Sales Quenchers is a North Palm Beach, Florida-based sales training organization that has a successful business providing just-in-time reference materials to organizations. The company publishes physical, pocket-sized sales training content, packaged in a traditional “playing card” or “flash card” deck.
These cards, known as Mem-Cardstm, distill the core concepts and key techniques of leading sales experts like Jeffrey Gitomer, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and others. The result is easy-to-carry, easy to consume educational moments for on-the-go sales professionals. Each card presents a salient sales lesson, and a quote to crystallize the lesson’s core concept. For busy salespeople, Mem-Cards help them learn and cultivate new skills they can apply while selling. Mem-Cards is a novel way to motivate and up-skill sales teams, without being meddlesome or breaking the bank.
Despite these advantages, there are some shortcomings to this distribution model:
- The physical cards cannot be updated without reprinting or republishing
- There no mechanism for publishing time-sensitive content
- There’s no way to track or measure whether people are using the cards
- Many next-generation employees consider using physical cards dated.
Sales Quenchers goes digital
Sales Quenchers decided to overcome these limitations. By converting from printed cards to digital format, they would revolutionize their approach. In addition, this would make their knowledge nuggets mobile learning-ready. They could offer a flexible subscription model, and deliver their content to customers via cell phone, PDA, or PC.
This change would also provide important benefits for Sales Quenchers’ customers. First, they would be able to plan “learning campaigns,” and schedule content delivery based on management objectives. They would have a means to track completion of assignments, and measure retention of information. Any supervisor could create and distribute custom content to their workforce. And customers could accomplish all of this using the mobile device that their employees already had and knew how to use – a mobile phone.
Sales Quenchers’ digital initiative opened up a whole new world of flexible rich-media formats. Customers could access professionally recorded audio content (Podcasts), graphic-intensive e-mail blasts, and even portable versions of popular content. While mobile devices are the ideal method for scheduled content delivery, subscribers can receive content by e-mail blast or as an Adobe PDF document, from any Internet-connected PC. This level of flexibility extends beyond the learner’s own delivery choices. Managers also can customize system-level options.
Customers can select the personal development and sales Learning Nuggets they want from the library of pre-recorded content, and combine their choices with content they create themselves. Many of Sales Quenchers signed authors now record their own Learning Nuggets, delivering their ideas in their own voices. For the mobile workforce, the effect of hearing valuable, actionable ideas directly from their authors has proven extremely powerful.
These changes make Sales Quenchers’ delivery model stand out from offerings available from traditional sales content providers and publishing competitors. It is unique, and adds value to the content. As a result, mobile learning is driving larger and broader sales into both current and new markets and sales channels for Sales Quenchers. Let’s look at how they did it.
Sales Quenchers’ delivery platform
Transforming their content from analog to digital was the first step of Sales Quencher’s evolution process. Fast, efficient, and cost effective delivery of these new digital assets also required new thinking and online methods. These methods affected everything from purchase of the content to its assignment, tracking, and management. Sales Quenchers requirements for their new Delivery Platform included:
- Integrated support for new customer and/or learner subscription and enrollment using e?commerce features and self-registration tools;
- Proven strategies for content packaging, scheduling, and distribution to any user or learner based on their unique mobile device(s), geography, time zone, and/or delivery preferences;
- Easy-to-use tools for creating and deploying interactive tests and surveys;
- Simple-to-learn tools for content creation (audio, e-mail, or message-based) for rank-and-file managers and subject matter experts;
- Detailed content tracking, reporting, and analysis of all online and offline results;
- Comprehensive billing and chargeback reports, that allocate all direct and indirect costs to specific Sales Quenchers customers per their utilization;
- Easy-to-learn and easy-to-use tools that facilitate customer-created supplemental content, using a standard telephone or cellphone that can be assigned and tracked; and
- Integration with other popular third party systems like Learning Management Systems or Learning Content Management Systems (LMS/LCMS) and Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM) as needed.
Sales Quenchers found a readily
available mobile content and communications platform to address these
requirements. CellCast Solution,
from OnPoint Digital in
Sales Quenchers subscription plans
Anyone, from independent sales professionals to large, multinational sales organizations, can purchase Sales Quenchers’ digital content offerings. Every subscriber can select their preferred delivery methods based on the plan they choose. The choices available on a monthly or annual basis are:
- Basic Subscription – For sales professionals who prefer their scheduled content delivered in a readable format. Subscribers also have unlimited access via toll call to CellCast content, using a call-in/pull access model.
- Premium Subscription – For on-the-go sales professionals who prefer to access their daily assignments using their cell phone. All they need is a voice plan and text messaging. Subscribers can elect to have their daily one- to two-minute CellCast broadcasts delivered at a specific time. They also have the option to receive an SMS message with an embedded phone hyperlink that launches their assignment whenever they’re ready (see Figure 2). All audio-based CellCasts include one or two interactive questions, or open-ended survey questions, to measure knowledge retention and gather real-time feedback.
- Premium Plus Subscription
– For sales teams wishing to combine Sales Quenchers’ Master Library and
scheduled training delivery with their own just-in-time training and
information. Their own managers or SMEs record the team’s content. The system
can deliver this combined content any time to any mobile device.
