How to Sell Learning to the C-Suite

Transcription

1 Udemy for Business How to Sell Learning to the C-Suite August 29 10:00am PST

2 Speakers Paula Spears Senior Director of Global Talent Management & Employee Development Cylance Brent Boeckman CEO and Founder Rising Strengths Consulting formerly Head of L&D at Malwarebytes Shelley Osborne Head of L&D Udemy

3 Agenda 1 5-step process to get key stakeholders on board 2 Case example: Malwarebytes 3 Case example: Cylance 4 Q&A

4 5-step process to get key stakeholders on board

5 Challenge: proving the value of learning Sales Traditionally challenging to show ROI of learning in ways C-Suite understands How can L&D pros drive this 33% statistic up and get more business leaders on board with learning? Only 33% of business leaders think the L&D function impacts business outcomes Source: CEB

6 1 Act like a consultancy: Your employees ROI is your ROI 5-step process to get key 2 Get crystal clear on your company s decision-making process stakeholders 3 Assemble your dream team on board 4 Speak in numbers build your business case 5 Pick good use cases and easy wins

7 1 Act like a consultancy: your employees ROI is your ROI Don t start with your bells & whistles, start with their concerns Understand the needs of the team or company Be reactive rather than prescriptive

8 1 Act like a consultancy: your employees ROI is your ROI Connect your training to your employees ROI Sales team: If goal is to increase sales deals by X%, that s your ROI Customer service team: Soft skills training ROI is to increase customer service satisfaction scores Software development team: Tech training ROI is to increase time to productivity of new hires and bring products to market faster

9 2 Get crystal clear on your decision-making process Understand how major decisions are made at your company Align on priorities across departments Know where your budget is coming from Create a working timeline

10 3 Assemble your dream team Be a door-to-door salesperson Identify an active sponsor Find out who s on your side Align priorities across finance, legal, HR and IT departments Integrate L&D with all facets of your business

11 4 Speak in numbers: Build your business case Speak in a language that resonates with execs Start the conversation with metrics Weave numbers into a bigger story Be concise and give Do your groundwork Talk to referrals Benchmark Gain access to key data Create metrics where you don t have them context

12 4 Speak in numbers: Build your business case Put your numbers together Impact on the business: lost revenue, excess costs, lost productivity Budget, resources, timeframe Alternative cost scenarios Expected outcomes: improved revenue and efficiency Alignment with business goals: profit generation, business growth, revenue increase, operational efficiencies, risk mitigation

13 5 Pick good use cases and easy wins Consider the point of need and time Pick the right pilot audience Be agile Manage realistic expectations o Case example: Udemy Feedback is Fuel program

14 Case example: Malwarebytes

15 S 1-2 Act like a consultancy & understand your decision-making process Make it about the individual department Your managers ROI is your ROI Don t have separate goals, adopt the team s goals If team goal is to increase sales deals by 10%, that was my ROI Get to know the different processes of each department

16 3 Assemble your dream team Be a door-to-door salesperson: Sell vision of what is possible: share course collection what would your team take? Questions to ask: What does training mean to you? How do you envision developing your people? I spent 5-6 months talking to managers, leaders, and execs about their issues and goals

17 3 Assemble your dream team Use a change management process Identify who s on your team and who s not o Find an active sponsor to help win over C- level stakeholders o Focus on naysayers who you need to educate more on the initiative Recruit learning champions at team-level o Identify team who has an ROI objective that L&D could help achieve

18 3 Assemble your dream team Integrate L&D with all facets of the business When rolling out Udemy for Business, success based on integrating learning into performance reviews: o o In quarterly goals, one goal related to personal development Allocated 20 hours per quarter for employees to invest in learning

19 S 4-5 Build the business case for learning & pick a good use case CHALLENGE Sending the QA team to on-site Python training would incur high travel and training costs. SOLUTION QA team to take ondemand Python courses through Udemy for RESULTS Entire team trained in 30 days vs. 6 month goal. Substantial savings in travel, training, and labor costs. Entire production calendar moved up which resulted in shipping product releases and updates ahead of schedule. Business.

20 S 4-5 Build the business case for learning & pick a good use case ROI of learning for Malwarebytes $2, $25,740 Savings per employee QA Engineers Total savings

21 Case example: Cylance

22 S 1-2 Act like a consultancy & understand your decision-making process Identified the training needs of business leaders & managers Constituency needs: More just-in-learning, less classroom instruction Understand who the key decision makers are in the process Key lesson learned: align priorities early on with Finance, Legal, HR and IT departments

23 3 Assemble your dream team Identify an active sponsor and have them test it: Our CEO took a course on Udemy for Business and became an instant champion Find people who are already engaged in learning: Asked employees taking courses on Udemy on their own to share why they loved it

24 3 Assemble your dream team Align with your finance, legal, and IT departments early on: Biggest takeaway: Didn t spend enough time educating them early in process Should have done product demo for them Finance looked at overall cost, not cost per person Legal contract language also a hold up in process (e.g. privacy, liability issues)

25 3 Assemble your dream team Integrate L&D with all facets of the business: At Cylance, we build learning into onboarding from Day 1 Employees sign on to Udemy for Business and start taking courses during onboarding Creates a stronger alliance with L&D and HR Demonstrates how much company cares about employee development

26 4 Build your business case for learning Demonstrated cost savings to win over my CEO: Calculated ROI using cost per employee Compared cost of individual employees already reimbursing Udemy courses vs. subscription for entire company Graphed break even point: amount we previously spent reimbursing employees vs. annual subscription Showed would spend 4x less using subscription

27 4 Build your business case for learning Once purchased, continued to show CEO monthly metrics: Adoption metrics New users and popular courses Our tagline: We don t care what you re learning just learn People were learning more and it cost less Added benefit: people could learn without others knowing they didn t know something

28 5 Pick good uses cases and easy wins Cylance Management Essentials Program: Blended learning: gave them more direction & structure CEO & Executives co-facilitate 5 management competencies tied to Udemy for Business courses 15 online courses Monthly discussions on each topic Capstone project Certification at end of 6 months

29 Q&A Paula Spears Senior Director of Global Talent Management & Employee Development Cylance Brent Boeckman CEO and Founder Rising Strengths Consulting formerly Head of L&D at Malwarebytes Shelley Osborne Head of L&D Udemy

30 Thank you