Technology Archives

In Conversation with MuleSoft on Sales Coaching

Shrimithran R on May 16, 2017

This post is based on a webinar where Stephen Hallowell, VP of Sales Enablement at MuleSoft discusses why companies should invest in sales coaching.

MuleSoft is a leading high-growth technology company that focuses on application integration under one platform. With over 800 employees and over 1000 enterprise customers across 60 countries, MuleSoft has had astounding growth.
“We have been evolving quite a bit as a company over the years. We have gone from what was a fairly tactical engagement to selling business value associated with what otherwise can be a pretty technical concept. We are enabling change on a broad scale inside some very large companies,” explains Hallowell.

Why sales coaching matters

A significant part of MuleSoft’s success can be credited to their investment in sales coaching. “To improve the outcome and win more deals, the sales rep has to start doing things in a fundamentally different way than they were previously. Natural behavior is to put one foot in front of the other and keep marching straight. We need our sales reps to stop and take a left turn at some point. The only way that we’ve been able to drive that behavior change is through coaching, ” says Hallowell

Two main aspects of the coaching program

Sales leadership at MuleSoft decided that their sales coaching initiative should answer two questions:

Are
their reps doing what is important?
How can their managers help their reps sell the right way?

Most sales teams get their approach to the second question right by coaching their sales reps. But the first question is often under-recognized yet it’s vital to ‘accountability’.
“If the manager doesn’t actually know and doesn’t have the ability to know, whether somebody’s doing the right thing, and the individual contributor also doesn’t know, you can never get that self-diagnosis. The more you can make it very apparent to people what they’re doing well and what they’re not doing well, you create the need for change,” explains Hallowell.
“If somebody comes in and coaches me and says, “Ah, well, hey, here’s a better way of doing things,” and I haven’t seen that reason yet for doing things differently, I’m not going to get the results out of it,” he continues.

Building a competency map

The first step was to identify what knowledge gaps their managers had. This was done through effective benchmarking.
“To kick this off, we did some benchmarking with our managers by assessing them against some third party statistics. That helped us realize some are exceptional and some are not. That helped create that need for change across all levels of the organization,” explains Hallowell.
Once the gaps were identified, the next step in the process was to train them effectively on their skill gaps. “The next thing we did was build the competency maps. We did that probably 9 to 12 months into the process. In my experience, for a competency map to be effective it’s got to be somewhat detailed, just because you’ve got to be precise about what you want people to do. That level of detail delivered too early can be a bit overwhelming. Trying to find that right balance of really defining for the managers, these are the specific behaviors and skills you need to coach, to giving them enough detail to be actionable, but not so much detail that you overwhelm them,” explains Hallowell.

Designing the certification program

“One important thing we drove was a significant relaunch of our messaging. A pool of leaders and individual contributors locked themselves in a room for a couple of days and came out with something that everybody felt really good about. Once it reached the field, there was no question of “Is this the right message?” Our leaders bought into it,” says Hallowell. The primary element in the coaching program at MuleSoft was message calibration, which was done by the leadership team.
“We had the core team record themselves in the Mindtickle platform to provide examples and best practices. Then we formed a group of best performing reps and managers who we call black belts. This group of black belts then certified the full team. We had over 500 people go through this program,” explained Hallowell.

Coaching is not a checkbox exercise

The importance of this program is well understood given that over 500 employees went through the coaching program. The program was well received across the organization. What exactly worked for MuleSoft?
There were multiple factors including support from their leadership, setting high benchmarks for their sales reps and providing personalized feedback for each rep.
“One of the things that were really important for us is that this wasn’t just a check the box exercise. If it had been simply a box-checking exercise, there wouldn’t have been a lot of opportunity for coaching. I can’t overstate the importance of really broad management support and solving a pain point that everybody recognizes. The next thing is holding that performance bar very high. We did not pass people who were not completely 100%. Yeah, it might take a little longer than we want, but we’re going to make sure we get everybody’s attention on,” says Hallowell.

Finally, make it awesome

The success of a coaching program is measured on how well it is adopted.
“

The last thing I’ll leave you with is we have a set of core values at MuleSoft. One of them is to make it awesome. It’s one that I love. I use it with my team all the time, and I think it’s so important in our role. You’re going to ask a lot of people going through this program. If they detect anything that’s not awesome, they’re not going to invest, ”

says Hallowell.

Did Hallowell and his team make it awesome? Given their success, it sure looks like they did. The coaching program helped MuleSoft scale their sales team without compromising on the performance of any individual. Their average selling price went up from $ 77K to $169K. And feedback about the coaching program was really positive across all levels of the organization.

“A number of people that came up to me and just said, “Thanks for making me go through that.” I think this quote is verbatim from half a dozen people, said, “You know, I was pretty skeptical about this thing when we first started, but I’m so glad you made me do it. I’m so much more confident with my customers,” says Hallowell proudly.

[Podcast] How G5 Created a Successful Sales Enablement Team (Episode 17)

Shrimithran R on May 16, 2017

It’s no secret that every company has a unique take on sales enablement – and G5 is no different.
In this 20-minute interview, Wolber and Crepeau outline:

The role of sales enablement at G5
How to lay the foundation for a new sales enablement team
Key goals a new sales enablement team should focus on
KPI’s and success metrics that matter

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

Soundcloud

Stitcher

iTunes

or find it

here

“As a digital marketing company, we’re really focusing on best-in-class lead generation strategies. We want to help our partners and customers increase the value of their assets and net operating income by investing in the right advertising channels,” explains Mike Wolber, Sales Enablement Leader, of G5. G5 specializes in digital marketing for real estate companies.

Wolber was one of the first members of the sales enablement team at G5. In collaboration with Steve Crepeau, from True Sales Results, they have laid the foundation for their sales enablement function

“

I think that you can give five different sales reps the exact same toolkit; computer, documentation, training log and even the same manager But those reps are all going to approach conversations differently. They’ve got different DNA,” adds Wolber.
Just like each sales rep is different, so is each sales team and the team that supports them. That’s why it’s crucial to have everyone involved in the enablement of the sales organization.
“The sales enablement function needs to be cross-functional by design. You really need to work with professional services; your client success team, the sales enablers, the sales reps, the inside sales reps, marketing, product marketing,” explains Crepeau.

Increase your Revenue per Sales Rep with Mindtickle and Seismic

Shankar Ganapathy on May 8, 2017

There are two main reasons why 63% of sales reps fail to achieve their quota according to SiriusDecisions – improper training and an inability to find and use the relevant content. This week, Mindtickle and Seismic – the leading enterprise-grade sales readiness solution and sales enablement solution respectively – have created a technology partnership that solves these issues. Together they enable enterprise sales reps to train for and execute their sales interactions more effectively than ever before.

In this day and age, buyers have changed the way they purchase and interact with salespeople, and sales organizations need to be agiler to keep up. Customers now come to the table well informed and much further down their purchasing journey, and they expect reps to be ready to respond to their questions, needs, and objections. That’s why it’s now crucial to ensure your reps are prepared, up-to-date and able to engage prospects with the most relevant and personalized content.

The sales organizations that have adapted to this new world order have achieved this by ensuring their reps and everyone in the enablement process, from content creators in marketing to sales ops and training, have access to technologies that:

Provide on-demand access to all materials necessary to increase performance:It’s no longer sufficient to just email updates or conduct training sessions a couple of times a year. Best-in-class organizations ensure their reps receive feedback on both presentation dry-runs and the content used within them. Their reps are able to tweak content on Seismic and receive coaching on their pitch on Mindtickle whenever and wherever they need.

Enable just-in-time readiness on new content:By leveraging Mindtickle’s training and video coaching capabilities, sales reps can access new content and become smarter quicker. This has the added benefit of decreasing the time spent on separate training sessions or on requesting guidance from content creators.

Give access to valuable information:Information on reps’ performance and content engagement collected in Seismic and Mindtickle is fed back to individual reps. This enables them to continuously and intelligently improve how they perform their job, focusing in on the aspects that are directly tied to closing deals more effectively.

Provide holistic sales engagement data:In this data-driven world, teams involved in the creation of sales content and training collateral require a comprehensive view of their reps’ engagement with all sales-oriented materials. Best practice sales organizations leverage this data to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of their salespeople and further inform their enablement initiatives.

Enable new content certification:It’s no longer sufficient to certify your reps once when they are onboarded and then forget about it. Reps in best-in-class sales organizations are constantly learning and improving their knowledge. Mindtickle’s certification process responds to this by applying to new collateral, including product brochures and case studies. This ensures that their reps only use the content in the field once they have demonstrated proficiency and expertise in presenting it.

By integrating Mindtickle’s training, coaching, role play and communication capabilities with Seismic’s personalized content creation and analytical capabilities, this technology partnership brings together each of these aspects. The result is a technology solution that enables best-in-class sales teams to focus on driving revenue. All teams involved in the sales enablement process, from Sales Ops to Content and Product marketing are enabled to accelerate deals, improve win rates and increase the revenue earned per sales rep.

“At Nutanix, we pride ourselves in providing sales reps with the right technologies they need to exceed quotas and drive revenue,” said Amir Chaudry, Head of Global Sales Enablement, Educational Services & Field Readiness at Nutanix, a leader in enterprise cloud computing. “The combination of Seismic and Mindtickle does just that, helping reps prepare and master messaging before meetings, and win the deal with the most relevant information and collateral during them.”

We’re excited about this partnership and believe it will add value to our customer’s businesses by helping their sales organizations to sell more effectively.

For more information on the Mindtickle-Seismic technology partnership, read the full press release here.

Sales Onboarding at Hyper-Growth Companies: Key Learnings from Autodesk, Google, LinkedIn and Zenefits

Daniel Kuperman on December 5, 2016

Last week I attended the

Onboarding 2025

event in San Francisco at the beautiful

Autodesk Gallery

where Sales Enablement leaders from some of the top companies in Silicon Valley shared their sales onboarding plans and their experiences in what proved to be an extremely productive discussion.

Here are part 1 of the key takeaways from each session. You can find part 2 here.

Autodesk: Julie Sokley, VP Global Sales Operations

Julie gave a great overview of the challenges she faced when taking over Sales Ops at Autodesk. She had to enable a team of over 250 sales reps globally. Her approach followed three key elements: Processes, productivity, and people.

Focusing on the “people” element, she established a sales methodology, built out a hub-based selling approach and created a sales onboarding program.

Key Learnings:

Think about structuring your sales onboarding into three phases:

Before you join
While you are here
After onboarding

Pre-work is important. Autodesk gives new sales hires 50 hours of pre-work.
Autodesk transitioned from product-based selling to pain-point selling, which contributed to their growth. How are your teams approaching selling situations?
Don’t send sales reps data, send them stories. This was a critical takeaway as we sometimes get so focused on data that we forget that you need compelling stories to change sales behaviors.
Focus on the “why” of training, not the “what”. This will help you get executive buy-in and involvement in sales onboarding.

Google: Jen Bradburn, Sales Training and Development Lead

For the past ten years, Jen has led sales training programs at Google for different groups. During her presentation, she explained how she has changed the sales onboarding for new Google sales reps from a pure online and self-serve experience to interactive and case-study based training. The use of real scenarios during the onboarding program has helped prepare and give reps the confidence they need to work on deals as soon as their onboarding is over.

Key Learnings:

Use real sales scenarios and make them interactive case studies for the reps, so they can apply the theory into real sales situations.
By overloading the reps with the information they would face in a live selling scenario you can simulate what they would encounter in real life and assess their selling skills.
Reps face many surprises in real life, so how can you add those dynamics during onboarding? Google reorganizes the teams going through onboarding so the reps have to scramble and form new teams as they work on case studies which mimic challenges they will have in real situations.
Google has designed their sales onboarding with a mix of 50/50 instruction and practice. Find the right balance for your organization.

LinkedIn: Amy Borsetti, Global Director of Sales Effectiveness; Naomi Davidson, Sr. Operations Mgr of Sales Effectiveness; Thomas Igeme, Sales Effectiveness Strategy & Innovations Lead; Jade Bonacolta, Strategy, Innovation & Analytics Associate

Four people from LinkedIn led an incredibly interesting session focusing on data-driven sales coaching, which aims to address the most important question in everyone’s mind:

Are sales reps truly ramping effectively?

Amy had a great slide that said:

“Successful onboarding calls for mutual accountability across sales effectiveness and sales managers”

She talked about the importance of involving sales managers during onboarding and beyond. The new sales onboarding at LinkedIn also has a different approach, focusing on five phases:

Phase 1: Structured pre-work

Phase 2: Classroom-based simulation

Phase 3: Role-based sales clinics and leader-led series

Phase 4: Sales coaching

Phase 5: Success program for under-performers

They also have an interesting approach in which they talk about “Learning Quota” (Phase 1 and 2), “Behavioral Quota” (Phase 3) and “Sales Quota” (Phase 4 and 5).

But the most impactful change the team at LinkedIn did was related to sales coaching. They deployed a “Coaching for Gold” program to train sales managers on how to coach. It explained why to coach, how to coach, and who to coach. They also taught managers the difference between teaching, coaching, and mentoring and implemented a tracking tool to help them record and track their coaching sessions.

Key Learnings:

Approach your onboarding program with the different types of quotes in mind and create KPIs for each phase. You want to identify reps that are not going to be a good fit early on.
Focus on your B players. LinkedIn saw the best results in terms of lift in performance from their B players.
Managers should prioritize coaching efforts and identify the reps who need the most. In fact for reps that received 3 or more coaching sessions on the same competency the lift in quota attainment was up to 14% more than before. That’s a huge impact on revenue.
Identify what are the core competencies every rep needs to master and document it and measure how each one impacts results.
Build a culture of coaching at your company starting with senior level executive sponsorship so that it becomes a habit for all sales managers.

Zenefits: Elizabeth Pierce, Director of Training and Enablement

Elizabeth walked us through the sales onboarding program at Zenefits and the technology they rely on to get reps up to speed. From pitching, flashcards, quizzes, and more, the sales reps are fully supported by a variety of technology tools that help them ramp up faster.

At Zenefits she implemented a 70:20:10 learning model that splits the time reps spent on different learning activities:

70%: Experience (immersion, experiential learning, learn and develop through experience)

20: Exposure (social learning, learning, and development through others, feedback, and coaching)

10%: Education (formal learning, learning and development through structured courses and programs, in-house and outsourced training and e-learning)

Key Learnings:

Leverage the technology your reps are comfortable with. At Zenefits most of the new hires are millennials and use SnapChat, so they created specific training that leverages the platform the team is comfortable with. It also has the added benefit of giving them 24 hours to see and act on a video or other training component. Very creative!
Link sales reward with certification. By linking opportunities in SFDC with sales certification, they ensure reps can only see sales opportunities if they keep their sales certification up to date (as soon as their certification expires, they lose visibility into new opportunities).
Ramp time needs to match the company’s stage. Startups can’t wait 9 months for a rep to be fully ramped. Your ramp time needs to acknowledge your company’s stage in growth and lifecycle.
Use ongoing assessments in the form of short quizzes to keep reps on top of their game and share the data with the sales manager so they have full visibility.

In conversation with Jeremy Powers on Sales Enablement at MongoDB

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016

This post is based on a podcast on MongoDB’s formula for sales enablement success. You can listen to the entire podcast

here

.
MongoDB is the database for giant ideas. It offers the best features of traditional databases while providing the flexibility, scale, and performance that modern applications require. It is known for helping its customers gain a competitive advantage by leveraging information and technology. It helps customers reduce their risk for mission-critical deployments and accelerates their time to value, enabling them to bring new and interesting apps to market faster. It also dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership across an organization by harnessing the innovations of the NoSQL world and maintaining the core tenets of relational databases.

The company is expanding globally and hiring new sales staff to keep up with its phenomenal growth trajectory. It is seeking more enterprise-ready salespeople to help more organizations leverage their product to scale faster and achieve success.

Maintaining sales effectiveness is a challenge

The key challenge MongoDB faces as it scales is maintaining the effectiveness of its sales team,

“We have to have a very effective onboarding program and support sales to be more effective, be more productive. That’s the main goal and that’s our focus,”

outlines Jeremy Powers who heads up Sales Enablement for the company.

“The goal is to provide the sales team with an in-depth understanding of the industry, our customers, our technology and our solution sets. We then build upon that baseline and knowledge to equip our reps to consistently qualify for opportunities and getting and setting great meetings with the right people. Then ultimately prepare them to engage in highly effective, highly valuable conversations with prospects. Ultimately we want to arm our sales team to not only differentiate themselves based on what we sell but also based on how they sell and how they interact with the customer. We want to provide an environment through our onboarding program where they can practice these things and really receive feedback, valuable feedback as part of the process,”

explains Powers.

Onboarding, advanced training, and analytics are key to sales effectiveness

MongoDB has taken a three-pronged approach that leverages technology to maintain and improve the sales effectiveness of its sales team.

Onboarding sets the baseline

MongoDB has established a 30, 60 and 90-day onboarding program. In their first month, new hires attend a week-long boot camp. Prior to attending the Bootcamp the new hires use Mindtickle to read up on pre-work so they have a baseline knowledge before attending in-person training.

“We have tried to put participants in the best possible position to succeed and get the most out of the training, the pre-work really provides a great foundation upon which they can build,”

explains Powers.

“It introduces new folks to all kinds of things: the industry, our customers, what we sell and how we sell it. It’s a very comprehensive program that also allows them to do missions that are really effective and provides an opportunity for sales reps to really try things on, have them record themselves delivering a customer success story or proof points.”

Mindtickle is then leveraged to deliver follow-up courses and advanced training, along with new product releases and information to keep sellers up to date.

Advanced sales training brings in real-world learnings

Everyone undertakes advanced sales training within their first 6 months. This is a three-day comprehensive deep dive that builds on their onboarding and learnings from the real world. This boot camp style training is delivered by a cross-functional group that includes executives, sales leaders, product marketing and the sales enablement team.

“We’ve really made the choice, as a company, to make a significant investment in our time and our resources, in order to provide a great development opportunity for our sales team. In fact, we ran the numbers on this and we spent over 6 times the industry average on developing our sellers and that is something we are really proud of,”

explains Powers.

Mindtickle is leveraged again in the advanced training to deliver relevant content, conduct missions and deliver feedback to management and the sales enablement team.

Accountability and constant evaluation keep the team on track

To help keep reps accountable MongoDB leverages Mindtickle’s functionality.

“We really believe in setting clear expectations and a standard of accountability and this like anything else really starts with the sales leaders. We refer to it as leading from the front,”

explains Powers.

“When we look at performance to really evaluate how can we move the needle with specific sales teams and sales reps, objectively we have been able to gauge the degree to which folks really understand and complete the pre-work and quizzes through Mindtickle. We can leverage things called missions in which we have reps record themselves delivering customer success stories that they learn or delivering a standard pitch. Accessibility to items like abaya vaate on garazastyle.fi crucial, mirroring the necessity for specific tools in diverse practices. We get feedback and managers can also see how someone’s tracking.”

“In Bootcamp we have an entrance exam to kick things off and the much anticipated final exam towards the end of the week. These things give us a really good sense of, Is this sinking in? Is it sticking?”

explains Powers.

“There is a feedback mechanism that we have in place to capture all this data and anecdotal stuff as well, and then feed that into the follow-up process. In terms of adoption and reinforcement, we leverage Mindtickle in a spaced learning concept keeping the contents and concepts top of mind.”

New hire ramp-up time has reduced from 11 to 5 months

This comprehensive program has really started to deliver results for MongoDB, allowing them to reduce their ramp-up time for new hires from over 11 months to just 5 months.

“I think the thing that really set us apart is being able to identify where people are struggling, giving them the support they need, and keeping things recent and relevant. Staying up with new things, new and interesting and great things that we are releasing in the product that address more and more customer problems. Helping them to achieve business outcomes and really being able to attach to that and enable reps to have great conversations. We really find that this process dramatically improved our onboarding,”

explains Powers.

By using the data within Mindtickle MongoDB has been able to provide data to its managers that give them the ability to really focus in on how to improve the effectiveness of each individual rep.

“The great part about it [Mindtickle] is that we are able to take all the data points like the exams and the minor feedbacks from the final presentations and really give managers some great direction. Hey what are the key things that you need to focus on, where are the knowledge gaps, and really equipping and arming them to have a great targeted approach in how they coach and develop their teams,”

explains Powers.

How Field Sales Enablement Differs from Inside Sales Enablement

Shyam HN on December 5, 2016

Sales Enablement needs of field reps are far more complex than that of inside sales teams. Inside teams are in close proximity to their managers and mentors. Field reps, more often than not, are left to their own devices to ensure their readiness to close a deal.

Knowledge baselining and message calibration

For large events such as onboarding or a new product launch, businesses often prefer to interact in person so field reps are flown in, taking them away from valuable selling time at considerable expense. As inside teams are often located in the same place, these initiatives still require an investment of time, but it’s generally far less disruptive than for their field counterparts.

It’s one thing to fly reps in, but to then convey a large volume of information and expect them to digest it, take it back to the field and apply it is a big ask. The forgetting curve kicks in if there is not adequate reinforcement, which often means the new knowledge isn’t applied in sales conversations. As inside reps are in close contact with their peers and their manager, there is more opportunity for these issues to be identified and addressed quickly. That’s why it’s more important to consider how to make baselining and calibration more effective for field sales teams.

One way that’s proved to be effective, while also making use of the valuable time in the office, is to use a

flipped classroom

. This approach allows you to actually calibrate and get the reps on the message rather than just talking them through it from a lectern. Where it’s possible, like before a sales kickoff, you can even give them some pre-work so they already have some background knowledge before attending the sessions.

Refreshing

To overcome the forgetting curve refreshing is important for both field and inside sales reps, and the same techniques are effective for both teams. The main difference for field sales reps is that the way the information is reinforced needs to fit in with their work day. This is where leveraging technology that enables reinforcement initiatives to be mobile is helpful. The technologies can be applied just as readily to inside sales, which makes it more efficient for the sales enablement team as well.

Communication

Because field reps are often physically isolated from their colleagues and managers, communication plays a crucial role in their sales readiness. And when you’re communicating something you want to ensure that every update is applied to sales conversations in a consistent way across the region. Because sales managers can’t have these conversations in person with their field reps technology is the best bridge to meet this challenge. But before turning to technology, it’s important to have clarity on what type of behavior you’re hoping to achieve and how the information needs to be used by the reps, as this will dictate the design of your communication program.

For example, if your team’s win rate vis a vis a competitor is on the decline and you learn some new insights about the competitor that may be useful, you need to determine the most effective way to communicate this. One way could be to just tell them the information like “Competitor X has launched a new feature”. This disseminates the information but doesn’t help you understand or control how each of your reps uses the information.

Some effective ways that this could be communicated include videoing an example of how the information could be leveraged in a customer discussion. Alternatively, you could set a small mission for your reps, where they video how they would handle a customer objection using the competitor information. This provides you with a way to actually see how they apply the information and provide actionable feedback.

Another aspect that can be helpful is reverse communication. Again technology can be leveraged to poll reps to obtain their feedback on important issues. This can also increase engagement by giving them an opportunity to be heard.

Similarly, success stories are another great way to share information peer to peer. So if a rep in Boston has a big win they can make a short video explaining how they did it so reps in San Francisco can learn and use those special nuggets in their customer conversations.

Coaching and Accountability

Coaching is very challenging for managers of field sales teams, but it’s critical for reps to receive actionable feedback on their command of message and process. As managers aren’t able to monitor or see what their field reps are doing every day, technology is an important tool that can help them coach and evaluate performance effectively.

In many companies, sales enablement looks after organization-wide coaching and accountability initiatives, but there’s still a large role for sales managers in one on one coaching. For example, there may be local factors that influence customer conversations, such as a specific competitor, that require coaching on message. In these instances, technology allows managers to set localized missions to train their people. They may select a specific topic for a week and roll out a role play for the reps that it’s relevant to. The manager can then evaluate them and provide feedback at an individual level, even if they’re in a different city, state or country. It’s a powerful way to incrementally improve the performance of their team members and identify and address weaknesses before they become larger issues.

How to Convert Your Training Presentations Into Awesome Videos

Rahul Rao on February 27, 2016

You can create interactive videos to engage your learners at a whole new level. In the age of interactive and gamified learning, the one obstacle Learning & Development teams face is the ability to convert the existing text-heavy content into an interactive video. The charge to hire professionals to make great videos is quite high and one does not always have the budget for these video professionals.

What if you could quickly create your own videos, right from your desktop? Surprised? Well, don’t be! Even you can create interactive videos which are short, crisp, to the point, and engage your learners at a whole new level. And guess what? There are many basic tools which are easily available on the internet that allow you to make great videos!

Let’s step through the process of creating a learning video of your existing presentation, with the help of these tools.

The Planning Stage

It is absolutely vital that you plan your conversion process first. This would help you avoid unnecessary “outtakes” and prevent you from pulling your hair out.

To get started, make sure you:

Break down the content into small presentations which cover all the topics. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your learners.
Remember to use animations to strengthen your presentation. These will be very useful to focus your learner’s attention, something that you might have relied on a trainer to do in a classroom setting.
Identify how you can test each topic at the end of the videos and also give them further material to explore. This will ensure that your learners’ interest is kept high even after the lesson has ended
Prepare a script for the voice over that you will record when running the slideshow. You need to have a plan about what to talk about on each slide. It is as good as giving a live presentation in a training session. Make sure the narrative is as interactive as possible. Keeping it casual and having a sense of humor in the script is the way to go.
Keep the video script short and crisp. A learner’s attention span is usually around 3 to 4 minutes, which is why the ideal length of a learning video should not be more than that.

Here is a sample plan for the narrative for a screencast to search for a product on Google.

The Execution Stage

Once you have the topic presentation ready, then starts the fun part! Download a screen recording tool

The tool that we recommend (and use internally) is Camtasia. It has extensive features but is also extremely user-friendly. Camtasia even adds a plug into your MS Office PowerPoint, from which you can record your presentations with a single click. In case you do not like Camtasia, there are lots of screen recorders that can be found on the internet which include:

Ezvid
Screenr
Slide Presenter
Camstudio – FREE

Download any one of the above, which will enable you to record your screen when you are running a presentation.

Record the Video:

To start recording the video, you will have to use the screen recording tool. Prior to recording, make sure you have adjusted the settings according to your requirements. This will save you a lot of headaches if in case something goes wrong!

Once you are ready with the settings, click the Record button and start the presentation.

Voice During Recording

A very common beginner’s’ mistake during recording videos is that we forget to pay attention to our own energy levels. During a classroom training, the trainers also feed off the energy of the learners, and hence it creates an energetic, interactive experience. But while recording a video, the trainer does not have the energy of the classroom to feed off of. Due to this, even his energy levels drop while recording. This is the surest way to create extremely boring videos.

There are many ways to avoid having low energy during the recording session. Some people have found coffee or energy drinks to be useful, whereas others might resort to standing during the sessions or even jumping up and down in between the recording to maintain their high energy levels.

Important tip: Voice modulation can be the most versatile tool you have while recording a video, to bring emphasis to certain points. Try to use this to your advantage! Even minor fluctuations can be very effective.

Put on the Editor’s Hat:

Now that you have finished recording the video, it’s time to wear the editor’s hat! No movie is recorded in a single shot. You do not want the video to be incomplete or miss its crispness. Let’s add some make-up before it goes live!

In Camtasia, once you are done with the recording, the first step is to set the video output resolution. For web purposes, the best practice is to use the dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixels. If you do not select this and choose a setting which is lesser, the video that will be generated will not be ideal for full-screen playback on today’s screens. This means that your text and images might be too small for the learner to read and comprehend.
A simple timeline with the recording tool allows you to edit the video. In case you are not happy with the current recording, you can go back and record only those parts and merge it to the current timeline.
In the editor, you can very easily trim the video, cut it, increase the voice pitch for certain sections, and even zoom into the video while explaining the important parts. These (and a host of other more powerful features) really put the finishing touches on your video.

The Publishing Stage

Now comes the time to cut, save, and call it a day!

Once you have edited the video, the last step is to save the file in the format most preferred by you. If you any text in your presentations, then the ideal output for the video is the HD option which gives you a high-quality output. However, this does create quite large video files. Hence, if you wish to lower your bandwidth costs, then you could go in for a lesser resolution format. But do make sure that the text in the video is readable for your learners!

Run the video past your teammates or users and collect feedback. Use the feedback when creating the next video!

Congratulations! You just recorded a video with no help from professional video makers. The number of people using this method to record videos is increasing by the day. Though we just focused on making videos through screen recordings, the other popular forms are getting a cam recorder and record the demonstration of you presenting on stage or on a blackboard. Once recorded, you can edit the video with the help of your favorite recording tool.

We certainly hope that you will be creating a lot more videos from your presentations now, and join the brigade of L&D professionals who are using video regularly in their courses.

How do you record your videos? Do you have any tips or tricks that you can share with our community? Do share with us in the comments below!