If you’ve ever worked in sales, you know that there are plenty of training opportunities — but not all programs are created equal.
The Maker Group’s curriculum stands out from the masses. Their secret sauce? Data and applicability.
Most enterprise companies are inundated with data but aren’t sure how to apply it to each stage of the sales cycle. The Maker Group’s talented consultants change that, using skill-building workshops to illuminate the power of data in the selling motion — from customer acquisition to negotiation to upsell to cross-sell.
Looking to recognize sales professionals from consumer packaged goods (CPG) clients like Kellanova, General Mills, and Nestlé who have completed their virtual and in-person training, The Maker Group explored various digital credentialing platforms before selecting Accredible. However, the road that led them away and back to Accredible was littered with unforeseen potholes.
YoY increase in credential open rate
YoY increase in credential share rate
YoY increase in credential share rate to LinkedIn
Coming on board with Accredible in early 2023, The Maker Group experienced all of the benefits and value they were looking for. However, as they approached the end of their first year with Accredible, Credly offered a 50% price discount to convince them to switch to its platform. With a company initiative to decrease internal costs, The Maker Group made the tough decision to move.
As Paul Voisard, a Partner at The Maker Group, says, “The deal felt too good to be true, so we made the leap. From there, it didn’t go as we’d hoped.”
He continued, “The onboarding experience we got from Credly was nowhere near the onboarding experience we’d had with Accredible, let alone any other SaaS solution — and we use tons. We spoke to the salesperson in the early stages, but once the deal was signed, we never spoke to somebody else again.”
But that was just the beginning.
Upon launching with Credly, The Maker Group’s digital credential-sharing rates took a nose-dive. Without Accredible’s one-click sharing, learners had to go through a multi-step process: creating an account, verifying their email, logging in to accept the credential, and then posting it to social media.
“The requirement for signing in and creating an account to capture your credentials and post them just sinks sharing rates,” said Paul. “I think we were down to maybe 20% to 25% with Credly as far as credentials being shared.” This was a stark contrast to the over 80% credential engagement and share rate The Maker Group had experienced with Accredible.
Regarding re-issuing credentials, the Credly platform proved so difficult for the Maker Group team that they had to involve their development team.
Per Paul, “The Credly functionality is much more limited as far as what you can and can't do after the fact and once credentials are issued. Our dev team troubleshooted every request, and it became a complete non-starter as far as a useful tool goes in the business world.”
Within two months, The Maker Group's experience with the platform, customer service, and downturn in sharing numbers had become so severe that Paul and his team reapproached Accredible.
“Our end-user feedback has been universally positive. Many clients have even asked who our credentialing vendor is so they can use Accredible themselves.”
Paul Voisard, a Partner at The Maker Group
After pivoting its certification program, The Maker Group returned to Accredible and experienced everything it had initially set out to achieve for its team and clients, plus more.
Since its inception, The Maker Group has branded itself as the premier negotiation and sales training provider for Fortune 500 companies. White-labeling the entire digital credential experience would not only maintain the integrity of The Maker Group’s brand but also make for a more seamless learner experience.
“What initially sold us on Accredible was the white-labeling option unavailable through Credly. When we send a credential, it looks the same as our other resources and is in a familiar place. It’s little things like this that uplevel the end user’s experience and ultimately drive greater retention, engagement, and sharing,” Paul remarks.
Accredible’s one-click sharing feature became a huge brand awareness channel. Without having to create an account and log in to accept a credential, learners can share their achievements to over 40 platforms and embedding options for LinkedIn, websites, and emails — driving brand awareness and referral traffic.
With the ease of credential sharing and additional optimization efforts, The Maker Group has increased its credential open rate by 68% and LinkedIn share rate by 29% year-over-year.
“One-click share is what made us choose Accredible in the first place,” says Paul. “We know that many of our clients in the CPG world are tightly connected. So when someone shares on LinkedIn, their peers get curious and start a conversation with us. Credentials have become the most efficient way for us to get in front of as many decision-maker eyeballs as possible.”
With the Accredible platform, The Maker Group team has also been able to spend more time improving its program and less time managing credentials. The team has been able to automate certification expiration notices and renewals. And because they connected their learning platform directly with Accredible’s API, they can easily issue credentials upon training completion — improving both their team’s and learners’ experiences.
“All our consultants have to do post-training is click one button, and boom, digital certificates get generated, emails get sent. Everyone’s happy,” says Paul. “I highly recommend Accredible to anybody who's looking for digital credentials. It's the best out there.”
With Accredible’s out-of-the-box features and stellar Customer Success team, The Maker Group has turned digital credentials into a brand marketing flywheel that will continue to power the launch of exciting new courses and workshops.
Schedule a demo and discover how Accredible can help you attract and reward learners, visualize learning journeys, and grow your program.
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Accredible is the world’s leading digital credential platform, enabling education and training leaders to increase learner engagement and drive program growth.
Accredible is the world’s leading digital credential platform, enabling education and training leaders to increase learner engagement and drive program growth.
