Corporate Learning Blog

Business acumen: a skill that can help your employees think like owners, align your workforce, and develop your leaders. It can also increase the skill of your sales people. Let’s face it: selling isn’t what it used to be.

Previously, in order to close a sale, sales professionals built a relationship, diagnosed needs, translated product features into customer benefits, and asked for the sale. Not anymore.

Selling has evolved, and your sales professionals need business acumen to win more sales. You should think of business acumen as the competitive advantage. Today, sales professionals have to earn the trust of their customers. A big part of that trust is care.

“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.” –Bob Hooey

Here’s how business acumen can increase the skill of your sales teams:

1.) It helps them see how their customer’s business works. Successful sales personnel possess keen insights into their customers’ financial and strategic issues, allowing them to employ that knowledge to align their solutions to real needs. Business acumen prepares sales professionals and sales teams to confidently and credibly position products and services and gain a competitive edge.

2.) It helps them see how their own business works. Knowing the impact and importance of sales forecasting and price discounting on the company’s financials is important. Business acumen provides a lens into how individual decisions and actions impact their own organization’s financial success.

3.) It allows them to empathize with their customer’s. Sales professionals are now expected to become trusted advisors who can work alongside customers to improve their businesses. Business acumen allows sales professionals to cultivate and maintain a business partnership, truly understanding the customer’s landscape.

You read in our last blog how Business Acumen Training can help you do more with less. Effective business acumen training covers many competencies and skills required for an organization’s success; it’s like a multivitamin for your workforce.

In the last blog we saw how Business Acumen helps your employees think like an owner. In this blog, learn how business acumen can help align your organization.

1.) Employees at all levels in all jobs will understand marketplace issues driving change. As organizations continue to face tough decisions about processes, people, products, finances, and customers, their workforces need to understand how to deal with these critical issues. Business acumen equips a workforce with this knowledge, helping them to make better decisions.

2.) They will make decisions with the organization’s vision in mind.Organizations are recognizing that business acumen training puts all other development efforts into the context of executing corporate strategy, ensuring the strategic alignment of leaders and employees around the company’s goals, objectives, and strategies.

3.) They will understand why/how they fit into the big picture of success, being able to accept change based on this understanding. Change management is a lot like embarking on an exercise program. It takes willingness to change ingrained habits, and requires close attention to deeper motivational issues. People need to see the vision clearly and understand that every decision they make impacts the bottom line.

You are able to see just two uses for business acumen training. Catch the blog next week when we look at a third way business acumen can help your organization do more with less. We told you: Doing more with less has never been easier!

As 2015 approaches, learning & development (L&D) needs are being re-evaluated to find providers offering effective solutions that engage talent and improve overall performance. At Paradigm Learning we decided to conduct a little research of our own. We compiled our participant survey feedback, listened carefully in the marketplace, and conducted several client interviews from Fortune 500 and 1000 companies. Here’s what they are saying about their learning and development focuses for 2015:

Applied learning provides real results. Industry studies continue to show that value and driving performance is directly linked to applied learning. Here at Paradigm our version of applied learning is discovery learning. Regardless of what you call it, applied learning is when training links to real world experiences. The learning is relevant to their workplace, job, role, and task. Applied learning leads to better job performance and greater value to the organization.

Blended learning is evolving. Technology is enabling blended learning to becoming more embedded, open, and connected. When influenced by business context, blended learning is resource driven, shorter, more focused, supportive, and performance related. Every organization is unique and blended learning allows for customized learning tools that deliver results.

Measurement tools are a must. The need for measurement is growing. Companies are looking for pre-assessments, post-learning reviews, and reinforcement tools. They want to be able create rich data for analysis, proving the benefit of the training.

The takeaways from this feedback:

Planning needs to happen now. At Paradigm Learning, we begin meeting with our clients in October to get their planning executed. Getting training dates organized for the first part of the year is a great best practice. We love to discuss where our solutions fit in for new customers, as well.

Find the right provider. If one thing is clear, it is crucial to find a provider that is aligned with your business needs for training to really make a difference. Make sure your provider has examples of companies they’ve been successful with in your industry.

Now’s your chance to get your planning started: Click here! Also, join the conversation on Twitter using #AskParadigm.

“Change is the only constant.” But what does it take to initiate change? And how do you gather people together to advocate it?

 It’s important to stay with the times and innovate for business success, but a lot of the time you might have people resisting change because “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

 We all know it’s not about fixing something, but rather staying ahead of the game in order to tackle challenges down the road and anticipate customer needs.

 If you don’t have a flashy way to keep your organization aligned behind your changes, maybe watching a video for some solar roadways will help you.

Solar Roadways is a prime example of an innovated, brilliantly marketed, and solution-based initiative; whether it’s actually a solution remains to be seen, all we’re pointing out is their ability to garner an excited following for a massive change initiative. The project raised over 2 million dollars in a couple of months.

All it takes to initiate changes, which inevitably happen in your organization, is a high-tempo and upbeat attitude to gather advocates. Your people should be excited about the change, not fearful of it.

Want help initiating change in your organization? CLICK HERE. Leave your comments below (and don’t forget to share)!

If you’re up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you know that their latest episode featured yet another “Halloweeeeen” bet between Captain Holt and Detective Peralta.

If one thing is clear from the two Halloween episodes for this show, it’s that whomever works with the team wins the bet. A simple business lesson to take away from a television show—work together and you’ll be successful.

A year ago, when Jake Peralta bet Captain Holt he could steal the Medal of Valor before midnight, it took the work of the entire cast to achieve the feat. Even dour Detective Santiago was in on it.

And, though it seemed (to Holt and the audience) that Peralta would not succeed, he did. And he did so by trusting the work of his fellow detectives.

This year, Holt turned Peralta’s tactics against him by using the team to confuse Peralta into thinking his plan had worked and gone wrong when, in fact, it failed miserably.

From this sitcom it is clear to see that teamwork is key in every business—but the more important thing to take away from these episodes is the trust factor between leader and team. When you all want a common goal, building a strong team is simple and effective.

If you’re hungry, you want to be asked what you want to eat, not just given something that you’re expected to bite into.

  Have you ever watched a sales person struggle to sell because that’s all he was doing—selling?

  It may make sense that selling is all sales people need to do, but it’s really not. A successful sales person is one that can connect to each of his customers on a different level than just selling a product.

  The successful sales person will offer solutions rather than products. They will help the buyer in every way they can to get the most out of the transaction. It’s less of a “sell,” and more of a “trade.”

  This is why your sales people need to understand business acumen just as much as everyone else in your organization. If your sales people speak from a background of acumen, they will be able to connect with their buyers on the level of understanding the buyers’ business and financial needs.

  It obviously doesn’t stop there. A sales person still needs their finesse and flair. But if they go to a buyer with a solution, they will be much more likely to sell than if they brought a product. With business acumen training, your sales people will understand their customers’ financial objectives, marketplace issues and strategic initiatives and use that knowledge to credibly position products and services throughout the customer’s journey to a buying decision.

With the use of technology on the rise, one question we must ask ourselves is: How important is the tangible connection between leader and employee?

  A storm of millennial workers is breaching the workplace levees, and they’re bringing with them an adept knowledge of connecting to people through technology. These are workers who will soon be leaders in the business world, and they are workers who need the proper leadership development.

  Are these soon-to-be-leaders going to know the importance of emotional intelligence? Does their knowledge of connecting through technology translate to face-to-face interactions?

  This is perhaps the hardest developmental challenge our millennial leaders-to-be will face, but it is the most necessary.

  Emotional intelligence relies on the ability to understand and connect to individuals on a deeper level than spoken or written word. Emotional intelligence requires the ability to read body language. It is what makes a connection tangible.

  Can technology offer our millennial workers and leaders these connections? Will business leaders today be able to teach emotional intelligence to the leaders of tomorrow?

  Developing your future leaders should start now, when your potentials are still fresh in the organization. Click here for more: