It is almost three months now, since we have delivered our first totally Virtual Training, but it feels like much more. I consider it as a kind of a paradox that during lockdown so many things have happened. New reality, new challenges, new needs. Let’s move back a little bit and look at how it all started. I’m talking to two of our Consultants Daniel and Izabela, who were the first in our unit to design and deliver these New Normal Trainings. I’m curious on how it looks like from their perspective.
What was your first reaction, when almost the whole country… the whole World – stopped?
IZA: That was a tough moment! In such a situation you normally face three options: you panic, you try to manage the situation or you can reflect on how it affects you? Where are we going to be in the future? What should we do in this new situation to secure our business? My reaction was the third one.
DANIEL: I was just about to start a new series of classroom workshops with one of our clients when #stay at home policy came. It became obvious that we had to think about adjusting our offer and it felt like a challenge to me, something new, an opportunity to break our routine.
Daniel, Iza – you are the architects of our first Totally Virtual Trainings. I know you’ve worked very hard on this project. Can you tell us about your new ideas?
DANIEL: My client decided to put a project on hold that we were about to kick-off, but soon it became apparent that their salesforce urgently requires a new kind of training. They realized that even experienced salespeople need a refresher training about effective phone conversation and they needed it as soon as possible. This was like a spark! So, I quickly took the challenge. I started to think about what knowledge would be most relevant and what would be the best way to deliver it. I brought up my idea with Iza and we started to work on it together.
IZA: Yes, our goal was to do this in a very engaging and effective way which would be as close as possible to a classroom experience.
I can remember when during our Team Meeting you told us about your vision of New Virtual Trainings – I felt a boost of energy. It was so inspiring!!
Daniel, you were also the first in our Team who delivered the training in a new way. How does it feel to be a pioneer?
DANIEL: Great!! Really fulfilling! As I said – it was a challenge!
First training sessions, first group of participants, first learning points!!! I can recall you gave us many tips.
And a first feedback, of course. How was it?
DANIEL: The Feedback was fantastic!!! Both from participants and from their Managers. They were pleasantly surprised that Virtual Trainings can be as effective as F2F sessions. At the beginning the Client was a bit anxious, although he trusted our expertise in sales. It was totally understandable as it was a new situation for everybody. That is why we agreed that the first session with the first group would be a trial and if the feedback was not good enough, we wouldn’t continue. We ran sessions with all the groups and when we finished, our Client decided to go ahead with the suspended project as a Virtual Training, too!!
IZA: After Daniel’s success I felt happy for him and frankly a bit jealous 😊. Now, we are converting content of other projects to a Virtual solution. This kind of workshops can be tailored and delivered in quite a short period of time which is definitely a benefit.
Tell me please, what are your observations after these two months in terms of Client’s feedback and attitude?
IZA: When delivering workshops and trainings one of the most important elements is responsibility for business. It was understandable that some customers at first did not fully trust the solution of Virtual Training, because it was something new, and new felt like more risky to them. What I can see now though is that those Customers who actually have experienced our Virtual Trainings changed their attitude and the way of thinking about trainings. We see more and more new customers signing up for Virtual Training as well. Right now in a cooperation with one of our Clients from medical sector who works with dentists, we are preparing a project to teach the salesforce how to carry out effectively 3 types of customer visits (F2F, hybrid: mix of F2F and virtual, and e-visiting) and how to properly target customers for different types of visits.
To summarize we can say, that in this New Normality, we are quite highly motivated and we are still looking for opportunities where we can do more and better. Despite the fact that we have experienced lockdown and the world has changed, we need to be even more flexible. Thanks to our customers’ feedback we may say that we live by this rule. We are consistent in developing our tools and skills in order to be able to offer our expertise in the New Reality . We are full of hope and energy and look forward to inspiring other people.
Magdalena Buczak
Project Coordinator Mecuri International Poland
