Marc My Words: Selling Performance Support

Performancesupport represents fundamental new thinking that transcends traditional learningstrategies. So it goes without saying that sellingperformance support comes with unique challenges. Beyond the technical issuesthat you must overcome, there may be organizational barriers as well as personalhistories and preferences that are often incompatible with something new.

The disruptivenature of performance support confounds many prevailing notions of the always-indispensablenature of training. So, how can we best get uncertain and perhaps resistantleaders, clients, and users to take a chance on what could be a game-changingapproach to performance improvement in the workplace?

A tough sell

We already know that moving fromoverdependence on training to more workplace-based solutions like performancesupport is a good idea but a hard sell. Here are five reasons why:

1. Performance support remains hard to define. Performancesupport is not yet something that most business people readily understand.
2. Seeing is believing; but there’s not much to see, yet. We’d be a lotbetter off if we had more real-world examples and demonstrations of performancesupport in action.
3. The value proposition is different. This is lessabout learning, and much more about making work easier, less error-prone, moreefficient, and of higher quality, at lower costs than it would take to do thesame with training. We need to get much better at measuring and communicatingthis.
4. We are very tradition-bound. We have been doing what we’ve been doing intraining for quite a long time, and we tend to think we’re pretty good at it. Butwe’ve been so focused on getting the training right that we’ve had little timeor motivation to look for solutions elsewhere.
5. The organizational culture is stacked against us. Even if wecould break out of our training mindset, and many of us want to, we often meetskepticism and resistance to new approaches, including performance support.

Advocating performance support requires us torecognize that we are promoting an approach that’s new, hard to visualize ordefine, contradicts our arguments of the past, and goes against severallong-held beliefs. If we are going to be successful, we must get a lot moreinvolved in how we sell it and what will make all of our stakeholders get onboard.

Strategy for selling performance support

Whether you are just getting started or havesome performance-support experience under your belt, here are ten approaches toemploy when planning to sell a performance-support project:

1. Understand the problem. Build credibility by conducting a needsanalysis, developing insight into the business problem that results fromperformance gaps, and clearly articulating it. Identify one or more business-productivitymetrics to impact with your solution.
2. Pick the right sponsor. When you are blazing a new trail, nothingwill defeat you more than a sponsor standing in your way. It’s important tofind one who is willing to take up the cause. You want a project that you canuse to promote the promise of performance support. But to do that, you have tofind a sponsor who’s willing to go with you on the ride.
3. Use one sponsor to recruit others. If you’ve hadsome performance support successes, chances are your sponsor and/or client willhelp you find more projects. If theycan explain performance support and its benefits to their peers, that’s a hugewin.
4. Think big but start small. Performance support has huge potential, butstart with something that you can easily manage. Pick a project that is clearand unambiguous, and is accomplishable in a relatively short amount of time. Remember,especially in the beginning, sponsor buy-in can be very short term. You needresults before your sponsor runs out of patience.
5. Focus on scalability. Performance support is, by its very nature,highly scalable, and the cost per additional user is quite low. Yourperformance-support argument should emphasize quick scalability, with little orno waiting for your solution to reach larger audiences.
6. Use existing resources to start. It’s probable that your first performance-supportproject won’t come from additional investment. More likely, you will be using alreadyallocated funds from existing projects. Initially, this gives you greatercontrol as you build your capability and reputation.
7. Make it real. When pitching your first performance-support project, a strongvision and a solid business case can help you sell your project when you havelittle in the form of prior results to show. Once you have some successfulprojects completed, you now have real examples and case studies of whatperformance support can do. Eventually, they will be your strongest tools; whenthe client says, “show me,” you can.
8. Build partnerships. When taking people in a new direction,credibility matters, and the more people you have on your side, the better. Whenseeking approval for your first performance-support project, it’s essential tohave the client see it as a team approach—a partnership with I.T., the business,and, if appropriate, outside experts and vendors.
9. Sell benefits, not features. No matter how technically interesting yourperformance support solution is, chances are the client is far less interestedin how it works than what it can do. Stay away from gee-whiz technical jargon. Askyourself, why would the client want to invest in performance support? What willit do for them? Then answer those questions.
10. Build a solid business case. Speaking of benefits, one of the biggest isreturn on investment. This requires a solid business case, with costs, costavoidance, and return clearly laid out, based on past or anticipatedprojections, or both. You can almost guarantee that they will ask you aboutcost-benefit, or ROI, so don’t go into your presentation without answers.

Sealing the deal is just the beginning

Don’t just work tomake the sale; the task ahead is much more daunting. Getting performancesupport accepted by the business, and by trainers, requires a balance betweenold-fashioned sales and marketing, and the more complex considerations oforganizational change. You’ll need focus, patience, skill, and more than amodicum of political savvy to help people move away from the old and toward thenew, in their own way and at their own pace. This is the only way performance-supportadoption will be sustainable in the long term.

Learn more

Want to learn moreabout selling performance support? The eLearning Guild just published a newwhite paper on the subject: SellingPerformance Support: Building Stakeholder Buy-in. Download it free here.

Note from the Editor: Performance Support Symposium 2014 inBoston, Massachusetts, September 8 & 9

The Performance Support Symposium offers you the opportunity to explore provenorganizational strategies for reducing training time while increasing focus ondelivering performance support directly into workflows as needed. Learn how toidentify an appropriate balance between performance support and training, anddiscover how to create and implement a plan that will best suit your specificsituation.

Join other senior professionals September 8 & 9 in Boston, MA for adeep exploration of strategies, case studies, best practices, and technologiesfor performance support, and start charting a course to performance for yourorganization today!