Every day, in everything we do, we communicate. When our goal is to teach something or to share knowledge with someone, we need to be sure that our message is well-understood. Visual communication has that power. Let’s explore why.

When you create a course, it’s important to understand if your learners have retained the knowledge you want to convey, and if you are being effective in sharing that knowledge. Usually, in online training, this means including an assessment chapter at the end of the course. This final evaluation can also be the basis for the student to receive a course certificate.

According to most dictionaries, we know that when there is something missing from a situation that prevents it from being complete or satisfactory, we can say there is a gap. A knowledge gap is a difference that is related to expertise, skills and know-how. It occurs when there is a significant disparity between what an organisation needs and the current capabilities of its staff.

When someone’s pursuit of knowledge is “ongoing, voluntary and self-motivated”, it can be called lifelong learning. Lifelong learning takes a holistic approach to education and development, actively encouraging people to learn throughout their entire lives while enhancing their human potential as a whole. Lifelong learning is different from continuing education of job-based skills development: it has a broader scope and more creative outlets, such as online tools and courses.

If you are yet to be convinced that training your leads, customers, partners, associates and internal staff is a worthwhile investment, here are eight quantifiable ways that training will directly impact your business metrics and will help you build a bullet-proof case for implementing an academy.

The time to make plans for next fiscal year(s) is a busy time for companies: in addition to the wrap-up reporting that takes place, you also need to create or adjust your overall strategy. This makes it the perfect time to build a case to add training as part of your strategy – especially for marketing, sales and customer success. 

In addition to product knowledge, which is absolutely fundamental for your sales reps, different sales skills training is a key factor in boosting sales performance as well as employee confidence and motivation. But which sales skills should be part of your Sales Training Academy?

Regardless of the innumerable benefits a sales academy can bring to your company — and there sure are plenty —, if you fail to prove the impact such an academy will have on the business, it may be difficult to get the necessary buy-in to establish it in the first place.

Creating and fostering a learning culture is quite different to simply having your Learning and Development team deliver a set of training courses. It means creating an environment where knowledge and best practices are shared between employees and teams as a constant practice. Fostering a learning culture is acknowledging that there is a growth mind-set at the core of your company's values.

On our professional and personal lives we are all inundated with content. Nowadays, anyone can post online whatever they deem important. Yet, the more content is available, the more people look for real thought leaders you can trust.