I am reluctant to admit this, but I learned about the importance of the "so what" mindset the hard way: A client made me realize I needed help. After years of training salespeople as a professional speaker and facilitator, I felt extremely confident that I was at the to... More »

Learning & Development , Sales Enablement

Business Impact , Delivering Training , Human Performance Improvement , Selling Skills , Training and Development - General

"You never have enough money to do all the training you want to do," says Karie Willyerd, vice president and chief learning officer at Sun Microsystems. Sun releases a product or an update every day around which training could be built; but putting out a new program or ... More »

Global Human Resources Development , Human Capital , Learning & Development , Learning Technologies , Senior Leaders & Executives

E-Learning , Human Performance Improvement , Managing Organizational Knowledge , Managing the Learning Function , Selling Skills , Skills Gap , Training and Development - General

Case Studies

Recent research underscores what learning executives have known for decades - effective communication between learning leaders and executives in the C-suite is difficult to achieve. Even in the most visionary organizations that have complete executive buy-in, engagement... More »

Human Capital , Senior Leaders & Executives

Informal Learning , Measuring and Evaluating , Selling Skills , Training and Development - General

The results of the most recent ASTD research study, "State of Sales Training," reveal the absence of a clear, comprehensive definition of many sales training topics that may be contributing to the sales skills gap facing many organizations. This sales skills gap, if not... More »

Learning & Development , Sales Enablement

Competencies , Delivering Training , Selling Skills , Skills Gap , Training and Development - General

During the big recession of the 1980s, McKinsey - the management consulting company I was working for - gave some great advice to their clients: pare back almost every corporate function except sales and marketing. General business opinion was on their side; Thomas Wats... More »

Sales Enablement

Change Management , Economy , Innovation , Selling Skills , Trends