July 2019 - CircleHD

How Can Managers Increase Employee Retention?

When it comes to employee retention, nothing is more important than a good manager. In fact, it’s often noted that workers don’t change companies, they change managers. This trend is applicable across almost all industries, too.

Take, for example, Google, which is already a pretty unconventional company. But it seems that was intentional, as founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin laid out in their founder’s letter.

Truly world changes come from visionary leaders like Larry and Sergey.

Managers reflect your company’s culture and are often the first line of defense when it comes to determining a team’s success. That’s why it’s so imperative that you focus on developing the leadership skills of your managerial team.

So what skills make a manager effective? At Google, it seems they tend to focus on the “3 C’s”:

Coaching

This one was obvious. Managers who can coach produce the most effective and successful teams.

Communication

Whether verbal or non-verbal modes, this skill is key to ensure teams are aligned and able to move forward.

Collaboration

There’s been much ado about collaboration over the last few years: and it’s no wonder. When managers bring teams and workers together, they are able to increase output and problem-solving while also increasing employee happiness. That means your best team performers will stick around longer, boosting your employee retention rates. Read more about measuring business impact due to employee collaboration.

Common Enterprise Video Learning and Adoption Myths

It’s no secret that many people turn to video learning when trying to acquire a new skill. In fact, on Youtube alone, 1 million learning-related videos are uploaded and accessed 500 million times every day.

Enterprises often explore the possibility of implementing this format for their own corporate training but persistent myths surrounding video learning make some offices apprehensive about the technology. Many of these arguments were formulated before the development of advanced equipment and the video online support that we have now. Let’s bust these one-by-one.

“Video is Too Expensive”

Back in the days when shooting a video required big, heavy, very costly equipment that only video experts know how to use, this was true. Now, there are endless options for video recording and playback options, thanks to advances in modern technology. Smartphones have become powerful enough to create edit, and broadcast high-quality video content.

“My Team Won’t Be As Engaged If We Use Video Learning”

It’s a common misconception that video learning promoted individualism over group learning, something that has been addressed by online platforms by offering video conferencing and interactive webinars. Now, learners don’t have to miss out on opportunities to learn from colleagues, while also collaborating and building social connections with each other. By platforms like CircleHD take this one step further by enabling further engagement through quizzes and other knowledge checks in video content.

“Video Won’t Allow Me to Control the Pace of Learning”

The idea that learning with videos is fast-paced may have come from the fact that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster compared to plain text. Content paired up with images is also easier to remember because information goes straight to the long-term memory. Video courses allow employees to access the content at their own time and go through lessons at their own pace. They can pause the video and even playback a section as many times as they need to fully understand the lesson.

“Video Takes Up Too Much Bandwidth”

Many enterprises are concerned whether their internal networks will be able to handle the bandwidth requirement of video courses. There are concerns about the videos causing networks to slow down and get saturated. Truth is, it will take a thousand simultaneous views to cause problems to a network segment. Uploading video content to the internet requires compression which makes it easily accessible even by the lower bit rate wireless connections.

At CircleHD, we understand how video learning can help you achieve your employee learning and development goals. We help set up your system so that video content is easily uploaded, shared and streamed by anyone within your organization. Videos are searchable and accessible even on mobile devices. Book a demo with us and we will show you how video learning can transform your employee training for good.

Using Video Role-Playing for More Effective Sales Training

This bit of military wisdom not only applies to actual war, but to business as well. In any endeavor, proper preparation and training are the keys to success. And in the cutthroat battlefield that is sales and marketing, the more prepared and trained your sales and marketing representatives are, the more money they make. And of all the myriad methods of training available today, nothing is perhaps more under-utilized or maligned than role-playing.

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”

Sales training utilizing role-playing techniques – when done the right way – is one of the most effective methods of preparing your staff for any situation and any customer. Properly conducted role-playing sessions can sharpen your staff’s skills and significantly increase your sales volume. In particular, video role-playing combines the effectivity of actual role-play with the reliability, knowledge-retention appeal and reusability that is inherent in pre-recorded video learning material.

Introduction and the “Swiss Army Knife” Video

Most potential sales situations will involve customers who have at least a mild interest in availing of your products and services but need that last push of persuasion to see the value in your offerings and convince them to finally open up their wallet. In most such cases, a well-scripted “swiss army knife” role-play video that depicts the “usual customer” that will enable your staff to practice the knowledge they have learned in your onboarding resources is a good way to kick off learning using video role-playing.

Situational Videos and “Leveling Up”

Aside from the “general role-playing training”, you can also utilize video solutions for specific situations, using your staff’s innate skills, characteristics and quirks to emulate such customers or situations. Perhaps, one or two of your team members excel at being bitchy or irate? How about another team member who’s a stickler for the smallest of details? Another one may be the lawyer-type who loves using his or her opponent’s arguments against them. Still, another one may be an expert on “non-commitment”. All of these situations can be captured and stored on video for repeated training sessions. And once all these initial scenarios become “easy mode” for all your staff, you can tell them to construct more difficult scenarios to role-play and learn from. This way, everybody improves and your staff actually develops the sense of anticipating the most difficult scenarios possible in every encounter. Subsequently, everyone will be prepared to deal with even the most nightmarish of situations, quite possibly turning a losing encounter into a buzzer-beating sales victory!

Critique Role-Playing Videos

Evaluating a live sales training role-playing session right after it finishes is a good way to learn. But people are bound to miss some of the details that can sometimes make-or-break the sales pitch. One of the major advantages of video-recorded role-playing training is that they can be repeatedly evaluated by you and your staff down to the smallest of details to pick out which areas to improve. This is similar to how pro sports teams go through film sessions of past games (and even of opponents’ games) to get every possible advantage in future match-ups.

Importantly, the goal of the critique should not be punishment, shaming or calling out “bad” performances. Rather, it must be seen as a way to improve your performance by trying to improve the – as sports coaches love to call them – “little things that matter”. After all, business is a professional sport in its own right, and to become a champion you need to be the best.

Centralize, Organize and Share the Wealth

A centralized platform, like CircleHD, enables content creators, corporate executives and managers to make all their video solutions readily available and accessible in an organized manner, within a secure digital environment. This means that all of your sales training role-playing videos can be just one click away anytime and from almost anywhere.

Schedule a demo with us now and unlock your sales team’s potential with the power of video platforms.