Conversations with Ray Taylor - a Sales 2.0 manager, a biker, a digital native Part II

As a Regional Sales Manager at Standard Register, Ray Taylor leverages Sales 2.0 tools and social media to give the best value proposition to his customers. He is a biker, a marathon runner, and a digital native. This conversation with Ray is the third in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

... Continued from Part I

RD> Do you see more of a training need for how to maximize the use of a tool, or is there more need for training where you say, here is a bag full of tools, and teach them which tool to use when?
RT> There is a tactical part and strategic part in the training content. For example, Live Meeting: teach people how to use it and tailor sales presentations within Live Meeting. That is the tactical content. Then what you do with that becomes the strategic part, where peers or managers can deliver that training by sharing best practices. For example, on the fly, showing the ability to share an ROI tool with the client once and close the deal, without getting on the road to meet with the client. The sales reps who were with me then became inspired to try something similar.

It is very hard for training events to teach the strategic part. Not because they can’t do it but because it’s too much too fast. It’s about finding the coachable moment, one person at a time.

RD> I use the example about teaching phone etiquette as opposed to training sales reps to manage the interaction. Corporate trainers typically teach the phone etiquette. What do you think about the value of old methodologies in current times? Do think there is some time-invariance to the content?
RT> Exactly, and that’s where we need different ways to train. Having said that, there is one area where corporate trainers truly add value, and that is in creating a common language across the organization. This makes it faster to spread the cultural change as long as the content that they deliver are not restrictive. But, just as the shelf life of products is getting shorter and shorter, the same goes for training content; it cannot be sustained for long.

Our sales training can no longer be focused on products and services. We cannot be walking and talking brochures. Training content that can’t ??? stays the same forever. Trainers and managers who have failed to see that they, too, can innovate are not as valuable. It is like the analogy with colleges: a few years ago, a university banned its professors from putting their lectures on YouTube because that would make education free. A professor went against the policy and posted his riveting lecture on YouTube. It spread virally and actually brought in more college applications for that professor’s department. The University lifted the ban.

Corporate training as well needs to become more innovative and less protective. For example, trainers can embrace the blended model. Their survival doesn’t depend on the classroom-only model.

RD> Tell me about your findings regarding the blended model?
RT> The blended model makes perfect sense. The reps start to learn those minimum skills and common languages online, on their timeline, and then come prepared to the classroom. Classroom interactions are used for practicing and being creative under facilitation, but they move faster because the pre-work is done.

RD> Are you seeing more games being used in sales training?
RT> Not yet—none other than yours!

RD> Well, that’s good news for us. (Just kidding.)
RT> The games are a great way to address this. I have seen e-learning—a PowerPoint with multiple choices—but games are so much more interactive and competitive and fun.

RD> On social selling: what does it mean to you?
RT> Selling using social media is very powerful for lead generation. Before, sales was all about cold calls based on paid research. Now the rep can find good reasons to connect and determine the best timing for getting in front of the buyer. The better understanding of the information they gather from social media they have, the more likely they are to win the competition for the buyer’s time and attention. Social media really facilitates that discussion.

It helps grow the network for future calls. It is a great tool for maintaining the trusted advisor status. Social media allows you to communicate with someone the way they want to be communicated with. Social media has limited capability for the rest of the sales process in qualifying, understanding business needs, and negotiations. The face-to-face meeting is still the goal in many complex sales environments.

RD> What does Sales 2.0 mean to you?
RT> I think it is the second wave of using sales skills in the Internet era. Twenty years ago, to get information about someone’s products the buyer would call the sales rep in the local region and inquire. Now most people research before they reach out to sellers. The skills for salespeople have to be different now. I remember only a few years ago, I heard sales people saying, “Oh! I am not technology-oriented. I do not know how to turn on the computer.” They thought the prospect of using technology was funny. I would ask them if they realized that “what you just told the buyer is that you are stupid… you might want to stop doing that.”

Now, a similar thing happens when salespeople tell prospects, “I think Twitter is just a joke,” or “Facebook is for my kids.” I give them the same coaching: “Did you realize Facebook is a huge marketing initiative for this customer?”

Just as the customer is researching you on-line, they expect you to do your homework. You can no longer get appointments to just learn about the prospect’s business—they expect that you know about their business when you call, and that you can move quickly to how you can help them grow it.

Sales 2.0 fundamentally changed the idea of loading up the salespeople with product knowledge. Now salespeople have to know about the prospect’s company, their problems, their strategy.

At Standard Register, as part of our Lean Six Sigma initiative, we had the customers come to our sales leadership meetings—very different for us. One came to tell us that they wanted us to participate in their Six Sigma project, as we were part of their supply chain.

It is no longer about the typical qualifying closing questions: Are you ready to close? What information do you need to understand the ROI? Now it is more about: What is the problem you are facing? What solutions have you tried?

RD> For somebody taking up a new sales job, what advice would you give as to what they should do the first 60 days?
RT> Be social and be intellectually curious. Own your own career. It is less likely a company today will invest in you. One cannot rely on that any more. Find all the opportunities to learn and don’t sit there and wait for it to happen. Take the initiative.


RD> Thank you, Ray. It has been really interesting chatting with you.
RT> Let’s keep the conversation going.

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Conversation with Mrs G. -- Arlene Gregory: an educator and motivator

A 72-year-old educator and grandmother of six, Arlene Gregory (known as Mrs. G to all who have learned from her), is the subject of our first conversation in a series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

Arlene worked in the Delaware City School System of Delaware, OH. After retirement in 1995, she continued to teach communications and English classes at Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College, as well as educational psychology at Ohio Dominican University. She has 1034 friends on Facebook; she is a Mafia Wars queen; she has played more Mind Jolt Games than anyone I know.

RD> Arlene - When did you start teaching?
Mrs. G.> January 1960. I have taught literature, writing, communication, business communication, and education psychology. Over the years, the age of the students varied with the youngest at 8 years old and others ranging to past 55 year olds who returned to college.

RD> Why did you become an educator and remain an educator for these many years?
Mrs. G.> My own teachers and my mother pretty much directed me to a career in education; in many ways, I lived my mother’s career dream. Fortunately, her dream was also mine. For me, one important value of education to students is creating a set of choices and opportunities. Obviously one value to a teacher is successfully motivating a person to continue to increase choices and the span of opportunities. I love doing the motivation part; I love watching students capture ideas and concepts that lead them to further inquiry. What other job can give that?

RD> These days, there is a lot of discussion in the web-sphere and media, about how people get information and how they learn has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Over the years, what have you seen that has remained the same in how people learn?
Mrs. G.> I think how people learn has fundamentally remained the same. There are those that are the top-performers and then there are those that I call Middlers. There is always a curve. What I think has changed in my fifty years of motivating is how educators have embraced how they motivate.

The top-performing students who received opportunities to be creative and taste success using their learning at an early and formative age, learn and explore in inventive ways --- they did it before and they do it now. The educators who have been successful have figured out how to keep them motivated in this technology age. I have found that the best way to do that is engage them to reach their peers. One adaption that occurred is using technology to communicate but inherent interaction between educators and students in this group has not changed all that much.

The underserved group of adults is what I call were “Middlers” in middle and high school. Their performance was average or below average in middle and high school. These Middlers typically will not go to college at 18 years of age. I found that these Middlers need nurturing and not more of boring repetitive learning activities. For example, when I was teaching grammar in middle school, we were instructed to teach the same modules taught to a 3rd grader, 4th grader and 5th grader. Guess what! These students did not care the second time it was presented to them and it certainly was not interesting to them in 4th grade. So! They tune out and the time they could have used for learning is wasted.

People of all ages, learn very quickly how to be lazy in their learning when they know they will have repetitive lesson plans. The same group as adults often do not want to go back to school because they expect the same boring repetitive learning activities. In the last few years, I find that this group is getting better opportunities to come back and acquire skills and knowledge and expand their horizon. Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College – here in central Ohio have devised curriculum that helps them acquire meaningful learning. If you, as an educator provide the challenge to the students where they figure it out, and they taste the success in figuring it out, then they go to the next stage of wanting to learn more, thus expanding their set of opportunities. Their learning desires have not changed but they are learning faster and more with the new technology such as Google, Wiki and a curriculum that keeps them engaged. I find that Games and such technology have changed the Middler’s desire to learn.

RD> Given that you are such an active gamer, how did and do you use games in your teaching?
Mrs. G.> I always used activities like have butcher paper and crayons and other games in my classroom. This was for students of all ages and from all diverse backgrounds. Games actually provided that challenge and motivation.
My entre into video games came with my grandkids. We created a playroom in our house where we outfitted the room with Playstation and a large number of games. Many of the video games follow patterns and motifs common in mythology and folklore; my grandson Zach was very engaged in playing. At that time I was teaching a classroom course about the narrative of folklore and myths and I found Zach learning how to manage the archetypes of mythology – the heroes and villains. Watching that made me realize that video-games have a great upside to faster learning. Playing the games with the grandkids provided not only opportunities to spend time with the kids, but also a new level of interaction that included several learning opportunities.

Another example was with my youngest grandson. We were playing one of the NCAA games and had to do is pick uniforms etc. for the avatars. I am not good at replaying sports events, and did not want to play. But then my grandson figured out a way to motivate me; he called me on the phone and told me that I assign all the players to have Brutus the Buckeye uniforms. Being the Buckeye that I am, I got hooked. All these kids, when I got stuck or did not feel challenged, were amazing and they would say, “Grannie, try this.”They figured it out and motivated me to keep my interest. Because they enjoy playing with others, they want others to play too and not walk away bored. Games allow people not only to learn by figuring out, but also teaches them how to motivate others to learn and play with them in their peer group. As you know peer-learning takes the pressure off from the educators to constantly battle with how to motivate next. Of course, I am proud to be in the peer group of my grandkids.

RD> What do you see as the downside of so many technology distractions in front of under-40 crowd?
Mrs. G.> I am not good at using mobile phones has they have horrible interface for texting. But that’s not the reason I have issues with the texting phenomenon. I do worry about texting and communication. Over generation, writing had fairly strict style guides and norms. But there are no style guides in Twitter and with texting. It is evolving, but the chance of miscommunication is very high; learning to communicate with clarity is not emphasized. Just because you have to write in 100+ characters and your thumbs are good to handle such a keyboard does not mean one knows how to communicate. There are no style guides or standards on how to abbreviate. The other thing that worries me with new technology like texting is that it has made communication become a reaction and not a dialogue. Lack of focused communication is creating a generation that may not experience sufficient knowledge gain… Information gains sure, but not knowledge gain.

RD> Aside from classrooms, where do you see video-games happening?
Mrs. G.> I am at that age where I interact with many elderly folks at a regular basis. My 94-year old mother-in-law for example. I see a tremendous advantage of introducing computer and interactive games with the nursing home community. Older people – those who are very alert always played games, but they played it as recreation. Nursing homes can make video and online games a daily exercise like mandatory walks for physical exercise. It will help deter lack of alertness and maintain high levels of cognition. In my opinion this is a big opportunity for the video and online gaming industry to explore.

RD> Thank you Mrs. G. It was wonderful chatting with you.
Mrs. G> Let us keep them motivated and engaged and communicate better.

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