example: in order to become an aircraft pilot, one must practice for a fixed number of hours (over 1,000) after having learnt all about flying. This is why offline sales training has become so important, now being provided by e-learning portals everywhere.

The courses may focus on topics like external communication classes, the mastering of different sales techniques, team performance, sales which involve several people or how to be customer oriented. Students enrolling will also learn about how to convey branding and represent or promote a brand successfully.

How E-Learning Has Become the Key to Leadership Development

E-learning platforms are far from what they used to be – places where the solitary students would go to learn something new completely on their own, isolated from the real world. Nowadays, these offer more integrative solutions and even public courses. The new methods are especially useful to companies and corporations in need to train their employees further.

Businesses have come to face the leadership faults at last. There is the wrong idea that these skills exist by default in certain people, which isn't true. Leadership qualities are acquired through training. This is why leadership training programs exist – now available through eLearning platforms and portals. Their purpose is to have employees build leadership skills through less theory and more practice. Companies can train or, better said, create their own efficient leaders through tailored solutions. They can learn corporate strategies, become more active and access a higher level of productivity.

Leadership programmes are most relevant today because of the lack of truly skilled professionals in this segment, plus the specific needs of each job and business. Such training will improve communication inside the team or the company, empower the individual as well as their colleagues, resolve conflicts, understand and eliminate risks, have a clear vision of a goal – not to mention the actual goal setting abilities. Besides, there needs to be a focus on managing and organising as well. As anyone can see, a lot is being demanded of leaders in the workplace. It's a whole set of skills to acquire and to sharpen. Moreover, these skills need to be adapted to the requirements of each company and department.

These are not usual e-learning methods, because leadership training will not work unless it's in an appropriate environment, with other people around and the possibility to build a team. This is how practical leader training was born – in the form of public open classes held in specific locations. Thus, the learning is no longer focused on theory alone. A leader created this way will be able to manage workplace relationships and resources, as well as clients. They will eventually be qualified to come up with solutions to current issues. Platforms also help employers not only train their leaders, but also analyse the results and keep tracks of their efficiency.

E-Learning Solutions for the Betterment of Company Employees

The many learning options and the work environment nowadays have led to different dynamics. If in the past one would start working after their education was finished, these days anyone can take up additional courses, go back to the university or just improve their skills or acquire new ones at whichever point in their career.

The development of e-learning solutions has facilitated such endeavours. Individuals can use their spare time to study a new topic. The Internet allowed for flexible learning and the options keep getting more diverse and convenient. Currently, blended methods are on the rise, which combine group courses in specific locations with individual study on the web. These new offers on e-learning platforms have attracted companies which aim to train their personnel.

Thus, E-learning platforms are also taking on the role of training companies. The diverse offer of public open courses, tailored to excellent standards, provide the training companies need in order to have more skilled and more reliable employees. These methods are quick and efficient and are usually focused on sales abilities, on management and leadership, collaboration and so on. With several such short courses on location throughout the year, businesses can ensure their training needs in a highly convenient manner.

Personal development is still at the key of all these courses and programs available through e-learning portals. Through the open courses, however, the employees of a company can meet other individuals with a similar experience and learn from them. All modules are designed in a way that allows students to stay focused. It lets them also manage their daily activities unhindered. Thanks to the learning resources storage solutions, they can keep all their records and access those as desired. This also makes it easy for the trainer or the company to track their progress and the efficiency of e-learning, though data analysis and tests.

This is how the efficiency of e-learning can be actually measured. The approach leads to better results within the organisation. Up to a million learners can be managed at the same time with top solutions and the control can be maintained at all times.

The Advantages of Using Learning Record Stores with Online and Offline Educational Resources


E-learning has changed the way it works along the years. Nowadays it even gets to interact with one's workplace and become an integrative part of work training. Platforms provide efficient testing and results analysing methods to companies to track down the progress.

E-learning platforms have begun to provide more solutions to help students keep track of their work and progress. Such is the learning record store – a repository to be accessed with a specific tool (a reporting tool for example), where all of one's learning records can be kept. All the data goes into the LRS. Thus, it can host not only courses, but also games, web pages and simulators.

Your LRS of choice, besides keeping the data from learning applications and portals or platforms, can run advanced analytics and sort it too, creating adequate reports. These will show the learning level, as well as the business progress. The filters for the data can be customised as desired. The data can be shared between several systems, so that more can benefit of the insights. 


There is no doubt that the trends have changed and there is an emphasis on the social aspect of learning. This is more centred on the individual's practical experience. Furthermore, the record store is extremely useful to the organisations that control the learning. In previous years, these had to record online learning experiences as the learner logged in to an LMS and then completed the SCORM module. This method was in no way flexible. Now the SCORM can be replaced with a mobile application, the Intranet or even an education experience happening completely offline.

The LRS solutions are growing in complexity and thus are able to accomplish more. These can stand on their own and be totally separated from an LMS. They will hold one's development record as a unique source.

In this case, many will ask: is an LMS still needed? The answer remains Yes. It is because the LMS will provide ways of interactive studying. This can be either through a discussion forum, a quiz series or encyclopedias. Learning Record Stores are simply for the storage of data and for reporting it. Everything is being tracked in one place – all the learning data employed by someone.