ASTD Convention Wrap-Up

Last week, Lou and I attended the ASTD International Convention in San Diego. ASTD, which stands for American Society for Training and Development, is the leading organization for training and coaching professionals throughout the world. The convention hosted about 8,000 attendees and was a great source of a knowledge for those who attended.
We participated in the expo, which was the first large-scale trade show we have attended since the re-launch of SureSpeak. The feedback we received was phenomenal! I heard countless people say things like “We’ve GOT to get this”, “This is awesome” and many “wow’s”. The reaction we received made me excited and proud. Attendees were most impressed by how it simply yet completely addresses a need that no one else has yet to address in the training world.
This need is exactly the reason I created SureSpeak in the first place. As a corporate trainer, I recognized the value of role-play, yet had no complete way to incorporate it into training. I couldn’t personally role-play with all trainees during training sessions, so I created this platform to allow trainees to practice and record themselves. I was then able to evaluate each person as if I were there with them. And so SureSpeak was born. While, at ASTD, we saw other products with similar thought processes behind their development—such as games or virtual sales contacts, but nothing was as complete as SureSpeak. I am so proud of the product and its evolution, and the team that has helped get it there. But the team is incomplete without great partnerships. If you’re a coach or trainer, individual or potential corporate client, please contact me about setting up a time to demo SureSpeak. I would love to find out more about you and/or your company and how we might be a great fit for each other.

New Article in Medill Reports

Online platform overcomes speech barriersby Stuart Tiffen

Darren Schwartz – Photo by Stuart Tiffen/Medill

published May 21, 2008 in Medill Reports. Here’s an exerpt:

“SureSpeak software lets users view video lessons and then record their own speeches via webcam.

Finally, there’s a solution other than picturing the audience in their underwear for people who struggle with public speaking.  Highland Park resident Darren Schwartz, founder and CEO of SureSpeak LLC, has spent the last eight years developing an online training platform to help business people communicate effectively.

“We were definitely able to get people ramped up quickly,” said a client, Brian Macias, former vice president of banker training at Quicken Loans Inc., in Detroit. “The ability to rehearse on webcam and watch it played back was very telling,” Macias said, adding that the process helped build mental muscle memory.

Over six years Schwartz trained 5,000 Quicken call center sales representatives and saw a 25 percent increase in the company’s revenue which he attributed to his training. For his work he booked a tidy $1.5 million.

…

Dr. Sheryl Rosin, a speech-language pathologist and director of the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders in Birmingham, Mich., said she is using the platform as a pilot program with eight-to ten-year olds with high functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome. 

“The kids are having a great response … they naturally like using computers,” Rosin said in an interview, “They would almost rather interact with the computer versus people.”

The next step for SureSpeak is growth.  Schwartz is confident SureSpeak will continue to expand as it maintains its cutting edge technology and reaches out to new customers, corporate, institutional and individual, who can benefit from a digital mirror on the wall. “

Read Full Article

 

 

 

Press Release: SureSpeak to Exhibit at ASTD 2008

CHICAGO, May 18, 2008 – SureSpeak (www.surespeak.com) today announced that it will be exhibiting and demonstrating enhancements to its webcam-based coaching, training and role-playing platform at the ASTD 2008 International Conference & Exposition (http://www.astd2008.org/index.html). American Society for Training & Development is the largest gathering of workplace learning and performance professionals and will be held June 1 – 4 in San Diego (Booth 1116).

Expertus and TrainingIndustry.com, titled “Training Efficiency: Optimizing Costs,” reported that more than 90 percent of survey participants faced some degree of pressure to reduce employee training costs. For corporate training departments facing these pressures, SureSpeak represents a cost-effective, highly productive solution.

Leveraging inexpensive webcams and existing computers, employers can use SureSpeak to easily create and manage video-based training programs and then view, score and provide written or video feedback for each employee’s recording.

Darren Schwarz, founder and CEO of SureSpeak, said, “Companies are always looking for new ways to better train their workforce, but without stretching their already thin budgets. With SureSpeak, they get a powerful but low cost one-to-many training platform.”

SureSpeak is a provider of webcam-based speech and communication training and technology for individuals and corporations. Through its website, www.SureSpeak.com, the company empowers users to better their lives through improved communication.

Rochambeau Continued

Here is the second part of yesterday’s post. Hope it’s helpful!   

3)     Let your employees see how they really look. Have you ever given a speech or performance, and then watched a recording later, only to be shocked at how you looked? I personally have a tell-tale “you don’t know what you’re talking about” expression that I make without even knowing.  It’s been pointed out to me several times, but until I actually recorded it on SureSpeak and saw it, I didn’t realize what a jerk I can be. Not that your employees are jerks…but some of them certainly have gestures and expressions that don’t convey what they are trying to get across.  Let employees notice their own flaws first.

4)      Allow senior employees to mentor junior employees without taking time away from their duties. This is one of the best universal training methods…if it can be done in a way that maximizes the time of both employees. Well, if the new employee could record their sales presentation to have a senior employee later review and score it, wouldn’t that be great? No one’s day is interrupted, and the senior employee might just remember a few things they have forgotten since their own new hire training.

5)      Simple. Practice makes perfect.  Cliché…yes. But clichés are clichés for a reason. Good athletes practice more than bad athletes. Why wouldn’t the same be true for communication?

 

So, when you look at your company’s bottom line and see how much you’re spending in training, how long it’s taking employees to get fully ramped up and how much you’re losing in turnover, is it a number with which you’re ok? Or could it use some improvement? Go ahead and throw out a couple hands of rock-paper-scissors to decide. If it’s not a number you like, contact us at info@surespeak.com.

 

Rochambeau: Good for playgrounds. Not so good for corporate decision making…

Don’t get me wrong– along with Scrabble, Sudoku and Trivial Pursuit, it’s one of my favorite games ever. But you shouldn’t let chance influence business decisions. How much money are you spending per year on training? The average training program is said to cost a company anywhere from 5-10% of a company’s payroll (trainingzone.com).  You spend this money, taking a chance that these employees will not only retain the material and make you money, but stick with your organization. How much can you decrease your spending by simply making the program more efficient? Here are some ways SureSpeak can do just that for your company (this is rather long, so we are going to split this up over the next few days—so check back!):

1)      Let your training staff work on development, not repetition. If your corporate trainer had to listen to every single new employee go through training materials, how long do you think it would take? It would be ideal though, right? Well, your training department can now set aside an hour a day to listen to several sales presentations, customer service calls or duck hunt voiceovers…whatever business you’re in. Allowing your trainers to dedicate this time, review all in one session and do so with little interruption. This will allow your trainers to address training problems new hires are facing and improve material. What are the chances of that happening with 20 new hires in the room?

2)     Make role play effective. Role play is powerful only if both people are engaged, which is difficult to address in face-to-face training. On one hand, you want your strong trainees to work with the weaker, in the hopes the weaker pick up habits of the stronger. Well, that’s a two way street. You’re doing the stronger employee no service by having them train with a weaker employee. In fact, you’re un-training them. The stronger employee will pick up bad habits. They won’t have their own shortcomings addressed. In fact, they may begin to resent the trainer (and your company) for doing the company’s dirty work. None of this will happen if you engage in webcam based role play, and have your training staff do the reviewing.

 

Check back tomorrow for the rest of this post!