Transformation of sales skills through knowledge management and blended learning

Alan C. Chute, J. O. David Williams, Burton W. Hancock

n the past two decades, technology companies have had to face incredible chal­lenges just to survive. An unpredictable marketplace characterized by the stag­gering pace of technological innovations, ever increasing global competitiveness, and acts of terrorism have forced many companies to rethink their business mod­els and their strategies for building long-term trusted relationships with their cus­tomers. Companies that have learned how to leverage knowledge management practices and create blended learning programs for employee skills develop­ment are the survivors. This chapter addresses how knowledge management and blended learning can enable the transformation of selling skills and sales strate­gies in technology companies.

In the past, companies could be successful by providing quality products and services at a reasonable price and delivering them on schedule to their customers. Quality products or services at a reasonable price continue to be important to cus­tomers, but companies that focus solely on this strategy find themselves in a com­modity relationship with their customer. When companies are seen as a supplier of a commodity, their products and services do not have any differentiating qual­ities or value. It is easy to get positioned at this level, but there is no leverage for establishing a long-term trusted relationship with customers. Moreover, compa­nies that are perceived as a provider of a commodity product or service have lit­tle control in managing the relationship with their customer. Their only bargaining position is availability and a low bid.

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Today, many companies are finding it difficult to make the transforma­tion from a product- and services-focused business model to a customer relationship-centric business model. One of the biggest challenges they face is how to upgrade the business acumen and the consultative selling skills of the sales representatives of the company. Sophisticated customers expect their supplier com­panies to go the extra mile for them. Going the extra mile means the supplier becomes a trusted business partner who understands business drivers and forms lasting, trusted relationships with their customers. Customers are seeking suppliers that are business partners that take an interest in helping them run a successful business. Suppliers that understand their customer's business challenges and objectives become an important part of their customer's success. When suppliers provide their customers with products and services that address their customers' concerns, improve their customers' operational efficiency, and help them with their bottom line, they hnd themselves in a strategic business partnership with those customers. Such partnerships help maintain the financial viability of a company. In fact, often when suppliers establish themselves as business partners committed to the success of their customers, they find that even if their products and services cost more than those of their competitors, customers prefer doing business with them.

An example of a company that made the transition from a product-centric company to a customer relationship—focused company is Avaya. Avaya was op­erating as a supplier of high-tech telecommunications equipment in a highly com­petitive business environment where technology was changing rapidly. Avaya was well known for its quality products and services that supported the rapidly grow­ing call center environment. However, this business was moving to a global mar­ketplace that had many new competitors. The Avaya sales force traditionally sold to customers by focusing on their products' features, benefits, reliability, and price. With the increase in global competition in the call center environment, the sales force often found itself in a position of offering what were perceived to be commodity products and services without a distinctive value proposition for its customers.

Realizing that operating as a provider of commodity products and services was resulting in lost business opportunities, Avaya embarked on a new approach for training its sales force to sell business value in the dynamic global market en­vironment. It employed a blended learning model to accelerate the adoption of a new customer-centric consultative sales approach. The Avaya leadership team realized that effectively disseminating and managing knowledge about customer relationship management (CRM) strategies could differentiate Avaya in the global call center marketplace because the sales force could offer more value to their customers.

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At Avaya there were many sources of call center-related information; however, accessing the right information, anytime, anywhere, and in a way meaningful to the sales force proved to be a major challenge. The Avaya lead­ership team commissioned the Avaya Customer Relationship Management Institute to create a knowledge repository that could be used as a stand-alone knowledge resource or used in conjunction with continuing education seminars or formal training programs. The CRM Institute team believed that the key to cultural transformation was an appropriate blending of knowledge, skills and experience; in other words, knowledge is necessary but not sufficient to bring about sales culture transformation: Knowledge + skills + experiences = Transformation.

The CRM Institute team started the transformation journey by creating a comprehensive CRM knowledge management (KM) program. After the program was established, the team created an innovative CRM blended learning sales cur­riculum that provided for authentic CRM sales experiences in order to transform the sales culture.

Knowledge Management

Avaya implemented a number of KM initiatives, including the Knowledge NET project and the CRM Portal. The purpose of these projects was to enhance the impact of the KM discipline on instructional effectiveness, business results, cus­tomer relationships, and the quality of work life for associates. The projects were internally focused and sought to apply CRM theoretical principles to real-world settings. Although associates reported that the resources developed from these projects were essential, they could not easily point to precise quantifiable business (that is, return on investment) impacts. However, it became clear that KM and blended learning were rapidly converging as both appeared to be geared toward providing highly relevant, just-in-time knowledge.

Avaya expanded its KM with additional initiatives and was ranked among the top companies practicing KM. One of these projects, the Knowledge Net, was implemented by the Professional Services Organization, an externally focused consultancy in the call center marketplace. The Knowledge Net project tested assumptions about the use of communities of practice and communities of interest as a means of focusing consultants on the use of core knowledge that they needed to do their jobs smarter, better, and faster. The Knowledge Net communities had specific roles and responsibilities such as mentor, subject matter expert (SME), and community leader. Researchers tested the value of those roles and found them useful in dividing the labor of a knowledge community.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

CRM Portal

In the year 2000, based on promise in the potential of Knowledge Net and other KM initiatives, the CRM Institute created the CRM Portal to address the KM needs of Avaya's CRM business unit. The CRM Institute was responsible for changing the focus of the call center business from one of hardware, software, and services to one that focused on bringing value to the customer. The CRM Insti­tute developed a vertical portal with hundreds of knowledge assets that were rich with contextual metadata that enabled users to perform powerful searches and to associate the knowledge assets with the needs of specific classes or users with unique job tasks.

Any sales or marketing employee at Avaya could nominate a knowledge asset to the CRM Portal. A knowledge asset could be a white paper, case study, re­search report, competitive assessment, or PowerPoint presentation, for example. If the knowledge asset was approved by the CRM Portal managing editor, it was added to the knowledge repository. Once the asset was in the repository, its fre­quency of use could be tracked. This capability gave the CRM Institute team the ability to identify people who were key contributors to the company's body of CRM knowledge and to identify frequent users of CRM knowledge assets. The CRM Institute used these data to determine natural affinities between authors and users of specific classes of CRM knowledge assets similar to the way that Amazon.com establishes affinities between book authors and potential read­ers of those books.

The research of affinity associations, moreover, provided the CRM Institute a basis for drawing peer attention and rewarding people who contributed assets to the CRM Portal that were frequently used and highly valued by other em­ployees. For example, the institute would conduct focus groups with employees who regularly used the CRM Portal if the use of a specific author's assets had a positive impact on their business results. These evaluations enabled the institute to begin to assign a value derived for specific knowledge assets on the portal. If a positive result was noted, the CRM Institute team would then determine to what extent the asset or class of assets grew or protected revenue, reduced expenses, or improved customer or employee satisfaction. This asset of value-derived moni­toring enabled the CRM Institute to reward authors and drive awareness that knowledge assets should be considered intellectual capital.

The CRM Institute managing editor was the key individual for ensur­ing the quality of CRM assets and consistency of the metadata tagging of as­sets in the knowledge repository. In addition to the managing editor, domain

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editor roles were assigned to subject matter experts in each strategic solu­tion group. An indexing tool was employed to help all of the editors make consistent contextual metadata decisions.

The editors conducted periodic training sessions to promote the use of the CRM Portal and elevate the visibility of certain classes of high-value CRM assets like white papers and current research reports. The managing editor also estab­lished a monthly audio plus Internet teleconference seminar series, " First Friday's" program, which featured CRM Portal authors. These programs frequendy had over one hundred participants on a two-hour teleconference. During the program, the authors directed the audience to knowledge assets on the CRM Portal such as PowerPoint presentations or Word documents and then engaged in live voice in­teractions with the audience using audio conference calls. The interactions were also facilitated through e-mail questions and instant messages with the presenters. This blended learning approach that leveraged high-value knowledge assets on the portal with live knowledge-sharing sessions dramatically improved the impact of the CRM Portal assets on business results.

Avaya Solutions Knowledge Center

In 2001 Avaya created the Avaya Institute, a new KM organization responsible for the Knowledge Net project, the CRM Portal, and the CRM Institute. The Avaya Institute created the building blocks of a new comprehensive KM portal, the Avaya Solutions Knowledge (ASK) Center. The expanded knowledge base and the information-sharing capabilities of the ASK Center created a new level of complexity for the KM schema, necessitating the development of a conceptual model to help describe the way knowledge was segmented and differentiated. The Avaya Institute adopted a cube model perspective to organize the domains related to knowledge at Avaya. One axis was the strategic solutions disciplines, another was the product information, and the last was the market distribution channels. Users could find information by following an information map along a linear axis or employing an extremely powerful search engine, which used the rich contex­tual metadata that described every knowledge object in the database.

The ASK Center was a powerful and dynamic resource for Avaya sales and marketing knowledge. It provided a wealth of knowledge, ranging from infor­mation and news to marketing materials, sales collateral, training, and various sup­port services. And the ASK Center enabled employees to share their knowledge and experience with other employees worldwide. In 2001, thousands of Avaya employees recorded over 660, 000 hits on the ASK Center and downloaded over

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The Handbook of Blended Learning FIGURE 8.1. ASK CENTER PORTAL.

Note: This portal and that for Executive Solutions Selling Business Acumen, discussed later in the chapter, were designed and developed by InfoMedia Designs, located in Easton, Pennsylvania (www.infomediadesigns.com).

100 billion bytes of data, equivalent to over 260, 000 pounds of paper. The ASK Center employed some highly innovative tools to enable employees to navigate the information repository (see Figure 8.1).

Accessing Relevant Information

The ASK Center portal gave employees access to all of Avaya's channel market­ing knowledge and expertise in a way that made most sense to them. There were several ways to find what they needed. The Map function provided a menu of case studies, presentations, white papers, and competitive information. The Search func­tion focused a search on a solution, author, topic, or date and delimited the re­sults to slides, documents, applications, and video media types. The Guide function helped employees tune into information that would be the most relevant to the tasks that they were working on at the time. The Guide asked questions and then retrieved items that matched what other employees found to be useful in addressing similar questions in the past.

The portal provided shortcuts to get quick access to background information and resources on Avaya solutions, collateral, customer references, and performance

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support tools. Spotlights were included for each of the Avaya Solutions groups to call attention to unique strategic events, learning, and updates on Avaya alliances. Each selection included a brief abstract that helped users decide whether to dig deeper or continue a search. Some items provided a list of related training courses that had been recommended by education experts at Avaya. There were affinity links that allowed users to check out related content that colleagues were using.

Chunking Content

The ASK Center included powerful tools like the Presentation Chunker, an innovative feature that made it easy to access and share PowerPoint content. At a glance, users could view all the slides from any PowerPoint presentation, add slides to their Slide Basket from different presentations, and download them with a single click. The Presentation Chunker was also regularly employed during live sessions to conduct online meetings and presentations to large groups. The sales force at Avaya referred to the Presentation Chunker as their " killer applica­tion" for quickly accessing the information they needed to do their jobs. Thousands of sales and service employees participated in the teleconference that blended live training sessions with online access to knowledge assets hosted on the ASK Center.

The ASK Center supported knowledge sharing and self-nomination of content for the Web site. Users could easily share their own files and Web links with other users by clicking the add/update content. Users received valuable feedback and information on how their content was being accessed, and rated, by other Avaya associates. The ASK Center facilitated collaboration with a number of communities of practice that shared a dynamic library of infor­mation, threaded discussions, and downloadable materials, securely, for mem­bers only. The ASK Center managing editor updated content, managed who had access, and sent courtesy messages to group members informing them of what was new.

Personalizing the Portal

Users could personalize the ASK Center to fit the way they work. When users identified their organizational function, the interface adjusted to their job context. From here, they set personal preferences to customize their own ASK Center home page. Users who were new to the ASK Center were invited to visit and get acquainted. A quick start for first-time users and an online tour were always available from the home page. The ASK Center was dynamic, growing, and

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improving all the time, which made Avaya expertise and knowledge accessible and usable to employees worldwide.

Formal and Informal Learning Experiences

In addition to the work to create comprehensive KM portals, the management team created formal and informal learning experiences to bring about the desired cultural transformations in the sales culture. Knowledge hosted in portals alone is necessary but not sufficient to bring about cultural transformation. Sales employees also need time to practice new skills and apply them in authentic learning situa­tions. The Executive Solutions Selling Business Acumen (ESSba) program is an example program.

Executive Solutions Selling Business Acumen

The ESSba curriculum was a 100-hour curriculum delivered over two and one-half months. A total of 208 students participated in sixteen class sessions offered in the ESSba program. The students were senior sales leaders in the CRM business at Avaya, and they were required to keep up with their job-related requirements and immediately apply what they learned as they progressed through the curriculum.

The curriculum used the theme of a mountain expedition to communicate to the students that this was not a traditional corporate training experience and that a great deal of student preparation was required to achieve success in this sales transformation program. The idea behind the theme was that sales repre­sentatives needed to be thoroughly prepared to make strategic sales at the top lev­els in client organizations similar to the way that successful mountain climbers must be thoroughly prepared if they intend to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. For example, an expert mountain climber proceeds from orientation camp to stag­ing camp to base camp before the ascents are attempted to high camp and then the final ascent to the summit.

Similarly, the ESSba curriculum was designed with a series of preparation steps to prepare the students for the top-level executive presentation experience. The curriculum plan had three one-hour teleconferences, various online learning experiences, two week-long face-to-face classroom experiences at a ranch in the Rocky Mountains, and an orientation session for the students with their mountain climber's backpack filled with essential reading materials for the ascent.

The students could track their progress along the twelve steps in the ESSba blended learning curriculum on an ESSba program guide Web site. They needed to complete an actual customer sales experience using the knowledge and skills

Transformation of Sales Skills Through Knowledge Management and Blended Learning

learned during the program in order to reach the summit and graduate from the ESSba program. The students were selected from various work assignments, coun­tries, and job tides to ensure innovative thinking and cross-fertilization of new ideas in the sales culture of Avaya. The purpose of the program was to reinvent the sales culture, change the perspective on how customer value was created, increase revenues and margins, and expand market share for new products and services.

The ESSba blended learning curriculum employed unique background re­search activities and outcome objectives. The business acumen assessment con­tent was assembled by interviewing a selected list of customers, interviewing best-in-class sales performers, working with retired corporate executives from Fortune 100 companies, and researching publications from faculty of major busi­ness schools. The advanced communications and computer technology content was derived through interviews with faculty from major universities and from interviews with Avaya CRM experts with multiple patents in call center technol­ogy. The CRM assessment content was derived from interviewing customers to identify how they viewed their business relationship with Avaya.

The overarching objective of the ESSba curriculum was to transform the sell­ing strategies employed at Avaya from commodity selling to product and services differentiation and then to CRM (see Figure 8.2).