Nandakumar Chari
NOVEMBER 18, 2020
“Average human mind forgets 40% of any new information within 24 hours of learning them”
“Sales trainees attending lecture or curriculum-based training programs forget 80% of the imparted knowledge – in just 90 days.”
Isn’t this alarming for traditional sales and product training programs – where companies end up spending huge sums of money each year to train their sales persons?
While organizing a training, sales manager or sales enablement manager often face the following dilemma –
- Scheduling on demand training and ensuring salesperson attendance.
- Ensuring retention of knowledge when it is needed during the sales process.
Our age-old practices of learning and interventions do not guarantee any solution to the above problems. Many companies today follow a default approach in developing sales readiness (preparing their sales teams with the right knowledge and skills for performance). Typically investing in training large groups of Sales Reps at a point in time – workshops during sales kick-off, product seminars for new product launches, etc. Clearly, organizing such training workshops once in six months (or during New product Introductions ) no longer works in today’s sales environment. While in the digital world, we have progressed to using webinars, the challenges remain.
So, it is highly essential to know the innovative techniques which can ensure effective learning.
Here are some ideas on how you can improve learning of sales teams.
Organizing on demand training by continuous learning and skill building
Continuous learning is based on the sound principle that learning is not a one-time activity. For your salesperson, a mindset of continuous learning means improving their knowledge –before or after every sales call – or preparing for a specific customer activity. The salesperson learns the best during a customer and deal engagement.
Sales organizations are now adopting a continuous sales training program – that is tightly integrated with the sales executive’s daily schedule through the use of sales enablement tools and technologies. Salespersons can get regular small knowledge snippets which allow them to learn quickly. At the same time, they can quickly discover and access the learning materials specific for their customer engagement needs. With continuous learning and skill building, you can empower your salesperson by helping them:
- Be more effective and efficient at their job and refining their skills
- Adapt to new and emerging sales tools and techniques.
- Proactively seek new information through reinforcement learning instead of learning them only at designated training programs.
- Feel more motivated and creative in their job and handle rejections.
- Be more confident about the value of their products and generate more sales revenue.
Incorporate gamification into the learning journey
In simple language, it is the use of games like puzzles, quizzes, flashcards, or visual tools to measure and encourage player achievement and engagement.
75% of your sales participants would be more engaged if their learning process included more game-based dynamics.
This means that your sales team would be quick to learn and upskill more – as a result of higher engagement and motivation in their job.
As a form of reinforced learning, gamification tools are an effective and growing trend when it comes to sales readiness and training.
There are numerous benefits including the following:
Increased engagement and motivation
As a principle, engage your sales reps and managers in short-term gamification activities that can eliminate an information overload – and fit seamlessly into their daily work schedules.
Different modes of learning
Gamification can be an effective and multi-dimensional tool when it comes to the continuous learning process. Depending on their learning styles, salespersons can prefer different modes – such as presentations, videos or – combinations each of which can be incorporated into your specific gamification model.
When implemented properly, gamification can enable faster learning and information retention – along with improving employee morale and retention.
Creates the right sales behaviour in your organization
The right reward scheme at the right time can be the right trigger to help your salesperson achieve their daily or monthly learning goals.
Gamification can work well when combined with a reward scheme in the form of winning prizes, badges, and cash awards for top achievers or winners. Example, for sales trainees, you can reward participants for completing a gamification-based quiz or gaining advanced knowledge about your product.
Improves learning outcomes
As a learning tool, gamification must ultimately work around your desired learning outcomes. Example, to improve conversational skills with different customer personas, it would be best to introduce an interactive game using these persona types.
Similarly, to improve the technical knowledge about your products or services, gamification can be used to include each aspect of the product by breaking them into smaller and easily digestible topics.
Provides instant feedback
Most of the online gamification tools provide instant and accurate feedback to your sales personnel after completing a task or activity (example, an online product quiz). As a result, salespersons know exactly what they did right or wrong – that acts as a reinforcement to their existing knowledge.
Gamification tools can also be designed to generate and send detailed reports to the training personnel or sales manager – using which they can identify areas of strengths or improvement for each salesperson. Instant feedback works towards faster learning and performance boosts in a shorter time period.
Conclusion
Through the right design and implementation, continuous learning with gamification techniques is more effective in empowering your sales team. This can facilitate better learning outcomes in your salesperson right from the initial onboarding process to the reinforcement of their learned skills.
As a sales readiness platform, Streamz can help you design a mobile first continuous learning capability where you can deploy various sales training modules including gamification model for sales training.
Share your experience how you have driven sales enablement in your organization.
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