by Site Staff
December 20, 2005
In 2004, Toshiba America Business Solutions embarked on the development of a new dealer program after the company saw a decline in its training seminar attendance. Because increases in sales and revenue are heavily dependent on the knowledge and skills of Toshiba’s dealers, Anthony Codianni, director of education and development, developed the Training To Go program.
“We have an integral role in the strategic plans of the future of our company,” Codianni said. “We try to educate all employees to provide internal customer passion and an irresistible value to our external customers. Toshiba is really an educational company because the value of education is foremost.”
The Training To Go program gives dealers the freedom to choose how, when and where they learn through portable learning solutions. The program provides new sales representatives with a solid understanding of Toshiba’s hardware, software, connectivity and advanced color imaging through a unique set of technology resources.
The mobile learning classroom, where Toshiba trainers bring learning to students, includes everything needed to conduct effective handson, technology-based training course. Codianni combined synchronous and asynchronous elearning with workbook-based and classroom learning sessions to ensure that students could choose the method that worked best for them. By creating this innovative, mobile learning approach, Codianni helped make learning more efficient and convenient, increased dealership participation and established a good working relationship between Toshiba and the dealerships. In fact, Toshiba’s desirability as partner improved greatly, and merely two weeks after Training To Go was launched, dealership participation increased by 1,200 percent.
“We have had tremendous increase in participation, and now we are training thousands of people a month, opposed to hundreds of people a month,” Codianni said. We are providing customers an irresistible value, and the fact that we are using technology to its fullest has brought us to the forefront of our industry.”
Codianni and his team are in constant communication with Toshiba dealers and executives to see how they can improve training content and delivery to make the process easier and more effective. At the end of each training program, online evaluation forms allow for immediate feedback.
According to Codianni, the program has proved to be successful on many fronts. Most importantly, it has effectively trained new dealers who have no prior experience with Toshiba products. Codianni’s technique has virtually eliminated travel and accommodation costs, and reduced training time so that salespeople can begin selling right away. This program also accelerated Toshiba’s dealer acquisition strategy, and as a result, increased its training capacity from 1,200 sales reps per year to more than 10,000.
“We don’t make decisions based on how much it is going to cost—not that we are not fiscally responsible—we make decisions on what is in the best interest of both the internal and external customers,” Codianni said. “We are continuously asking ourselves what we need to do to make customers more efficient, what do we need to do to make our customers more effective, and we now have seven Training To Go boxes. The concept has been so successful that we are now training internationally as well.”