Learning plays an important role in getting your organization ready for the digital world and for social selling. To effect lasting change of habits in your sales team and beyond, Marketing should cooperate with the Learning & Development (L&D) team. In this episode, we talk with L&D expert Anna Bejgrowicz from Deutsche Telekom about how she and her Marketing team successfully established a social selling program across 9 countries. We cover:
Listen in!
About Anna:
Anna Bejgrowicz is a Learning & Development professional with 8 years experience in the IT & telecommunications industry, working for Atos and Deutsche Telekom Group. In her current role at Deutsche Telekom B2B Europe she is the Lead for Learning and Development within the Digital & Cloud Services group, serving the sales & technical communities across 8 countries in the CEE region and in India.
Before entering the ICT world, Anna was on the path to a career in international relations and diplomacy, when she decided she’d rather use her talents in business. Ever since, she’s enjoyed using her competencies in stakeholder management as well as her leadership and interpersonal skills to affecting lasting change in corporation.
Most recently, she successfully implemented a social selling program in her organization – in partnership with her marketing team.
Anna believes in an approach where learning is effective when linked to personal and business objectives while bringing the learners joy. She lives & works in Toruń, Poland, the birthplace of world-renowned astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus.
Connect with her or follow her on LinkedIn
Anna's favorite L&D group on LinkedIn: L&D SHAKERS | Groups | LinkedIn
Anna's favorite book on establishing successful habits: Atomic Habits by James Clear
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
Learning plays an important role in getting your organization ready for the digital world and for social selling. To effect lasting change of habits in your sales team and beyond, Marketing should cooperate with the Learning & Development (L&D) team. In this episode, we talk with L&D expert Anna Bejgrowicz from Deutsche Telekom about how she and her Marketing team successfully established a social selling program across 9 countries. We cover:
Listen in!
About Anna:
Anna Bejgrowicz is a Learning & Development professional with 8 years experience in the IT & telecommunications industry, working for Atos and Deutsche Telekom Group. In her current role at Deutsche Telekom B2B Europe she is the Lead for Learning and Development within the Digital & Cloud Services group, serving the sales & technical communities across 8 countries in the CEE region and in India.
Before entering the ICT world, Anna was on the path to a career in international relations and diplomacy, when she decided she’d rather use her talents in business. Ever since, she’s enjoyed using her competencies in stakeholder management as well as her leadership and interpersonal skills to affecting lasting change in corporation.
Most recently, she successfully implemented a social selling program in her organization – in partnership with her marketing team.
Anna believes in an approach where learning is effective when linked to personal and business objectives while bringing the learners joy. She lives & works in Toruń, Poland, the birthplace of world-renowned astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus.
Connect with her or follow her on LinkedIn
Anna's favorite L&D group on LinkedIn: L&D SHAKERS | Groups | LinkedIn
Anna's favorite book on establishing successful habits: Atomic Habits by James Clear
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
Let's get straight to business. Whether you want to optimize your lead generation, make the most of your marketing budget or gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the field. Monika Ruzicka and Lisa Davidson give you the expert insights on social selling to take your business to the next level. This episode is brought to you by ready for social, the b2b, social selling experts. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to straight to business. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of our podcast about social selling and b2b. Today, Monika and I are looking into how marketing and learning and development can cooperate to make your social selling approach successful. We know that bringing a social selling or employee advocacy program to your organization or sales team is heavy lifting for marketers. And as you know, change does not happen automatically by giving people tools and a one of training. marketing pros like you guys listening at home are very skilled and equipped to influence people outside their organization, such as prospects or customers. The learning and development team on the other hand is doing similar work inside the organization. The focus of l&d is to help the organization grow, build the right skill set and create training that affects lasting change. Today, we will explore with Annabelle COVID and Ella de expert with hands on experience in implementing social selling at scale, how you as a marketer can cooperate with L&D to make the most out of your social selling program and deliver results to your organization. With that, I'd like to welcome our guest speaker Anna Bejgrowicz. Hi, Anna, we're so excited to have you on our show today.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Hello, welcome Monika. Welcome, Lisa. Thank you for having me.
Monika Ruzicka:Hi. Hi, Anna. Hi, Lisa.
Lisa Davidson:Hi. So before we focus on the specifics of how marketing and L&D can cooperate, I'd like to give our listeners some more information about you Anna. You guys need to know that Anna is a learning and development professional with eight years of experience in the IT and telecommunication industry working for Atos, and Deutsche Telekom group. In her current role at Deutsche Telekom B2B Europe. She is the lead for Learning and Development with the Digital and Cloud Services group. Her branch is serving the sales and technical communities across eight countries in the Central and Eastern European region and India. Before entering the ICT world, Anna was on the path to a career in international relationships and diplomacy, when she decided she didn't step use her talents in business. Since then, she has been enjoying using her competencies in stakeholder management, and her leadership and interpersonal skills affect lasting change in her corporation. Most recently, Anna successfully implemented a social selling program in her organization in partnership with her marketing team. She believes in an approach where learning is effective when linked to personal and business objectives while bringing the learners joy. Anna lives and works in Torun, Poland, which is by the way, the birthplace of the world renowned astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus. So as you can see, Anna has an impressive background with various influences. But before we dive deeper into today's topic, I'd like to ask Anna if she could describe her current role a little more to help you listeners at home picture her day to day business life.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Yes, thank you, Lisa, for this introduction. Well, when I describe my role, I like to say I'm there for my colleagues when they need me on their professional path. So my official role is Learning and Development lead of the Digital and Cloud Services team in the B2B Europe segment in Deutsche Telekom. But to be honest, we actually work closely with HR and L&D teams in those eight countries of Central Eastern Europe and India. And we have one goal, to make sure our colleagues in Telekom across the region, have all the right skills, so consult, to sell and to deliver cloud services, simply to accompany our customers in the digital journey.
Lisa Davidson:Thank you so much for this explanation, Anna. I'm sure our listeners can imagine your role much better now. So let's jump to our actual topic. How do you see the importance of social and digital selling from your perspective?
Anna Bejgrowicz:I want to say that the world is changing fast, and we need to make sure we are online to keep the pace. I believe we all know that already. But there was this meme with a question that was viral in the internet, who has started digital transformation in your company? And there were three three answers as far as I remember, CTO, CEO or COVID. And the COVID was the chosen answer in this meme. We were I think all forced to think about that more and think about it reasonably, not as an interim solution to use online. But as a long lasting plan with the definition on how actually the good looks like here. If you ask me about the importance of social and digital selling, I would say, if we want to be there with customers, and with our partners, social selling is the way to go. And my definition of social selling is, well, the way you actually position yourself to the global marketplace. Because if you think about LinkedIn, or Twitter, those forums, social forums, they probably serve the biggest opportunities online, and they serve you with the possibilities to present your brand, or your values and your products to the world, thousands, millions of people. Someone once said that, once something gets an internet, it will never disappear. So no pressure on this podcast and our work here today. But this is also why it's so important to get the social selling cried, it will always be there. And we can always constantly work on making the progress there.
Monika Ruzicka:Yes, I liked that meme that you mentioned, Anna. And we had recently our first guest speaker Björn Radde from T-Systems. And as you mentioned that some things that are online will always be there. He had his famous saying that when you are considering what you should post on social media, you should think about whether your current CEO will like it, whether your future CEO will like it, and whether your mother will like it. And if that doesn't pass the filter, you should not post it.
Anna Bejgrowicz:That's a very wise rule, I would say.
Monika Ruzicka:Yes, yes. So But let's come to the next question. But I wanted to mention also that I've observed that is stressing a lot of people like a lot of sales people that are new to social selling, that they are obviously very well experienced in talking with clients and starting conversations in the offline world or by email on the phone. But what stresses them a lot is actually the fact that it's so public, everything that you do on social media, but anyways, I'm sure we will come to that.
Lisa Davidson:Right. Yeah. So Anna, you played a significant role during the social selling implementation at DT? How did that work to have social selling as part of a go to market strategy while following and l&d cooperation with the marketing team?
Anna Bejgrowicz:So everything I just mentioned that, you know, we all understood, and it was a learning curve for us that we need to go online and need, we need to be really good at it to attract to our brand to make people aware of what we do, what kind of services do we sell. And that we have people who are fully capable to do that, not only face to face like we used to do before pandemic but also online now. So in Digital and Cloud Services we have we went through a learning curve and needed to step our presence learning. For me, it's like a behavior change, right. So implementing the social selling program actually kick-started this one. And definitely I'm not the one to take the honors for that. But I was very happy when this year's marketing team invited me to cooperate. So at the same time training became a natural part of the go to market strategy. And this is actually what I love, in any cross functional project that we work together. And that we bring our best sites to the table to create something really valuable. But speaking about the training itself, I was listening to one of your previous episodes, to be honest. And there was Andreas Klauser, from Zoom, was stressing the point of the right training for sales teams. Of course, as learning professional, I will I won't say no to the right training. But I would like to add maybe add another flavor to that. Because sometimes another format than training can also help or nicely supplement the training efforts. And this is the approach we have also taken in DCS and in Deutsche Telekom. We've actually started with an idea for training in a basic format, you might say that it was like one on one course on how to make the social media profile best in class, how to leverage it, how to use various features on Twitter and LinkedIn, just simply to remove this obstacle of not knowing how to do it because you will be surprised but still, many people didn't know that they didn't have the right wording or they didn't use the picture that was professional enough. So we really cleared out the obstacles of knowledge there. At the same time, the team has received access to ReadyForSocial, which made them a practice what was preached. And this how the application part started application part of the knowledge that they gain. And with the application of the knowledge, also a lot of questions arise. So how to apply the perfectly prepared profile into the routines people have, how to actually use my values in all of that, how to represent myself as a salesperson, but of course, also a representative of the company. And who am I in this actually. So, how to keep the authenticity of things. And these questions started to pop up. So we needed to do something about them, we took the decision to add a new format to the training program, which was office hour. And it was one where people could actually come to with their questions and concerns. And although it was done online, it was regular enough to establish a pattern, but also not too often to keep it visible in the working hours. And every several months talking about the format, we have also had a context for like the best performing post, which was announced in advance so that people can prepare and they can have a small, small reward based on their performance. It always works. On the last session of the training program, we also summed up all the efforts of the team to see what was the reach that we managed to gain as a team. So what were the overall results, we also shared the best performing posts, and then the awards. And what I particularly liked about it, and this really worked nicely as an application format of the training is that because it was the last session, that graduation session, they must set you might say, it was nice to show the best posts and to still drive some results out of that. So why were the best what worked? What kind of reactions we gained, what was the reach? How many leads did we get from this? So it was all very tangible, and very, very manageable for everyone to understand how actually this post ended up are being a good social selling tool, and how this training become a nice social selling tool. So we are we were actually learning to the last moment, right, so it was not one off, it was still working, working on it to the last moment. And we've great blog posts prepared by the ReadyForSocial team, we could continue the habit of building our expertise, reaching out to the customers and boosting our confidence in the social selling profile.
Monika Ruzicka:Nice. It sounds like a really good blueprint that you have described there for the for the training. And I just have one question for our listeners. How big was the group that you trained for social selling? And was it across all your different regions? And how did you organize the trainings? Yeah, basically, how did you go about that?
Anna Bejgrowicz:Sure. So it was in my team Digital and Cloud Services, we have about 100 colleagues, working in different roles. These were not only sales roles, I must say so of course, the social selling part was the one that was most interesting for sales. But we also understood that social selling work nicely for the pre sales and technical roles, because it worked as a kind of a brand building tool, right? So 100 People here and there, right, because of course not maybe everyone took part in all of the sessions we had. But I might say that those 100 people were there in the process. And when it comes to the training organization, they were of course online, because we were already in the pandemic phase when everyone was working from home, but we kept it the same day, during the week to organize it, we kept mostly the same timing, with some slight changes from here to there. And because of that, that already know soaked into the pattern of the every day work. And it became a habit for people. So they already knew that. Okay, this is when I have the session. This is when I have the office hours. So maybe this is also the time when I can prepare my questions or worries or concerns about the process. And if you asked me about the geographical representation, it was, of course we have different like sales team in different countries. So the participation might be a bit bigger in one country, but we have bigger representational sales, and maybe a bit lower in other countries. But we tried to keep it even. We tried to keep them in a way that we knew that in every country of the blueprint, there is at least someone who can maybe also in the future, perform the role of the trainer or show some best practices to the others. And what we decided also to do in terms of format is that social selling course was one of the onboarding formats on the checklist for new joiners. So especially for the salespeople, it was important that when they joined the team, they knew that actually they will get the tools that will help them do the social selling. So not only the training not only the office hours, but also the access to ReadyForSocial and frequent blog posts that they could share and personalized.
Monika Ruzicka:it sounds it sounds really well well organized and structured, how you went about it. And what was the what was the overall timeframe if you can say that from like, the time over which you train the people with recurring trainings and office hours and so on.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Yes, actually, I would say that we had two waves of the program. And the one wave was like one year because we wanted to split the the activities throughout the months, we didn't want to bombard the people with all the activities in one week. So it might seem that you know this one year or half a year if we exclude different holidays. It's it's quite a long time. But actually, because of that it helps to build those patterns. And it helped to make it a normal thing, right, not something that will be organized once. And that's all. Now you go there to the to then use what you what you have. But actually it was like a support system that we built in this timeline. So I would say one year, minus different holidays. But it was safe enough to just test a different format that test different social media. So not only LinkedIn, but also Twitter, and see what works best for for who. So I would recommend not to hurry up things because the change is difficult. And colleagues, our teams just need to have time to get used to it. So please take your time. I know sometimes the time is money. And sometimes especially in selling, we need to have the KPIs and different business outcomes very fast. But if we take the change and people into consideration, time would actually work for our benefit.
Monika Ruzicka:Yeah, so one year might seem a lot to you know, some people who might be listening and just getting started with the process in their organization. But from also from my experience, I would say that, just as you mentioned, it's really building new habits and new skills with the salespeople. So I think one year is a really good timeframe where you can help people build sustainable habits, answer questions that come up during, you know, the process, as you said, while people are actually using their new skills, and then during that first year, it's not that you will only start seeing some outcomes after the year is over. Right. You know, people will build their networks, they will start sharing content. So I think one year is a really good timeframe.
Anna Bejgrowicz:And you spotted that nicely. First thing is to get to know the tooling. So what what do I actually use? If I'm comfortable with using that. What do I need to do about the content? Where is my place in all of that? Because I think that being yourself in all of that is very important. So so then the implementation actually some results they come after, after some time. So, yes, this is this is the recommendation to take your time on that.
Monika Ruzicka:Yeah. And people need to get comfortable with, exactly as you described it the balance of, well, I'm sharing content that relates to my company, and to my current work on my personal LinkedIn profile. So how do I strike a balance? What's gonna be my tone of voice? How am I still being authentic? Because a lot of the people that start new with social selling, they have never posted anything on LinkedIn before, or, you know, maybe they have liked something, or commented on something, but they haven't really shared any content of their own. So I think that's another thing, which really takes time for people to get comfortable with.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Couldn't agree more here. Yes, definitely.
Lisa Davidson:Anna, maybe you could share some of your own experiences with using LinkedIn to build and maintain relationships? And do you think there's some new opportunities for people that they wouldn't have in like the normal world when they, you know, call their prospects or do it face to face?
Anna Bejgrowicz:Yes, if we have time for a longer story, I can share one. So because no stakeholders management, it's like one of the most important topics for me in work life, in general, in private life as well. But in work life, it's for me, it's the foundation of actually doing the business. So here, I felt actually when you know, the pandemic started, and sorry, for those listeners who hate listening about pandemic again, I know it's getting better, but it's a reference point. And this was an important milestone also in the business life. So how we started to approach no hybrid and so on, so forth. So for me when it started, I felt actually like, I don't know, an actress on the stage of the workplace. So let me explain why. I ended my work in in Atos, in the IT company. So that was in January, it was 2020. When pandemic stroke, yes. So in February already, I was working in Deutsche Telekom. And I started in February when that was the moment that was the month when, when COVID started in Europe. And my feeling was that I left one workplace, stakeholders and partners and move on to a new one, but already in a changed environment fully online. So those meetings face to face started to fade away. And then they seem through the distance. And because it was in the previous workplace, they seemed even like ancient history for me. So I remember still going to that transfer meeting to Bonn in Germany. But when I was leaving the plane, I needed to leave my data to the Ministry of Health already, because the flight we had some passengers from Asia with the highest COVID risk back then. So I already knew that something is coming, something is changing. So when in the first week, I sat down in my home office, first days of my employment in DT, and I had this tabula rasa, like clean sheet feeling, I need to build my stakeholders map from the very beginning, I need to build it now online, and set up the foundation for my work. So the video calls and online presence filled the void of no face to face contact. And suddenly, it started to be more natural than ever to do the business online. I just needed to make connections online if I wanted to survive and actually start doing my job properly. Now, because you can imagine that being a new hire in a new company, you know, no one, or maybe three people who helped you to hire you, and you need to establish those relationships to work properly. So I remember I started to be more open to online contacts then myself, I started to reach out to my colleagues in the team. It was nine countries back then. So again, circa 100 people knowing almost anyone and started to make the appointment, you know, finding the time in the Tetris calendars that people had back then because everyone went online. So the agendas were went crazy. And I needed to do the same for the contractors or business partners for training, delivery or consulting. And what I discovered, it was amazing how beautifully vulnerable most of people were and what level of trust I've managed to build over the distance of 1000s of kilometres actually. So sitting in my home office, I've missed most possibility to challenge my thinking and with someone and get some inspiration, this is what I miss the most when it comes to working face to face. So then I thought what to do, right? I've set up my deal of conference calls, but I need to do something else. And then I decided to dig into LinkedIn. And I discovered that many new learning communities are forming up during pandemic. So people started to share their learning challenges, they started to be more willing to learn something new themselves. I've joined some of those communities. First of all, I started to observe, find my place. Now I'm more experimenting and asking questions, and collaborating with them. But the first couple of weeks was difficult just to find myself there. And I can't count how many online l&d conferences came to light for me because of these communities. And I've also received a proposal to write an article to a newsletter, fellow l&d professionals started to contact me about research they're doing on different formats of learning, like informal learning gamification, I was pretty happy back then when I was participating in the social selling program myself, because I started to pay more attention on what what is in my profile, so that the right people get in touch with me. So it was interesting to do this, like meta level of things and look into my profile, and how my presence looks like so that those L&D connections will be better suited. So you might ask, what about the offline stakeholders then, right? If I was uncomfortable to do the connections online? But actually, I'm often surprised how fast do I receive a reply via LinkedIn. And I quickly realized that those often stakeholders moved to online as well. And even though we didn't have a chance to meet face to face, yet, after the pandemic, we are still connecting online. And it's just actually additional formal to conduct our discussions. So I'm sure that because of being online, together, we just made the bond stronger, and it will be there right now when we are getting back to many face to face workshops and meetings.
Monika Ruzicka:Thank you for sharing that story. And I think it's really interesting to have such a firsthand experience. I think everybody has that kind of story of how their life changed. But what I think is so interesting, is that how it coincided for you with starting your new job and you know, being completely disrupted with all your existing relationships, and not being able to go fly to see your different teams in the countries how you manage all of that. One question:Would you mind for our listeners, so we can put that in the show notes afterwards. If you have like one or two of your favorite communities on LinkedIn, maybe other people who listen to our episode would be interested in checking those communities out to joining them as well.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Of course, I would like to give a big shout out to the L&D shakers community. So this is also one of the biggest learning and development communities out there on LinkedIn. And this is a lovely welcoming community of people who are actually in I don't know how many countries now because it's a true global community. Every time someone has a challenge, they just write a post. And there is always tremendous amount of different tech piece of advice and articles and resources. They're helping each other as much as they can. So definitely, the Shakers will be, I think they want to know me, I would shout out maybe it's not fair for the others, but actually, that was also the one that really made me feel welcome in this online environment.
Lisa Davidson:Great. Thank you for sharing. We definitely put those inputs information in the show notes. So we spoke a lot about social selling implementation, the effects of the pandemic and your personal role, your input during the DT social selling implementation, and also about leveraging tools such as LinkedIn. Now, I'd like to dig a little deeper regarding the learning aspect of our topic. Can you maybe explain to our listeners how they can make learning sustainable?
Anna Bejgrowicz:That's a very good question. And there are people out there who are spending their whole lives on finding the answer. So much research is also done and many books written. But I was recently reminded in one of the training programs, I've joined in Deutsche Telekom that learning needs to have an ongoing flow of knowledge, then application, and then evaluation. So these are actually three points that we need to remember, one, one's learning something, there is a theory there is an application, so practical part and evaluation. So feedback that we either give ourselves or get from others, or, you know, have this self reflection of how it is going. And as I work with my team on variety of things, from our skills in personal development, to technical skills of technologies, that are really often through tongue twisters, application part is the most difficult one. And in online environment, it's rather easy to serve the theory. So it's easy to make people aware that there are things that they need to learn what is the vocabulary they need to use? What are the theories or concepts they need to grasp. Evaluation is also pretty manageable, because you can ask someone for feedback, you can see in your own action, how does this learning work for you, but application as mentioned is the hard part. And I work in the team that is, I'm lucky because they feel very strong accountability towards learning. And in this scenario, we are putting a lot of emphasis into micro learning. And micro learning is actually you know, serving yourself and not just the learning, not just learning nuggets, or learning pieces, however you'd like to call them. So these are tiny pieces of knowledge that you can apply instantly. And you can evaluate quite quickly, some small things that you feel that will work for you. And this micro learning also was an idea that caused some challenges that we did for the team. So when we were all working off online, and we still do mostly, we are, for example, doing this 21 Day Challenge where people receive a learning nugget every day, they learn something new, sometimes they need to implement their knowledge in the real life scenarios. And then of course, they know if this was working for them or not. So this micro learning is actually something that helps a lot to keep learning sustainable. Because then well, learning is embedded in the flow of work. It's easy to find, like five minutes for your learning nugget every day. And you know, also it goes around the concept of building habits, right, Monica has already pointed that out. But I don't know if someone already mentioned this book here in the podcast. But I'm a huge fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear. And he is describing on how to form a habit. Also, you can apply it to the habit of learning. And he writes down in this book that he needs to make it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying enough to build the habit and stack the habits to make them irresistible. And this is the same applies to learning so your learning habits can lead you to some let's call it a rabbit hole of Alice in Wonderland right world where you chase the next piece of knowledge as I reflect upon it and repeat and again. So with learning, as I mentioned, we are changing behavior. So before we start, it's good to define what we want to change work with maybe your l&d team professionals, coach, whoever you need to support the path of change, and apply it in your real life scenarios just to make it a part of your life. Because if you don't, then it's easy just to get distracted and you know, pursue another goal.
Lisa Davidson:I love that I love the micro learning and it makes you feel so accomplished too.
Anna Bejgrowicz:That's a very good point. So you get the impression that you achieved something quite quickly right? You can also call it baby steps approach. But actually this celebration and feeling of accomplishing something fast. This is something that is really working nicely for the concept.
Lisa Davidson:Yeah. Monica, I think you wanted to add something?
Monika Ruzicka:I just wanted to say that I really liked the idea of micro learnings as well. I hadn't heard that term before. But I totally get it. And I think it's something that I will incorporate in my future trainings as well.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Nice to hear it. Yeah, of course, you know, micro learning is good, especially for the for people who already know what they want to learn, they already have the basics of the topic they want to learn. Yeah, sometimes micro learning is better. Because when you learn something from scratch, you really need to have like a full blown program with all the elements inside the pillars like what will be covered, what are the modules who is going to train you. So we need to have the whole program the curriculum of training, to feel comfortable that you start from scratch. So you start with the basic vocabulary, you go with the trainer, there is always someone who will help you. But if you're already a professional who knows what they want, right, then it's it's easier to make those tiny things happen in your work life. And just use it for your own advantage of going forward.
Monika Ruzicka:Yeah, that makes sense. And combining the two I think sounds like a good way for sustainable earning.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Yes, that would be a recipe.
Lisa Davidson:So Anna, how can we translate that field to marketers? Are there different learners personas in the marketing field? What have you seen there?
Anna Bejgrowicz:Exactly. You captured that really nicely, Lisa. Because in the L&D world, we as L&D pros, we are becoming more and more like marketeers. So we have in sales we have buyer personas about in learning, we have learners personas. And actually, this is a very new topic for me as well. But something that I was observing, and I was feeling that this coming because also working with different professionals across this couple of years, I noticed that there are different things in learning that gets people going right. So I started to team up with a company that is actually doing marketing just for learning, and maybe about that in either next episode that I will join. But actually, this is a very new topic. And I'm pleasantly surprised how many common things are in marketing and learning and development. And here, I would just like to mention that no having those learner personas, which I defined for my learners, probably they are learning about that from this podcast, it's so much easier to build the training content based on that, because I know what gets them going. I know what our values I know them based on the learner personas, when do they have time? What are the learning formats they prefer? What is the goal that they have? What are the KPIs? What are all of these things in the role in their assignments that they are worried or paying attention to every day? So then I can just simply analyze this data and plan the well development action, it doesn't need to be just training that will suit this needs. Well, so that it's like a like a suit, right, tailor made, because there is this phrase in the world of l&d that there is no one size that fits all. And maybe it sounds obvious, but the more we go into the learning that development researchers, we see that people need a personalized approach, like the products people buy based on their personal recommendations. So also, the training needs to be personalized. And I don't like the phrase, which is like that different learning tools are like Netflix of learning and so on. But to some extent, people know what works for them. And the more we work with this, the more we get into their real needs, the more we help them. That's why I mentioned at the very beginning that I like to be there for my team when they need me on their professional path. I don't want to force them too much, because only they can be fully responsible for the path. Only they know what's what's best for them. I can just support them in giving feedback application, getting the right methods or formats to get the going. So I'm really happy to embark on this marketing for learning journey. I hope it will have a lot of impact also in our team, but more about that probably in the future once we have some tangible results on that.
Monika Ruzicka:Yes, I really liked that. And I'd love to have you back on a next episode. We'll talk more about that. I think that's some something very interesting that marketing and l&d can learn from each other.
Anna Bejgrowicz:We have an agreement then yes.
Lisa Davidson:Definitely. So as we're slowly coming to an end of today's episode, I'd like to ask you to share your top three tips on how to stay motivated for learning to basically give our listeners a special take away from today's show.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Yes, call for action, very important. But by no, I was bragging so much about the personalized approach. Now it's very difficult to just give three tips that will work for everyone. But when I was thinking about that for myself, like what are the three tips that work for me to stay motivated, I'm thinking that they are quite obvious. So one will be make it work for you. So find your way, establish a habit that works for you, and get the right it's right. So get the thing that is actually working for you. So if this is like, no making morning cup of coffee or tea, and sitting in front of elearning, maybe this is your thing, and your habit will be done to do it every day or every single second day, with the tea getting the ritual started. And just getting it going. If this is like you know, having a community session of, you know, professionals that are doing maybe similar things, and explaining them a concept that you just learned, do it and make it regular, put everyone accountable, make sure that they are there they listen to you, and that you always serve the content that works for them and for their context. So make it work for you. That's the first one. The second would be involve others. So I started already upon that by mentioning the community. But it can be in a study buddy, you can have a peer that is working on the project together with you. Or you can have a mentor a coach just involve others because eventually you need to have this evaluation part of the learning this last step that we mentioned, knowledge, application evaluation, and in evaluation, it's good to do self reflection. But from time to time, we just need others. We just need to have this external perspective of things. So involve others will be the second. And last one, I would say reflect upon the progress and celebrate it. So start saying what you've done well and feel the success and the accomplishment of what you've done. Because well, who wouldn't like to repeat such pattern right? You did something right to celebrate to give your brain a signal. It was good for you. So why not to repeat it. So make it work for you involve others and reflect on the progress to celebrate it.
Monika Ruzicka:Nice.
Lisa Davidson:Thank you so much, Anna, for sharing your knowledge and insights. And thank you at home for tuning in to the straight to business podcast with your host Lisa Davidson and social selling expert Monika Ruzicka. We hope you enjoyed our episode on marrying marketing with learning and development to create a change for organization and digital age.
Monika Ruzicka:Thank you so much, Ana, for joining us today.
Anna Bejgrowicz:Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Lisa. It was my pleasure. If you're keen to
Lisa Davidson:learn even more about social selling and how to use it for your business advantage, join us next week. As always, you can head over to www straight to business dot life for additional resources to sign up to our email list or to join us as a guest speaker. Don't forget all the information from today's episode can also be found in our show notes. If you have additional questions, please feel free to comment on our blog, or get in touch with us on LinkedIn. The links to our profiles are provided on our website and in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. We hope to see you next week.