Features

Published July 2008

Birth of a Salesman: Selling Learning to Solve Business Issues

Anthony A. D�Agostino and Joseph Daniel McCool

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Perceptions about the learning function may be learning professionals’ greatest frustration, but changing those perceptions is one of the most promising opportunities for impact. Moving learning to business-partner status requires an investment in yourself.

How many times have you seen the potential for a critical integrated learning solution overlooked until the deployment of a new operating process, a systems implementation or the launch of a new product or service — or worse yet, totally ignored until something goes wrong

Learning need not be forced to limp in and turn lemons into lemonade, though. It should move beyond the role of a firefighter dousing the flames of poor planning and circumstance to the more proactive role of a building inspector to help make sure the house doesn’t catch fire in the first place. To assume this role, however, learning leaders must sell the value of development programs.

Selling has several connotations. If you find yourself selling learning to a line-of-business head, promoting a packaged solution that fits in your current budget or asking for precious budget dollars and finding apathy or limited excitement, you likely are too late and have missed the opportunity.

Selling your solution is about selling yourself and your team’s ability to execute — to build trusting relationships based on previous initiatives’ success and indisputable data. Selling is about business partnering, not pushing your solution.

This requires a continual cycle of developing the relationship and educating decision makers about learning potential and performance. This kind of selling is key to building the kind of institutional trust and relationships that will be required to win support for learning’s up-front involvement in the next critical endeavor that will require collaborative initiative.

It’s important to remember that relationships are earned, and if organizational perceptions about learning’s role are not taken seriously or shaped by creative and innovative solutions, they can remain a serious drag, damper and de-motivator to the entire learning enterprise.

Consider the sales process: It is not your one-size-fits-all idea in a box that should be accepted by any prospective customer you pitch it to. It is determining the business issue, drivers, potential of the solution, how the solution comes together, investment in dollars, satisfaction with the executed solution and return on investment. If you have been attempting the first with limited success, let’s discuss how we get to the latter.

Rolling Up Learning’s Sleeves
Given the demands on our time these days, it’s easy for any learning professional to get mired in an unceasing cycle of process meetings in the learning organization. But this unfortunately comes at the expense of not moving our learning organizations forward to become better business partners — easily said, but not easily achieved.

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Selling Learning�s Potential at Siemens

Anthony A. D�Agostino and Joseph Daniel McCool

Sonserae Toles, director of the U.S.-based Learning Campus for Siemens, said learning professionals should be proactive in positioning themselves as partners with the business lines.

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