Heidi Hartman

#1

TITLE:

Just-In-Time Learning for a Difficult to Reach Sales Team

CHALLENGE:

Despite the fact that there are thousands of learning assets (e.g. high quality online courses, feature sheets, white papers, videos) posted and readily available on a company’s intranet site, the perception of most of the sales account managers is that they do not receive adequate training on any of the products that they sell.  When account managers do not feel comfortable talking about a product with a customer, they do not sell it – which is a problem.  The  product portfolio is continually expanding into new unfamiliar technologies making it more important than ever for account managers to get up to speed quickly.

To be fair, these account managers are incentivized to be in front of the customer and generating revenue – which limits the time they can dedicate to searching for the information they need and then blocking out time to study. The challenge is to get the right training in the hands of the account managers at the right time in the selling process.

THE NUDGE:

All account managers are required to use Salesforce.com to track customer contacts and to manage their sales pipelines.  When the account manager identifies a new sales opportunity, they are required to define that opportunity in Salesforce.com.  When defining an opportunity, the account manager must select the vertical market/market segment as well as the primary product or solution identified for that customer opportunity.

Here is an example of the Salesforce opportunity definition screen.

Our recommended nudge requires some fairly simple event based programming within the Salesforce.com application.  Each time an account manager enters a new opportunity and selects the target market and product or solution – the program would capture the values that are selected.  In turn, the system would generate a message asking the account manager if they would like to receive an email containing links to any learning assets that are available for that particular combination of target market and product or solution.  The account manager can answer yes or no – retaining their ability to choose – and can even opt out of continuing to receive these messages.

ANTICIPATED OUTCOME:

The anticipated outcomes of this nudge are

• Account managers will have access to the learning assets they need at a time in the selling process that they are most critical
• Account managers will grow more comfortable engaging in customer conversations around new expansion technologies
• The perception of the availability of learning will improve

Your recent post appears to have been written under the influence of alcohol.

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Please consider holding off on posting this message until you have had time to sober up.

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ANTICIPATED OUTCOME:

While we do not believe that this nudge will eliminate all cases of regrettable drunken Facebook posting, we are confident that it has the potential to limit some instances. As a side note, we also believe that there is an opportunity to expand this type of nudge protection to text messaging as well!

It is interesting to note that we uncovered evidence that we are not the first team to suggest this type of intervention.   We stumbled upon several articles that described similar strategies.

Facebook offers solution to end drunken posts, December 11 2014, BBC News, Technology, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30432493

To drunk for Facebook?  This tool may help, November 9 2010, Skoola, http://www.skoola.com/read_news.php?id=155

#3

TITLE:

NUDGING THE GREEN CONSCIENCE OR APPEALING TO THE CONSUMER’S BETTER SELF

CHALLENGE:

Despite overwhelming evidence that water bottles and disposable coffee cups are creating floating islands of plastic waste in our oceans and overfilling landfills, many Americans continue to consume water from plastic bottles and use throw-away coffee cups in continually increasing numbers.  It’s not a matter of getting the message across to consumers.  They get it.  The problem is that when confronted with the choice, the convenience of the disposable containers seems to win out.

THE NUDGE:

It is our hypothesis that the same consumers that are likely to have the disposable income required to continually purchase cases of plastic water bottles and daily Starbucks coffees are the same consumers that are more likely to be influenced by the approval or disapproval of their peers.

The idea for our nudge leverages a technique employed by consumer protection agencies wanting to ensure that the dangers of cigarette smoking were plastered in a raw and disturbing way on the cigarette labels.

Nudge Inspired by…

In the same spirit of “ugly truth” labeling, we propose that manufacturers of disposable water bottles and coffee cups be required to label their products with images representing the impact that continuing to use these products has on our ecosystem.

ANTICIPATED OUTCOME:

We anticipate that the constant reminder of uncomfortable images along with the sense that anyone seeing you use one of these cups or bottles is immediately judging your character and will provide enough deterrent to significantly reduce the consumption of these pollution causing containers.