Marketing excellence: how to win over your internal audience
pharmafile | January 7, 2013 | Feature | Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | MSI, Manastersky, marketing
You’ve spent months building a marketing excellence training curriculum which has been prioritised by marketing leadership as a critically important for your marketers and extended brand teams. Class sign-up is not significant, but large enough to hold the class.
The day before it is due to run, at least 30% of those who signed up cancel.
You now have to make a decision whether or not to run the class with a sub-optimal level of class interaction, or cancel it all together and incur a cancellation fee from an outside speaker and the venue location, as well as face embarrassment from internal speakers thus reducing credibility with key stakeholders.
If you have had this situation in the past, you know that something needs to change. The solution is not to simply tell managers to give their direct reports time to train – it needs to go much deeper into corporate culture to be sustainable or even effective.
Problem
Company engagement and baseline skill measurement surveys show marketers do have a desire to grow functional skills but rarely have time or are given time to do so. Intentions are good, resulting in class sign-up earlier in the year.
However, once the class is upon them, there is always an urgent matter that their manager (from senior brand manager up to vice president) needs taking care of.
Managers depriving direct reports of time previously set aside to learn is one of the main reasons provided when cancellations are made. And the resulting cancellation rate can easily exceed 30 per cent.
Low class sign-up and high last minute cancellations can be symptoms of a core problem in the design of your marketing excellence curriculum. The critical issue is the lack of training alignment and connection with performance.
When marketing excellence is anchored to employee performance objectives and Individual Development Plans (IDPs), there is greater transparency and commitment to skill building on both the part of the manager and direct report.
A direct report should build their annual performance objectives and IDP with their manager’s agreement, thus creating a mutually agreed plan of action for skill building that will help achieve business goals and personal growth. Both are now committed to allowing time for training.
Solutions
This by no means is the only way to increase marketing excellence training class attendance. Assuming it is not due to poor curriculum content or delivery, then solutions range from; blended learning options, to communications planning to anchoring a curriculum to performance.
The solutions have been ordered by degree of complexity based on the need for gaining internal stakeholder agreement and time to launch. Any or all of the solutions combined below can be implemented to improve class attendance.
1. Group learn: train by team
Using a ‘train by team’ model is one of the most logical, easy to execute and successful methods for increasing class attendance.
‘Train by team’ is just that: engaging a full brand team at the same time. The whole team, from associate brand manager all the way up to brand marketing vice president are all present.
It is best to:
• Connect with the brand marketing VP prior to class to align key business issues with the curriculum. The curriculum does not have to be customised, rather the class discussion tailored so the key skills are applied to a current business issue. For example, if the curriculum topic is competitive strategy, not all marketing team members will actually work directly on the brand’s competitive strategy. However, all members will be involved at some point in the business plan which does require understanding competitive strategy.
• Select ‘train by team’ curriculum topics carefully to appeal to everyone. Not all classes offered will be appropriate for the full team to attend due to varying experience levels.
• Vet and socialise the idea of ‘train by team’ to your key stakeholders to gain early commitment.
• If possible, launch the ‘train by team’ programme with the option of allowing marketing teams to select ‘X’ number of ‘train by team’ events during the year, depending on budget. Keep in mind that all team members may also be spending time in elective training to enhance their own personal skills.
• Benefits and results
• Based on my experience, I was able to increase annual marketing excellence training class attendance by almost 100% during the first year of application with a ‘train by team’ model.
• Plus we increased Level I measurement ‘overall rating’ score by +1 point (on a 7-point measurement scale).
• It creates a team building environment with increased learner engagement, based on qualitative feedback from attendees.
• Training is closer to brand and business issues, thus increasing the likelihood of internalising newly-learned skills and skill transference to on the job application.
2. Group learn: action learning
Often, marketing training seems to live outside of critical business issues, limiting the ability to apply what has been learned and reducing probability of skill transference post class. ‘Action learning’ is another learning method executed in a team format. Action learning is a real-time learning experience that addresses a business issue and develops individuals and groups at the same time.
The goal of action learning is to learn by doing. Whole project teams go through training together and then apply those skills to resolve a business issue. This allows teams to learn new skills and immediately apply them to an actual project. This method is best reserved for critical projects, but is effective in building accountability for attending training.
3. Early, regularly scheduled communication
An organised communication plan can have great impact on marketing learning event attendance. This does not mean one should bombard the learning target with daily emails requesting sign-up for classes.
It does mean that one should have an awareness generating communication plan that allows for early and timely communication, ease of class sign-up, regular interface with the learning target outside the classroom and senior marketing leadership reinforcement of support.
Below are tactics that have achieved success:
• Launch the annual curriculum late the prior year, or during the first quarter of the current year. This allows the learning target to plan ahead and schedule time for training on their calendar.
• Launch a monthly email or e-newsletter featuring training curriculum and events coming up in the following two months. Ensure the email has deep links to connect with your Learning Management System (LMS) for direct class signup.
• Enlist senior marketing leadership as marketing excellence champions and show their support and commitment in communication (i.e., quotes, enlist for class openings, enlist as class instructors). The greater the support marketing leadership provides, the greater the importance marketers will assign to marketing excellence in the organisation.
Partnering with marketing leadership creates far greater traction of class adoption, or ‘pull’.
• Connect with the learner audience: Attend marketing team status meetings to increase familiarity with offerings and connect with key stakeholders face to face throughout the year. Offer one on one performance consulting to drive learners to the right classes.
• Build a marketing excellence training vision and brand. This will convey to stakeholders that marketing excellence is a sustainable way of growing a best in class marketing department.
• Use technology to capture marketers as they travel (i.e., apps for class sign up and easy class calendar visibility).
• Benefits and results
The combination of monthly emails with direct access to class sign-up (deep links) has been shown to increase class sign-up by +40% at the end of the Year I launch. An increase in class sign-up will result in an increase in class attendance even if not all sign-ups attend.
Other benefits of a communication plan include:
• Deep links to classes reduce the frustration of having to sign into the LMS and search for a class.
• A monthly e-newsletter is a quick reminder – marketers are busy and while some will take advantage of the annual programme – others may find it overwhelming to select classes at that point. A monthly email with direct LMS link can encourage learners to sign up for more classes simply because it is easy.
• Greater connection between you and marketing leadership and the learner target.
• Communication of a clear vision for the marketing excellence programme conveys to the target and leadership that there is clear direction and a plan for building marketing functional skills.
4. Collaborative technologies
The Net Generation, also known as ‘Generation Y’ or ‘NetGens’ have grown up with the internet and are forecast to make up 47% of the workforce in 2014. Currently aged in their 20s to 30s, they also make up a significant part of class attendance.
Therefore integrating collaborative technologies such as ‘Web 2.0’ has the potential for positive impact on class attendance, if adequately publicised, and on outcomes. Collaborative technologies will appeal to the NetGens, who relish informal learning opportunities during a learning event (if more than one day) and continued idea exchange and learning post class.
5. Self-paced learning 24/7
Self-paced learning can have a positive effect on class attendance and outcome, as follows:
• The ability to learn on your own time allowing scheduling flexibility.
• Shorter class time alleviating scheduling issues.
• The ability to become an expert or become comfortable with the curriculum at your own pace without the concern of being in a class where you are forced to move on to the next concept.
• The framework serves as a resource to be able to go back and review materials any time.
• A blended learning scenario where much of the conceptual learning is done via e-learns or podcasts, allows for a much more interactive and collaborative classroom experience. This interaction will increase the potential for the curriculum and discussion to be far less theoretical and more relevant to a participant’s job, thus increasing the likelihood of skill transference on the job.
6. Anchor training to competency or business planning framework
One of the best ways to increase marketing training attendance is by anchoring curriculum to a performance measurement framework such as marketing functional competencies or a brand/business planning process.
This ensures that the classes are accepted and endorsed as either skills needed to achieve critical behaviours for organisational success, and/or a way of doing business within the organisation. This is a much more in depth approach for building curriculum and increasing class attendance. While increasing class attendance is not the primary reason for anchoring marketing excellence, it does have a positive impact.
My preference, based on experience, is to align curriculum with performance or marketing functional competencies rather than a brand or business planning framework. Here’s why, in both instances, they:
• Demonstrate endorsement by the organisation and marketing leadership.
• Increase the likelihood of using skills learned on the job.
• Increase accountability of attendance because performance or business planning depends on it.
• Seek to make marketing training critical for success.
Conclusion
A marketing excellence training curriculum should be anchored with a performance or business model as soon as possible. If that is not possible, the other solutions listed above will have a positive impact on attendance.
Cindy Monastersky is a senior consultant at The MSI Consultancy. Email:cmonastersky@themsiconsultancy.com, or for further information visit www.msi.co.uk
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