The following is an interview with Jim Allen of ValueBased, Inc. Jim is one of our many clients who helps small and mid-size businesses increase their sales and margins and colleges and universities increase enrollments. Their curriculum, methodologies and best practices reside on the E360 LMS platform. For more information about ValueBased, Inc. go to http://www.valuebased.com/.
CG: “This is Cathy Garland, Vice-President of Marketing & Sales at Edvance360. With me today is Jim Allen, CEO of Value-Based Selling. Jim, can you tell us a bit more about ValueBased, how long you’ve been using us, and what prompted you to look for an LMS in the first place – just to give everyone the context?”
JA: “Sure thing. Our training curriculum, methodologies and best practices help organizations improve their top line revenues. We focus on improving the performance of the people in two departments – Sales and Marketing; or in the case of higher education, the Admissions department. There are 33 best practices in our training that focus primarily on creating and articulating an organization’s product and service value proposition. Instead of focusing on the features of a product/service, which is the old way of marketing and selling, the ValueBased approach is to attract potential clients by educating them on the value of what they are thinking of buying. It sounds simple, but it actually takes training and reinforcement through coaching to change how a product/service is marketed and sold. We’ve been with Edvance360 for over five years now and by the way have loved every minute of it. We began looking for an LMS when we realized that our live, instructor-led way of teaching on-premise for clients was holding us back. In order to grow, we had to move online. We were trepidatious about whether or not we could even move online. We determined that it would save our client’s money and time and serve as a convenient way to train our client’s virtual teams. On the other side of the equation we did not want to lose our close connection to our clients and have them feel disconnected in any way. Establishing and sustaining a relationship is important in both the marketing and selling processes. The E360 LMS provided an added channel to distribute our training without losing the personal touch we and our clients desired.”
CG: “And you chose us because of relationship.”
JA: “That’s right. I have an extensive background in the software company and SaaS sector where relationship and support is critical to serving your customers and sustaining a high level of continued support. When we compared two other vendors with Edvance360 we found the human touch to assist in the design and transfer of our training to an online environment was not the same. The folks at E360 were head and shoulders above the others. Additionally, we found Edvance360 to offer the first Learning Management System to incorporate collaborative, relational-learning tools. Our sales representative presented the software and helped us think through our model, assisting us with actually setting up the architecture so we could really test things before committing to buy. We were also connected to a trainer who helped a lot before we made our purchase decision. The trainer was incredible. I have sat through numerous software training sessions in my lifetime, but I have never experienced the level of support we’ve received from E360. Period. Ever since, our online training delivery option has grown to where almost every engagement involves some form of online delivery.
And 5 years later the same people who helped us in the beginning are still helping us now. I cannot recommend them enough.”
CG: “That’s our policy – to let potential clients really test out training before they “buy” because most of the time, this is one of those intangible things that can make or break a roll-out! Now you also mentioned budget…”
JA: “Yes, since we were small, we had to budget time and money. Edvance360 was a no-brainer in this area, as it’s one of the least expensive options out there.”
CG: “And we were just awarded the #2 spot in Gartner’s Capterra Top 20 Most Affordable LMS vendor list.”
JA: “Which doesn’t surprise me. Like I said we narrowed it down to three options. Edvance360 was not only the best value, it was also by far the best price.”
CG: “Thank you for your time. Just to end this, is there any advice you have for someone who is reviewing us and maybe comparing to competition?”
JA: “I would say . . . ‘Go with Edvance360. You won’t regret it’ “
CG: (laughing)”No, I guess that works for me.”