Consumer Electronics University
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What is Blended Learning?

Learning, practicing, and putting new skills to work is a process, not an event.

That is why CEU recommends that training programs include a variety of delivery and follow up options that are designed to address each specific retailer's needs, budgets, and capabilities.


CEU supports a variety of training delivery and follow up methods including:


1.     Webinars and On-Line Training Delivery

        Benefits:
·            Low Cost Per Student
·            Great for Widely Dispersed Participants
·            Easy to schedule and execute multiple sessions
·            Ability to record sessions to impact the highest percentage of salespeople
·            Opportunity to build a curriculum of additional skills over time to address product specific service contract training.
·            Option of Online Registration/Tracking to measure impact
·            Option of Online Testing/ Competency Assessments to measure understanding
·            Relatively low creation costs – (adding video & interactive content will increase creation costs). 
·            Low Monthly Hosting Costs
   
    Challenges:
·            Less Impact on behavior change than live training due to lower interaction and less active participation.
·            Less potential for interaction with managers, to drive performance and assess dealer specific needs.
·            Requires Internet/Computer Access for participants (in grou
ps or individually).

2.     Live Training Workshops

    Benefits:
·        Highest Potential Impact On Behavior Change for participants
·        Greatest Opportunity for interaction with and influencing management
·        Greatest Opportunity for creating dealer specific content and time sensitive information.
·        Highly Interactive – options for activities, assessments and feedback.
·        Options of Including Real World Role Plays (exercises or in Video)
·        Workshops can be targeted to specific audiences (ie: Appliances Salespeople, Sales Managers,) to maximize impact

    Challenges:
·        Higher Travel Costs and Potentially Higher Execution Costs per participant.
·        Less potential to impact highest percentage of retailer’s salespeople (scheduling issues)


3.     Video Training

    Benefits:
·        Multiple Content Delivery Options: Streaming, DVD Video, Key Drive, make it simple to execute and repeat as needed.
·        Video training can stand alone – as a 10 to 20 minute session that covers all key learning points.
·        Incorporating video into live & online training increases impact.  Short role plays prove skills in a real world context. 
·        Easy to schedule and execute multiple sessions – opportunity to impact high percentage of retailer’s salespeople.
·        Option of supplementing with written or online Testing/ Competency Assessments and Follow-Up Exercises.

    Challenges:
·        Highest initial cost for content and video creation
·        Time Limited to maintain interest (10-15 minutes total per viewing segment) – option of multiple segments
·        Limitations on time sensitive content

4.     Reference Materials and Pre-Training / Post-Training Exercises

    Benefits:
·        Potential to greatly increase the impact of  Webinar/ Live Workshop/ and Video Training
·        Provides Opportunity for Customized Content and Feedback/Interaction
·        Low creation and execution cost per student

    Challenges:
·        Impact highly dependent upon commitment of each retailer's store leadership for execution

5.     Testing and Skill Certifications 

    Benefits:
·        Track and assess training effectiveness and participation
·        Provide Coaching Feedback to sales managers
·        Can be easily incorporated into Online, Live, and Video Training
·        Relatively Low Creation Costs

Challenges:
·        Tracking results has administrative time and costs.



Using Video as Part of a Blended Approach to Maximize Training Impact:

Video is one of most effective and efficient ways to deliver training to new generations of salespeople. However, effective implementation of video training has changed considerably in the last few years.  In this new video world, shorter is better. That means content producers must be ‘on message’ out of the gate. In line with these trends, we recommend using video as a supplement to live and webinar training through creating a series of short single-subject vignettes. Each vignette can address a real world challenge faced on the sales floor.  We then illustrate the solution to that challenge through realistic role plays.  This vignette based training advances the learning points from webinars and workshops by providing solid examples of real world application.