learnability matters

Problem solving through contextual inquiry – A reality

Most solutions to organizational problems begin with a Training Needs Analysis. The phrase itself means that we begin with the premise that there is a “training need”. However, as a learning solutions provider, our duty is to first understand if at all there is a training need. For all you know, the problem could be elsewhere.

Of course, as a consulting company we do begin with a problem handed out by the client. And this is precisely where we began. Our client came to us with a problem that their sales conversion ratio was very poor. They wanted us to develop a training program for the salespeople to increase the conversion ratio by 50%. A fair enough problem for any organization! We took it up from here but did not jump into a solution. We wanted to investigate the problem a little more to understand its genesis – is the problem real or perceived?

This took us to our first step in the process – contextual enquiry and ethnographic study – simply means observation and study of the target learners (in this situation they were the sales people). We went around all the outlets of the organization to observe and study them, how they behaved at their workplace, how they sold, communicated, what were the problems encountered, and how they executed their work. We covered a statistically relevant sample size of the outlets and observed/studied the salespeople in these outlets. We also had in-depth interviews with the supervisors and managers.
Now we reached the second step in the process – analyzing the findings. After numerous painstaking rounds of sifting through the data, we categorized the findings and analyzed them. The findings were startling!

• The actual sales conversion rate was above 50% but customer walk-ins were falling.
• Most of these salespeople were high performing individuals barring an odd one out.
• Most salespeople had trouble convincing the viability of the concepts they were selling rather than lacking in selling skills.
• Most salespeople had no clue about their growth in the organization; they were not clear about their career path.
• All outlets had devised their own selling process that was unique to that outlet and not unique to the organization.
• All outlets had different recruitment standards and processes for their sales people.
• There was no uniformity in the service provided by the outlets.
• The services were priced far higher than the competitors without any clear/convincing differentiators.

In the third step, we presented the findings to the organization. And, weren’t they surprised with the outcome! They had perceived falling revenues from sales to poor sales conversion. However, they realized that the truth lay elsewhere. The salespeople were actually doing a decent of job of whatever customer walk-ins they had. The problem was in their processes. This made them sit up and call for a policy change in the way they ran their operations. They communicated to us that they were re-looking at their sales hiring policies, they were thinking of policies about their career paths, and were redesigning their sales process.

Well, as for training the salespeople, this requirement may come up later depending on their specific needs with respect to the new policies rolled out by the organization. But as far as we were concerned, we had done justice to our role – we helped our client identify the root cause of the problem.

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