Area9 Lyceum Blog

As algorithms and robotics take over lower-level jobs, and people need to be retrained and equipped with higher-order skills, traditional learning falls short. Corporate learning and development (L&D) must move toward innovative solutions, such as combining the personalization of adaptive learning to build knowledge with “activity-based learning” to put that knowledge into practice.

Training Industry has announced that Area9 Lyceum has been named to the 2019 Top Training Companies™ List for the training delivery sector of the learning and development market.

When CIOs invest in enterprise applications—whether developed in-house or purchased from third parties—they must balance a number of key characteristics: supportability, maintainability, deployability, and cost. Nine years ago, as Area9 developed its adaptive learning platform and related applications, we needed a programming language that would let us optimize those characteristics for ourselves and our clients. The result was Area9 Flow, and today we are releasing it to the open source community.

What is a major problem plaguing the world of professional sales training? It’s the time training takes.

For the average salesperson, corporate training is the last place they want to be, and that’s because time spent in training is time spent not selling. This puts any would-be trainer at a disadvantage: take too long with the training, and you lose the sales crowd. But be too brief with the training (to accommodate for the fast-paced environment) and you risk spending too little time on important topics, thereby losing the learner’s interest.

Sales and sales management training have the double hurdle of having to train many people over a vast territory (for example, employees in satellite offices or travelling sales reps) and with varied experience levels ranging from novice to expert.

Traditional corporate sales training has three components that often leave sales reps dissatisfied:

In 2016, Millennials surpassed Gen Xers to become the largest part of the American workforce. In 2019, Millennials will outnumber the Baby Boomers in overall population. Sales management is going to have to get used to the changing attitudes and priorities of these Millennials who will soon make up the bulk of their workforce.

What’s better for sales than understanding the key differentiators of your product? What’s worse than not knowing? In a recent survey, less than one-third of buyers felt that their vendors were well informed. Is it acceptable that two out of three conversations with vendors are considered useless by the prospective purchaser.

There are so many factors that sales reps can’t control, like client budget constraints or a slow growth economy. That’s why, when managing a sales territory, it’s important sales reps are able to use their time - the one factor they can control - wisely.

It doesn’t matter how strong your top line growth is when your bottom line expenses, like your medical sales training budget, are too high. As such, most sales teams keep their training expenses low - but at what cost? You still want top line growth, and training keeps the sword sharp for even your most experienced and knowledgeable sales professionals.