Whether it is a product or a services organization, the salesforce plays a vital role in keeping the engine running. The organization does well when its sales teams bring in new leads and closes the deals. The sales teams need to be motivated and well prepared for their jobs.
In one of my previous articles, 4 Ways to Make Your Sales Enablement Training a Success, I mentioned the following:
It is critical for sales teams that they keep themselves abreast of the latest knowledge on products or services and have the requisite skills to perform well. The success of an organization depends on how well the sales team performs and gets the orders that can be fulfilled by the product and service teams. Sales teams need to have a good understanding of the products or services that they are selling.
Given this, it becomes imperative that the sales teams have good training available to them. Whether it is custom learning, off-the-shelf courses or classroom training, the programs need to be engaging, exciting and memorable.
How Does Gamification Help?
One of the best methods to engage sales teams is to have gamification as a strategy.
In one of my previous articles, “A Case Study On Gamification In Corporate eLearning”, I mentioned the following:
A well-crafted game can help learners remember the content thanks to its engagement quotient and transform online training courses into enjoyable online training experiences. Regardless of your performance goals, employee needs, or online training objectives, games are a great addition to any corporate eLearning strategy.
Let me now present a couple of examples where we used gamification as a strategy for sales training.
Example 1: Gamification For Sales Teams For A Food Processing Unit
We created this game where the learners learn about the various aspects of food processing, from production to certification and sales. The previous training was conducted as classroom training. The customer came to us to make the training a fun and engaging experience.
We created the course with a complete gamification strategy. First, the learners had to choose an avatar who goes through the various processes as part of a mission. We presented the journey of the salesman using a visual roadmap or journey that depicted the multiple areas that the salesperson has to travel to understand the process better.
As the food products need to be sold only after complete certification, they had to be sensitized about the sourcing, processing, and sales in a linear manner.
The game had an isometric view of the landscape that contained processing plants, markets, people, and a host of guides to help the learner understand the concept.
To create a good experience, we also used a competition motif in the game. The learners could see their progress against a fictitious competitor.
The game had many activities. If the learner did not answer the questions correctly, the competitor would zoom ahead. This element of competition helped the learner stay invested in their learning experience.
Example 2: Gamification For Product Sales Teams
We built a game for a customer who was primarily into selling software solutions. We created a gamification solution that helped their sales team understand the various nuances of the product and get some good tips and techniques in selling the product better. As the product is a software solution, it has to be sold in a consultative manner. The gamification course we created had numerous scenarios that allowed the learner to make choices.
Conclusion
To conclude, gamification in eLearning helps in creating high impact training and learning engagement. It works incredibly well for sales teams as they need good stimulating learning experiences to stay invested in the training process.
