The sales organization at Workiva, the creator of the Wdesk productivity platform, conducts a weekly virtual training classroom to build team members’ skills, competitive insight, domain knowledge, and application knowledge. Historically, trainings were conducted on Friday morning at 11 a.m. to accommodate all time zones where the company had salespeople. They were 30 minutes in length, recorded, and posted to an internal company portal so salespeople could access content if they couldn’t attend the training or if they wanted to revisit it.
However, despite focusing on high-priority content and skills, Workiva started to see a decline in the attention rate on these virtual trainings—on average, only about 18 percent of viewers would watch an entire session.
In response, Workiva created a new weekly training called the “7 Minute Workiva Workout” (7MWW), which replaced the weekly virtual training classroom and has emerged as a best practice for the company.
Program Details
The 7MWW is a seven-minute pre-recorded live video sent to the entire sales organization every Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. CT and posted to the internal company portal. The short length of the video is more manageable and increases engagement and retention of information. The pre-recorded format also allows salespeople to view the training at their leisure throughout their day, weekend, or following week.
For the 7MWW videos, the host/s are videotaped, which results in a more compelling and personal experience for viewers, who have noted that it is helpful to see a person speaking as opposed to just looking at a screen or slide deck of information. Additionally, the videos generally are taped in an interview-style format with a variety of guest speakers presenting on several different topics.
The videos are also fun and entertaining. Sometimes the host and presenters are in costume, or the topics relate to current events, company happenings, or holidays, etc. This keeps salespeople connected to Workiva’s company culture and interested in tuning in each week. The topics presented are aligned closely with company goals such as new competitors in the marketplace, new solutions, thought leaders, or hot sales topics for the timing of the quarter.
Results
Since implementing the 7MWW program, Workiva has noted that its employees are better trained and demonstrate more efficiency. Additionally, attention to the training has improved, with 88 percent of sellers on average watching a video all the way through, versus 18 percent under the previous model.
