Forget the eLearning authoring tool, remember the audience

Last week I was invited by a Marketing department to review their proposed eLearning. They were concerned at the constant re-education needed for sales people – “…they just don’t remember what we teach them”.

Their use of Articulate Storyline was excellent, branching, layers, states, and so on – so why wasn’t the training being successful?

Over the first couple of hours, they mentioned, several times, that “…what we do is very complex”, and their aim was to try and get salespeople to “expert” level. In this case, this was a valid requirement, salespeople do need expert-level knowledge to perform a consulting role for clients.

Using a flipchart, I showed them that what they DO is actually very simple, using about 3 squares, 3 symbols, and two arrows. What was complex was HOW they did that – they had never put all the complex facts into a simple overall framework. Their teaching had no framework, and I suspect that this is why sales never remembered anything.

Their role, as Marketing was to be “sales support”, and I think they had just become the “sales confusion department”.

I received an email the next day, and I quote “… I can see now the importance of thinking from the end-user perspective and also to try to keep the content to a minimum and use illustrations, videos etc. to keep things interesting rather than bombarding the viewer with words.” That is partly true, as it also needs to be relevant and meet sales’ ends, but they made a huge leap forward.

When faced by the “classic SME” situation, be prepared to challenge, and talk in business-related language. Get out of your comfort zone. They wanted to know how to use Articulate Storyline more effectively. I explained how to run their business more effectively, using Storyline as one of the tools to get there, and they will now create courses, (and job aids…) so much for effectively because of that.