Sales training must engage sellers and enable them to tackle any sales interaction. Unfortunately, the tried and true sales training formats of old now get stale quickly. Classroom-based lectures, group brainstorming sessions, and annual performance reviews lose their utility, bringing the team’s productivity and focus down with it.

But sales training doesn’t have to be a drag. It may surprise you, but with the right approach, it can even be, dare we say, fun? Gamification and interactive methods spice up training and inspire reps to not just passively participate, but actively engage in learning. And the concept of gamification doesn’t just deliver short-term results — it plays a significant role in a dynamic sales everboarding strategy, leading to better productivity and retention over time.

Below we define gamification and show you how it can be a lucrative technique for your training program.

What is gamification?

Gamification refers to the application of gaming elements into non-game situations or processes. Incorporating point-keeping, leaderboards, badges, competitions, team activities, and other game-like features boosts concentration and participation.

While fusing a game-like system into your sales training strategy may not feel natural at first, thinking strategically and investing the necessary time and effort can drive success across the organization.

Benefits of gamification in sales training

Gamification addresses common frustrations associated with conventional training methods, offering the following advantages:

• Enhances motivation. The spirit of competition is proven to trigger endorphins, motivating people to work even harder to reach goals and “beat” their fellow sellers.

• Boosts engagement. More motivated sellers mean they are more willing to participate and complete assigned training materials.

• Adds convenience. Available on mobile, training games and competitions can be done anywhere, any time — also contributing to higher engagement across the team.

• Is less time-consuming. While upfront it will take some time to create gamified training and set it in motion, sales reps can complete the training without taking hours away from active selling.

• Focuses on unique needs. Gamification can be personalized to individual teams and salespeople to strengthen the skills that need it most.

• Promotes continuous learning. Rather than watching a video or reviewing a product slide deck, you can consolidate as many materials as you want into your contest or game, and space them out to focus on different subjects and cement learning.

• Builds morale. Sales can be isolating, with reps taking an “every person for themselves” outlook. Creating competition surrounding training materials and events spurs teamwork and collaboration across the organization.

Implementing gamification into your sales training program

Does this all sound like it could boost seller productivity? Ready to try it out with your organization? Keep these best practices in mind to ensure gamified learning is a win for everyone on your team.

Start with desired outcomes and objectives

With any training, you likely have goals in mind for what you want to achieve. Developing a gamification program will require time and financial investment, and the only way to know whether it’s working is to set specific objectives toward which to work. Whether you are trying to educate sellers on a new product, increase reps’ content usage with buyers, or grow a certain skill set, put SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) into place and communicate them with your team.

Establish a timeline

Once your goals are set, work backward to create a realistic timetable. Consider how long it will take to craft your gamification strategy, roll it out to the team, and carry out the game itself. Whether you decide to hold a contest rewarding whoever completes the training first or assign points for different training-related challenges, determine a deadline and stick to it. If you introduce the game as a continuous activity with no end, there won’t be a sense of urgency and you’ll likely find many reps fail to participate.

Offer gamified learning digitally

It doesn’t make much sense to gamify training for added enjoyment then force sellers to complete it at their desk in the office. Lean into the game format and make training materials available via an app or mobile platform for sellers to play at their leisure, wherever they are. This added convenience will encourage continued cooperation amongst the team.

Track individual progress

Those objectives you set in the beginning? Critical to a gamified training initiative is to evaluate success throughout. Put reps — and your training program — to the test with regular assessments of both completion and performance. If completion rates or scores are low, you’ll need to make adjustments to your approach. To further motivate salespeople to continue participating in future training exercises, recognize rep achievements and reward them with appropriate prizes.

Reinforcement: essential to lucrative training

While gamification is more interactive and engaging, it’s important that while analyzing participation in the training itself you are also assuring that sellers are actually learning and retaining information over time. A single contest may show immediate positive results, but are reps absorbing the information 30, 60, and 90 days after it’s complete?

You want to make things fun, but at the end of the day, the goal of training remains the same: generating positive sales outcomes. The great thing about gamification is that it can be incorporated anywhere you choose within training. But it should be just one part of your broader sales everboarding strategy, driving ongoing learning that leads to better sales readiness, improved buyer engagement, and ultimately more closed deals.

Today’s productive and successful seller must be a jack of all trades, mastering a variety of skills to engage buyers and close deals.

Sales onboarding and ongoing enablement activities are typically one-and-done affairs for sales reps. Reps are bombarded with information about the company, industry, customers, competitors, and sales methodologies over the span of a week or so, then left to their own devices and expected to dive in and start selling.

What can leadership do to ensure reps gain all the knowledge they need and absorb it for ongoing success? Develop a sales training strategy that includes microlearning. It could be the secret to turning sellers on your team into better performers.

What is microlearning?

Where traditionally sales organizations onboard new reps and then often don’t train again until months later at annual meetings, microlearning keeps reps up-to-date all the time and is a key part of sales everboarding, a term we use to reference ongoing learning. microlearning provides small, bite-sized training materials that are more engaging and interactive. Typically offered via a mobile platform, these materials are remotely accessible and can be completed at one’s convenience.

The key to developing a microlearning program is to identify and work toward specific learning objectives, using training materials that are highly focused and complementary.

Examples of microlearning include:

• Videos delivered by SMEs, successful sales reps, or executives
• Quizzes
• Games
• Situational simulations

Challenges in sales enablement & training

There’s a lot at stake for your sales enablement and training activities: You need to build (or rebuild) the knowledge and skills your salespeople will need to succeed while also promoting morale and teamwork. So it’s key to keep reps engaged throughout onboarding and beyond:

1. 1. Holding reps’ attention. If you throw too much information at your reps at one time, their focus will inevitably fade– so it’s on you to find ways to maintain the team’s concentration.
   2. Reducing time away from selling. Reps may also be hesitant — or even bothered — to take time away from work for enablement activities because they see the opportunity cost of training as too high.  phones and computers and
   3. Focusing on sales skills. Salespeople are not interested in generic training that’s not clearly connected to business results, so ensure that your enablement activities aren’t just bite-sized, but also clearly aimed at improving outcomes.
   4. Keeping it interesting and individualized. Different people excel and struggle in different areas, and they also learn best through various methods. Using different modalities and adjusting enablement activities based on strengths and weaknesses will keep reps engaged and help them hone the skills they need to succeed.
   5. Getting information to stick through spaced reinforcements. Perhaps the biggest drawback to most sales onboarding and training is ensuring that knowledge is retained over the long haul.  Research has shown that 90% of training is forgotten within a month if you don’t follow up, so spacing out short reinforcement activities is critical.

What microlearning can do for your sales training program

microlearning doesn’t solve all the challenges of conventional sales training but it’s an essential piece in transitioning to a more dynamic, sales everboarding approach  Its mobile format is inherently shorter, more accessible, and more convenient for reps to complete and for leadership to distribute and measure. When training doesn’t feel like a huge undertaking, sellers are more likely to participate and complete the materials assigned to them.

As a key part of a sales training and enablement approach, the convenience of microlearning means it can be offered up at any time for continuous learning reinforcement. Keep salespeople on top of their game with materials at the ready, and get them quickly up-to-speed on products, promotions, and industry news with fresh videos and assessments.

Microlearning can also be easily tailored to fit the individual needs of every seller on your team. Depending on the specific person, buyer, and selling conversation, you can serve relevant and timely learning content when it’s needed most. How do you know whether training is having a positive impact? microlearning platforms have analytics capabilities for leadership to see not only which reps finished their assigned training, but also whether it had an effect on those reps’ real-life sales interactions.

The cherry on top with microlearning is its cost-effectiveness: You can reinforce and augment other learning without having to bear the considerable travel and facilities expenses associated with in-person sessions.

 

A culture of learning, from day one

Incorporating microlearning into your larger sales strategy doesn’t have to take away from in-person training; there is still value in congregating sellers in person to celebrate wins, set goals as a team, share ideas and best practices, and build rapport. microlearning supplements and supports these touchstone events for a true sales everboarding approach.

A focus on knowledge and skill-building in your initial onboarding and ongoing enablement activities will prepare new hires to be open and committed to continuing education, driving better outcomes for them as individuals and the organization as a whole.