Gamification can bring many benefits in business when effectively combined with e-learning, including upskilling a sales team. But from increasing engagement to providing quick feedback, using gamification this way isn’t just about adding a fun element to your sales training. It can offer many other advantages.
Here are six benefits of using gamification to educate your sales team:
1. Increasing engagement: Having an engaged sales team is crucial on a sales floor. Individuals need to be engaged in what they’re doing to sell and sell well. But they also need to be engaged to learn more, build up their knowledge, and improve their sales skills. According to research from PulseLearning, this is where gamification can help. The global learning solutions provider says 75 percent of participants would be more engaged if learning included gaming dynamics. What this can mean for a sales team is that by being more engaged, they are more likely to learn and upskill quicker.
2. Adding to a rewards culture: Sales rooms are known for having a rewards culture—from cash rewards being handed out for the biggest sale of the day, to rewarding experiences days to the most consistent salesperson over a business quarter. Such rewards schemes can motivate sales staff, and make them feel valued to work harder, helping to push sellers to hit their daily, weekly, or monthly targets. So it can be effective to use this type of rewards culture when training and educating your sale team. Gamification can work well with reward schemes because prizes can be given out after completing a game, a particular level, or for achieving a top score. You also can give out rewards for finishing games for different areas of training, such as improving sales techniques, speeding up call times, or improving product and brand knowledge.
3. Providing a learning environment: In a busy, continuously fast-paced, and often intense sales room, it’s good to have a different environment when it comes to learning. Introducing differences, such as the type and style of tasks, energy, and pace can make educative activities more memorable. Gamification can help achieve this. It can provide a contrasting environment for salespeople that’s interactive, creative, fun, and offers a variety of challenges at a different pace. This makes learning more memorable, which, in turn, can help with learning retention.
4. Making topics more interesting: Some topics sales team have to get their heads around can be dry, heavy, and complex. This could include technical details about new products or the policies and regulations of the brands they are selling for. Gamification can make these subjects lighter, more interesting, and easier to understand. The way a game might work, with its different tasks and challenges, stages and levels, can help separate topics, break them down, and make them more digestible. Different types of games and different genres and themes also can make learning more fun. This could include sports-themed games or point-and-click adventures that are aligned with different sales topics.
5. Encouraging friendly competition: Sales teams can thrive on a bit of healthy competition. It can get salespeople more fired up to hit their targets harder and faster, or reach the top of a leaderboard to beat their colleagues. So it can be effective to add this competitive element in other ways to a sales floor. Gamification in learning can encourage competition as employees battle it out to win games, all while learning more and building their knowledge. Competing to win educative games also can encourage them to want to learn more to earn higher scores, for instance, and remain a leader while striving to win more sales.
6. Giving instant feedback: Working in a sales room is fast paced and sales teams have to aim high and sell fast. So learning fast is important, too. This isn’t just about taking in new information quickly to help with things such as sales pitches. It’s also about getting instant feedback to know when a salesperson got something right or wrong so he or she can learn quicker. The way gamification works—doing a task right in order to move on to the next challenge or level, for instance—means staff can get instant feedback on what they do and don’t know. Doing this also can allow them to know what they should know and what topics they should know better. Getting this feedback quicker can help them learn faster. This can make them better equipped to improve their performance, in a shorter space of time, and become a stronger salesperson for your business.
REFERENCES
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-did-gamification-sales-training-teach-me-patrick-veenhoff/
https://elearningindustry.com/6-killer-examples-gamification-in-elearning
http://www.learntech.in/types-of-gamification-games-vs-gamification/
https://www.corporaterewards.co.uk/news-ideas/how-incentivised-learning-can-benefit-your-business/
Corporate Rewards (CR) Worldwide was founded in 2002 and has grown to a global business with offices in EMEA, U.S., and APAC, helping some of the world’s more recognizable brands to drive greater engagement, change behaviors, and produce outstanding results. As performance improvement experts, the company is passionate about building innovative sales, recognition, event and reward programs for businesses worldwide. For more information, visit: https://www.corporaterewards.co.uk/
