Solution Examples
Below are a few of the many solutions I have delivered to my employers and business partners. All are crafted for maximum return on effort in the smallest amount of time possible. If you think these solutions seem simple, well, thank you! Please reach out if you would like more information or other examples.
Onboarding
Scalable Program by Role
Situation: Paycor was growing at a rapid pace. Quarterly Onboarding for field sales no longer met the needs of the business.
Solution: This interactive (or dynamic) PDF was created in lieu of purchasing onboarding software. From the first page, the user selects their role and is then guided through resources, expectations, etc. of their new hire experience.
Irregular Hiring, Multiple roles
Situation: Tackle is a small and growing company with four unique roles needing unique training, but never a volume to create a cohort of newbies.
Solution: This Onboarding website was created for the new hires along with an accompanying manager's guide. The new hires could learn their role at their pace and the managers had enough information for meaningful daily check-in calls with the new hire (without taking the training themselves).
Plan to Succeed
Situation: Enablement was staffed to facilitate one onboarding program per month for field sales. Sales Managers wanted to maximize the time a new hire had zero quota (month of hire +1). Talent Acquisition was measured on monthly positions filled.
Solution: At Paycor, I established a regular cadence of Onboarding with fixed start dates for sellers each month. This initiative was a culture change and required collaboration with both recruiting and sales leadership so their MBOs were considered. I created this calendar so recruiters and sales management could easily set expectations with candidates about start dates and travel requirements.
Rapid Pandemic Pivot
Situation: On a Friday in March 2020 Infoblox announced their offices were closing to "slow the spread" of COVID-19. With an entirely new team of SDRs beginning employment on Monday, the in-person onboarding program was not possible.
Solution: Over a weekend, the original multi-week program was pivoted to a virtual experience that maximized the learning in this very different format. With the co-facilitating hiring manager falling ill herself, Ken managed the experience from three timezones away without missing a beat.
Everboarding
Seller-Centric Scheduling of Training
Situation: Infoblox had a culture where anyone from HQ could announce and hold a training webinar with the field at any time. These were usually at the time most convenient for the HQ SME, not the field. There was also no consideration of how many others may be taking time from the field in the same week.
Solution: The field already held "Super Tuesdays" where they were not on appointments with customers/prospects. I launched "Super Tuesday Training" which was the same hour every week. HQ SMEs would book their week well in advance as part of their strategy and the field was not pulled away from customers/prospects at random times throughout the week.
Knowledge Reinforcement
Situation: Studies have documented the "forget factor." This is the percentage of training lost if it is not reinforced in the subsequent weeks. Paycor was not immune to the "forget factor" and with weekly "Super Tuesday Training," we needed a way to make the key elements of training stickier.
Solution: Enter Qstream - a knowledge reinforcement app we used competitively to increase knowledge retention.
Internal Communications
Minimize Emails, Maximize Impact
Situation: As with most organizations, there was no shortage of announcement emails from Veeam HQ to the field. These messages were delivered with varying degrees of skill and consideration to the audience.
Solution: The Brief became a weekly deliverable to the sales managers to present during their Monday morning meetings. All HQ departments were permitted to have up to one PowerPoint slide per week to share their content. Presenter notes were required and Enablement would clean the formatting for consistency and ease of consumption by the field. This ended mass emails from HQ and ensured the manager was enough of an SME to deliver the messages (which helped reduce the questions/errors in the subsequent weeks).
Podcasts for Productivity
Situation: Pre-Pandemic, Paycor's field sales team was on the road 80% of the week. They sought knowledge on their schedule in an audio-only format.
Solution: CorCasts was a podcast series from my Paycor department marketed internally and externally as "All things relating to HR technology for SMBs in 10 minutes or less." This is an example of how we could make content designed for multiple audiences.
Infographics to Inform
Situation: Without notice, Google updated its Chrome browser, and Microsoft Silverlight no longer worked. Because Paycor's software utilized Silverlight, our revenue organization needed to be informed quickly.
Solution: I released this document to subside the rumors and panic in the field. This format proved more successful than a text-only email IT put out two days earlier.
Tech Stack
Less is More
Situation: With 14 different tools and content repositories, the sales org was struggling to find content, learning, and other resources. This caused frustration and misaligned messaging.
Solution: I sourced, built and launched BloxHub - a single platform and mobile app that integrated with SFDC. In BloxHub is a Content Management System, Learning Management System, Playbooks, Call AI, Coaching platform, Self Assessment tool, Knowledge Reinforcement, and more. This resulted in lower OpEx, higher productivity, and increased job satisfaction for sales and SMEs.
Tackle the Chaos
Situation: A hyper-growth of a start-up is bound to have bumps in the road, like inconsistent messaging, content confusion, and a struggle to transfer legacy knowledge to a growing sales org.
Solution: As a quick fix, I built and launched Tackle Box in under a month, a sales-centric intranet to add context to resources and validate the accuracy of the content. While not meant to be a long-term solution, the tool evolved into a valuable resource beyond the Sales Organization with Playbooks, Onboarding, Collateral, and so much more.