In last week’s blog, we took a general look at eLearning solutions, including how they can be implemented and why they can work. The conclusion was, that as companies look for ever-more creative enablement strategies to motivate and educate their sales channel, employees, and customer base, we will continue to see eLearning solutions become more and more synonymous with business solutions.
In addition to the heavier-duty, Learning Management Solution (LMS)-based approaches, with their focus on accreditations and longer-term curriculums, there are also options out there that provide more dynamic, easily customizable solutions.
The latter, with its unique features and outside-the-box strategies, is the focus of this current blog. Let’s zoom in on one program in particular to illustrate.
An Example
The Client:
Cavium, now Marvell, an IT infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturer for networking server and storage technology.
The Challenge:
Cavium was looking to implement a non-traditional eLearning strategy for their channel partners. They wanted to gain a competitive advantage—in a very competitive space—by growing the mindshare of their channel partner salespeople and sales engineers through focused learning and enablement.
The eLearning Solution:
Now in its sixth year, the incentive program—called Follow the Wire—is unique in that it’s designed to be engagement-focused rather than sales-focused. In other words, it doesn’t directly motivate anyone to sell a specific product but rather attempts to influence sales behavior through simplified learning and sales engagement.
What Cavium’s program does is incentivize the salespeople and sales engineers of Cavium’s channel partners to read the company’s white papers and product announcements, watch videos and answer questions, and other indirect engagement behaviors.
For example, through its uniquely branded online portal, the Follow the Wire program features a variety of “Learn and Earn” incentive opportunities that reward participants with points earned.
Examples of these include:
- On-demand training certifications for both sales and technical associates
- Learning opportunities that ask participants to read product-specific evaluation reports
- Even simple surveys about the program that participants can take, with the first 100 or so responses earning points.
Perhaps the best part of the program is that all this content is produced by the Cavium team already, so finding a way to leverage this material becomes, in effect, a way for them to double-down on their own product marketing and expertise.
Essentially, when the Cavium’s partner network is armed with this increased awareness of their products and solutions, the members of this network will be more likely to promote and sell them versus similar products and solutions from a competitor.
This is just one specific example of an outside-the-box eLearning and enablement strategy, and there are many others. Contact us at 888.220.4780 or marketing@hmiaward.com for a more detailed description of how creative eLearning solutions can be tailored to fit your exact business needs.
Sources
https://www.marvell.com/
