Office for Mac / Windows 7 / Office 2010
Training and education tools that inspire.
Most sales are still done face-to-face: one person, talking to another. Given that, you want the people representing your brand and products not just to thoroughly know your products, but to love them and your brand. When we create training materials, that’s our goal.
Fact sheets
Given the breadth of consumer products and retail environments, sales associates need brief, targeted instruction. To prepare and inform, we designed fact sheets that presented features and product comparisons in a voice that was friendly and easily understood. In the end, it's not just about the facts—it's about sales.
Guides and booklets
Salespeople cover a lot of ground—literally and figuratively. They need reference materials that they can stash in their pocket and go. The guides and booklets we produced are just such items, offering descriptions of features, answers to questions and critical talking points. Because more information means more sales.
Flash cards
For products as feature-rich as Windows 7 and Microsoft Office, it helps to break them down into bite-size chunks. Several dozen sets of flash cards were written and designed, each containing a product feature on one side and instructions for demonstrating it on the other.
Online courses
Starting with Windows 7, we designed and developed several online courses that engaged and educated Microsoft's retail partners about new features and benefits. The results surpassed everybody's expectations and led to more work for Office 2010 and Office for Mac. Ultimately, the presentation system and visual template we created became the standard for Microsoft’s online education initiatives. These courses were applauded for their visual simplicity, ease-of-use and information value.
Video
No medium lets you tell a story so accurately or so quickly. The snippets we used may have been really short, but they went a long way to educating and demonstrating some of Windows 7’s most advanced capabilities.
Interactive games
It’s one thing to have people read or watch your training materials. It’s entirely another to have them use that information. That’s why we developed games and interactive tools—so sales associates could use their knowledge, have fun, and commit information to memory.
Staying up-to-date
No outreach program is complete without ongoing communications. That’s why we recommended that Microsoft sales associates receive periodic emails, briefly describing new product features and new sales incentives programs, as they become available. This not only kept sales staff informed, but also let them know they were an important part of the team.
