Let me quickly paint the picture of two Salesforce training events:
Scenario 1
The attendees who arrive have never used Salesforce before. The instructor asks them to login but several haven't received their "welcome" emails. The instructor spends the first 30 minutes trying to get people set up and logged into the system.
Nobody is the least bit familiar with how Salesforce works so the instructor has to keep repeating instructions to make sure that everyone is in the right spot.
Everyone feels overwhelmed by the amount of new information and the information retention level is low.
Scenario 2
All attendees arrive at the session already having logged into Salesforce so getting everyone up and going takes just a few minutes.
Each person has done some basic work inside of the Salesforce interface so they feel less intimidated by the new information.
Each person has already explored Salesforce a bit and has come prepared with some questions they would like answered during the training session.
Which training session would you prefer to attend? Which would you prefer to host?
The answer is "Scenario 2" of course. How to you prepare your attendees so that you can have an event like Scenario 2? The answer is to use pre-assignments.
Pre-assignements are simple homework assignments that attendees complete before they come to your training session. Pre-assignments can be a powerful start to developing an effective Salesforce training plan.
Watch the video below for an explanation and example of how to create and use a pre-assignment to improve your next Salesforce training event.
In the video we give the example of using "Setting up a user profile" as an effective pre-assignment. What other ideas do you have for pre-assignments?
