Sales Quenchers Case Study: Delivering Learning Nuggets by Smartphone

Measurable results and outcomes

Sales Quenchers concentrates on helping customers measure the effectiveness of their mobile training and communications initiatives. These results come in both easy-to-measure tangible results and harder-to-discern intangible benefits including: 

• Faster production and delivery times – The digital versions of Sales Quenchers content are easier to create than the traditional Mem-Cards decks, and generally require a different type of resource to produce. Table 1 compares these production efforts.

• Lower production and delivery costs – The digital version of a Sales Quenchers title costs 40% less to produce and deliver to each subscriber, on average, than a physical Mem-Cards title. (See Table 2.) Pre-production costs (“content chunking”) for either model are basically the same, but production costs for the digital product are greatly reduced. In many cases, authors prefer to record their content in their own voice at their own expense. Tthe reduction in printed production and physical shipping or delivery costs associated with the traditional Mem-Cardsdecks offsets the added expense for digital delivery of Sales Quenchers content. Finally, the mobile learner bears the majority of direct daily delivery costs, because most subscribers prefer to call in and retrieve their daily assignments to balance the demands of their schedule. Sales Quenchers does not incur connection charges for call-in CellCasts.

• Intangible Benefits – Organizations with Premium Plus subscription plans can easily produce and distribute their own content on any subject matter or sales initiative they care to add. This can improve communications with their distributed workforces in ways never possible before. Sales Managers with authorization can use their cell phones to call in to the CellCast server. They can then record a short “Market Update and Strategy” CellCast for their sales team, append a short test or feedback form to gather comments, assign the new CellCast to the team, and schedule the CellCast for immediate delivery. They can do all this without ever firing up their laptop. Every manager knows that closing the knowledge gap, and bridging the communication divide between parties, yields tremendous positive results for any organization. Everyone can participate, since few salespeople today are ever without their mobile phone.

Summary and conclusions

Since launching in August 2007, Sales Quenchers has already inked subscription contracts with hundreds of individual sales professionals. It has also signed bulk purchase contracts with several leading sales organizations in the multi-level marketing and trade associations. As of June 2008, there were several hundred unique mobile subscribers. The company has a pipeline of more than 50,000 subscribers expected to deploy in the 2009 calendar year. Adoption continues to accelerate because every customer (whether a sole proprietor or an international conglomerate) already has what they need to participate – a mobile phone with basic voice service and SMS services or e-mail.

For individuals, gaining wisdom, insights, and a pep talk from their industry’s leading experts quickly, via their daily CellCasts, translates into more sales and accelerated learning. For organizations, CellCasting provides a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to reach every salesperson, with whatever content helps them overcome the obstacles and objections they face, using either the words of experts or words of their own – and knowing that the message was delivered, understood, and made immediately actionable.

Project summary

Description

Sales Quenchers dramatically transitioned their product and business delivery model from paper-based to digital, using CellCast services from OnPoint Digital, Inc.

Links

http://www.salesquenchers.com

http://www.mlearning.com

http://www.onpointdigital.com

Forms of training/learning used

On-demand and scheduled delivery of just-in-time content and assessments to knowledge workers, using Podcast-style audio “CellCasts,” e-mail/messaging blasts, or downloadable m?Learning modules according to each user’s preferred delivery modality. Available content includes a Master Library of more than 1,200 pre-packaged Sales Nuggets/Tips as well as support for organizations and managers to create and deploy their own just-in-time custom content using just their cell phone. Sales Quencher’s end-to-end CellCast Solution provides support for new customer/learner subscriptions, which include fully integrated e-commerce functionality, content and interactive tests and surveys, and automated planning, scheduling, and distribution of mobile content and communications. Also included are tracking, reporting, and analysis of mobile results, and seamless integration with third party systems (such as LMS, CRM, ERP, or SFA platforms).

Number of learners that will use the system

Sales Quenchers’ service is currently accessible to more than 500 sales professionals from a variety of multi-level marketing groups and trade associations, and the company forecasts this number to grow to 50,000 in 2009. The total addressable market exceeds 1 million potential participants.

Project cost

Sales Quenchers’ subscribers pay an average of $17/user/month for access to their world-class library of sales and personal development content, via five to seven scheduled CellCast broadcasts per week. Sales Quenchers’ primary expenses are sales and marketing, content production services, content licensing and/or royalty payments, administration, and support personnel. The CellCast Solution platform is procured on a transactional basis via a Software-as-Service model that scales to meet Sales Quenchers’ growth requirements, using a per user/per month cost model. Additional transactional fees incur on a customer-by-customer basis, based on system utilization, number of customer-created CellCast broadcasts, number of SMS messages sent/received, toll-free services used, etc. Sales Quenchers bills all incremental transaction fees directly to their customers.

Implementation time

Implementation time was nine months from inception to deployment, including design, content production, piloting, platform integration, site branding, and customization.  

 Tools, products, and services used

• OnPoint Digital’s CellCast Solution v3.2, mLearning Pro platform; OnPoint Ecommerce platform (“OPEC”); and OnPoint CellCast Server appliances and hosting.
• Content production services using Melbourne, Florida-based Skylab Studios, a professional recording studio.
• Adobe Acrobat Professional v8.0.
• Audio Editing Tools: Audacity v1.25, Apple QuickTime Player Pro v7.4
• A standard cellular phone with voice plan and SMS services.

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