Instructional Strategies For MDT Company

Analysis of the Instructional Design

Discuss about the Instructional Strategies for MDT Company.

Instructional design program is used by the trainers to providing training to personnel helps in occurrence of interactive participation of the learners during the program. This helps them to remember the information in an effective manner (Archer & Hughes, 2011).  This report emphasizes on the analysis of the instructional design and strategies used by the MDT company to provide training to sales managers across Asia related to the new product named as V-LOC a suture.  This facilitates sales people to convince customers to buy the product.

An instructional design plan is formulated by the companies in Asia to provide appropriate training to a group of learners consists of sales manager across Asia. The main purpose of instructional framework is to provide coherent understanding of the training session to sales managers who provide training to their subordinates. The instructional design consists of various steps that would be implemented to provide training to sales managers in the train the trainer workshop in Singapore. The different steps involved in the instructional training include analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate. In the analyze step, there will be an analysis of the attributes and goals of the trainers. For providing effective training to the trainers there is a need to analyze the key characteristics and drawbacks of the learners. This facilitates in gaining knowledge to conduct the training program in an effective manner. This also helps in the understanding of the existing attributes of the learners support the training procedures in an effective manner (Gagne, 2013).

After gaining information on the attributes of the learners and their support to the training procedures, the next step is to design the instructional training program in two broad steps i.e. the formation of the learning objectives and the desired outcome of the training program. It is essential for the trainer to collect different resources such as learning material for the purpose of providing learning to the trainers in an effective manner. The objectives of the trainer can be achieved by constructing or enabling a learning atmosphere by the trainers. After this, the trainer implements the training program in order to fulfill the objectives of the trainers. Without the implementation of the training program, the objectives cannot be achieved in a proper manner (Schwager, 2012).

Under this step feedback is received from the learners on the basis of which, the learners are shifted to new training lessons. At last, the training program is evaluated on the basis of different factors such as difficulties faced by the learners and their reaction towards the training program. This facilitates in gaining information related to the outcome of the training program is fruitful or not. It is essential for the trainers to create different instructions for different learners as they differ from each other in terms of their learning needs at three levels i.e. capabilities of learners, job or task and organization. There is an occurrence of variations in the skill set and background of the sales managers (Sternberg & Davidson, 2005).

Critical Justification of the Strategies

 It is essential for the trainers to identify some characteristics which are common among the learners in order to increase the effectiveness of the training program. There is an existence of variation in the analytical skills of the learners along with the language barriers as the language used is not the mother tongue of the learners. Besides this, the learners are motivated and interested in learning and gaining information related to the new product as this information will be passed or shared with customers which in turn results in increasing the sales and profits of the company. Along with this, some of the learners find difficulty in memorizing the specifications and components of the new product. In addition to this, the learners or the sales people have a belief that the new product named V-LOC will results in improving the life of surgeons and patients which motivate them to attend the workshop (Morrison, et al. 2010).

 In addition to this, there is an occurrence of meetings in which strategic planning sessions are carried out and views and opinions of different sales person is shared among themselves which helps in enhancing the knowledge base of the sales people (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2014).  

The strategies adopted by the MDT to train the sales people regarding V-LOC product is categorize in four strategies namely concept, attitudes, cognitive strategies and verbal information. It is essential for the trainers to provide information related to the products offered by competitors and different activities pursued by the competitors. Along with this, the information related to the product and market situation is also shared with the learners by the way of lecture as it helps in motivating the learners to attend the workshop as they analyze that they will be benefitted by the training program organized by the company (Reigeluth & Chellman, 2009).

This also facilitates them to gain information related to the importance of the workshop to them. This strategy is useful as it provides information related to different types of sutures used in different markets. This facilitates learners to make comparison between the sutures used in different countries with the new suture named as V-LOC introduced by the company in terms of quality, features, benefits and prices. Besides this, this strategy also facilitates in providing information about the new product in terms of its features, and benefits. This help the sales person to persuade surgeons to use the product which results in increasing the sales revenue of the company. It is essential for the sales people to express their views and opinions related to the product to customers (Palloff & Pratt, 2011).

For this purpose, mnemonics will be used that helps the learners to remember the key features and benefits of the product. The sales people have to remember a large amount of information and data which is communicated to the customer for the purpose of convincing them to purchase the product. Therefore mnemonics is an effective strategy to be implemented by the trainers so that learners can remember the vital information related to the product in an effective manner. Another strategy that is adopted by the trainers is scripted role play which helps in building confidence in the sales persons to provide information related to the product to customers (Laurence & Matthews, 2012).

This strategy help learners to increase their willingness to acquire knowledge related to the new product. The role play is scripted because it help learners to observe the way of the trainer in providing information to the customers in an effective manner. It help the learner to analyze the behavior to be maintained by the sales people in front of the customer while providing information related to V-LOC to the customer. In addition to this, in order to boost the morale of the learners and handling and overcoming the problems faced by the learners is done by conducting frequently asked questions session. These sessions facilitates in resolving the doubts and increase the confidence level of the learners. This method also helps in increasing the learning, recalling and thinking power of the learners (Clark, 2011).

This strategy is useful as the learners have various doubts misconceptions and questions which can be resolved by the trainer after providing training to the sales people. Under this strategy, the learners are provided with 20 minutes to ask their questions so that they can convince the customers to buy the product by providing them the information related to the specifications and features of the product which cannot be provided by its competitors. This facilitates in increasing the willingness of the customers to pay premium price for the product which results in an increase in the sales revenue of the company. These strategies are supplantive in nature (Karahan, et al. 2014).

But the use of generative strategies help managers to gather information and skills related to the new product on their own as it facilitates in occurrence of the learning among the learners in a natural manner. In these strategies, the learners have an interest to learn new information and the trainer play a role of facilitator. The strategy that can be used to provide information related to the new product is through demonstration. The learners can observe the method through which the V-LOC can be applied to the patients by the surgeons, the sales managers are also excited to gather knowledge regarding the new product as it facilitates in increasing the sales revenue of the company. This strategy also facilitates in engaging learners to share their views and opinions with other sales person which results in continuous learning in the organization (Khan, 2001).

In this strategy, it is requisite to gain attention of the sales person in order to provide training to them related to a new product launched by the company. The sales people are highly motivated to gain knowledge regarding the new product as there is a use of new technology in the product which results in attracting large number of customers and aids in increasing the sales and profits of the company. After motivating the employees, there is a need of providing the overview of the training program to the sales persons. It is also essential for the trainers to provide demonstration of the working and benefits of the new product to the sales people (Konschak, 2003).

This facilitates in providing all the relevant information regarding the product to the sales people which is used by them for the purpose of convincing the customers. In addition to this, there is also a necessity to supervise the activities of the sales people by the sales manager by going with them to the customers to convince them to purchase and use the product. In this way, the activities performed by the sales people are evaluated for the purpose of evaluation of the effectiveness of the training program (American Society for Training and Develo, 2006).

There is a necessity to make a balance between supplantive and generative strategies as it facilitates in providing effective training to the learners.  The adoption of these strategies helps in providing in-depth knowledge of the product to the learners so that they can communicate the information related to the features and benefits to the customers that are unique and differentiate it from the competitors (Romiszowski, 2016).

The goal of the instructional event is to provide training to the sales people across Asia related to the new product launched by MDT named V-LOC. Besides this, there are various objectives of the instructional event such as

• Provision of the information related to the features of the product
• Investigation of the benefits of the use of the V-LOC product by the surgeons

The different strategies used for the purpose of providing training include lectures, mnemonics, role play and frequently asked questions.  The different assessment options include the sales of the product to customers, increase in the number of customers, increase in the demand for the products. These strategies facilitates in providing in-depth knowledge of the product to sales people. Such strategies are useful as it help learners to remember large data and information that can be provided to customers in order to persuade them to purchase the product. Provision of the training program related to the new product helps in gaining attention of the learners towards the training program (Joél, 2012).

When sales people get to know that the training program emphasizes on the new product that have been launched by the company which results in an increase in the sales revenue, they are highly motivated to attend the training program. In order to provide information related to the market trends of suture product, the products offered by its competitors, and comparison of the features and benefits of the product with the products offered by the competitors is given by the use of lectures and mnemonics. In addition to this, along with the lecture, there is also a necessity of the use of visuals and the information in the form of tables and figures results in remembering the information in an effective manner (Biech, 2011).

Lecture is an effective strategy as it helps in providing information related to intrinsic interest of a subject in an enthusiastic manner. This strategy helps in providing information to large number of learners. These are appealing to those learners who learn through listening. It helps in providing large amount of information to the learners. This strategy also helps in providing information related to different questions and problems faced by the learners. The use of mnemonics helps in recalling the information provided by the trainers in an effective manner. In this strategy, the information is provided by the use of pictorial representation of the information such as graphs, tables, videos and so on (Reigeluth, 2013).

Along with this, the other strategy used for providing information related to the new product is the role playing. This strategy demonstrated the skills required to communicate the information related to the new product to its potential customers. These help learners to have a look towards convincing the customer to buy the product. In addition to this, the learners or the sales people can also use their communication style to convince the customers in an effective manner. Besides this, at the end of the training session, adequate time is given to the learners to clarify their doubts and problems they think they face while providing information to its customers. There is an existence of a positive relationship between the instructional event and the strategies adopted to provide information to the learners. The training program has a timeline of 2 months (Bean, 2014).

In this training program, there is also a use of on the job training as it facilitates in evaluating the success of the training program provided to learners. The training program is considered successful if there is an increase in the number of customers of the company to purchase the V-LOC suture. Besides this, this product is becoming more profitable and there is an increase in the sales of the product in the market. This indicates that sales people are successful in convincing its customers to purchase the product. For the purpose of effective implementation of instructional training program, there is a requirement of various resources such as projector, training manuals which is distributed to sales managers and information regarding the working of the product.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the MDT has launched a new product named V-LOC for which the training is provided to the sales managers across Asia. This is because, it is made by the use of new technology which is helpful for the surgeons in the operation theater. This training is provided to the sales managers to provide them information related to the features, benefits and market scenario so that sales manager can provide answers to different questions raised by the customers in order to achieve high level of customer satisfaction. For the provision of training different strategies are adopted by the trainers such as lectures, mnemonics, role play and frequently asked questions so that the information provided is retained by the sales people in an effective manner. This is essential as it helps them to provide useful information to the customers in order to increase the sales and profits of the company.

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