How Can Gamification & Microlearning Better Enable Your Frontline Salesforce?

When the ‘New Normal’ has become the buzzword in our pandemic ridden world, you know an inevitable change is coming everyone’s way. Corporates and workplaces have also been swept by the tide. With social distancing becoming the norm, workplaces are slowly but surely undergoing a paradigm shift. This has impacted the relationships between business and clients as well

Selling, often carried out in person, has now moved online. Virtual selling will now drive most businesses in the foreseeable future as more and more organizations are now closing deals over video conferences, and e- mails. However, the nuances of the selling process are often lost over these digital interactions. In person meetings add a personal touch to the relationships between the businesses, and fosters trust from the client.

However, the need of the hour calls for sales personnel to up their virtual selling game. But how will this happen when the numbers of most businesses are falling, and employee morale is at an all time low everywhere?

This is where digital learning comes into play. The use of technology and digital content to impart learning has proven to be very effective and beneficial for:      

·       Retention and engagement: Digital tools like game-based learning enhance engagement with the trainees, making learning more effective

·       Personalization: Enables customization of learning by considering needs of each learner and their learning gaps

·       Fun learning process: Gamification and appealing aesthetics of digital content can make the process of learning easier and more fun

·       Motivation through competition: Digital learning tools provide opportunities for competition which also helps in peer to peer learning.

Digital learning can also be coupled with Microlearningfor the best pedagogical outcome. This brings us to an important question-

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning involves teaching a specific skill or concept through nuggets of information. Microlearning ranges from 2-minute make up tutorials to quick
30-second recipe videos or even flash cards, quizzes, games etc.

Here’s how Microlearning can help sales personnel develop their virtual selling skills:

·       Better Engagement: Microlearning courses have innovative, upbeat, and graphical but succinct content. This makes the learning process a lot less monotonous and hence, more engaging compared to conventional learning processes.

·       Faster learning: Each piece of information in a microlearning course is short, lucid and addresses a specific knowledge gap in a quick and easy way. Since there is no clutter of unnecessary information, it makes the learning process faster.

·       Easier Retention: Microlearning considers a learner’s short attention span and hence, clusters chunks of information in a way which is quick to consume. This allows the learner to remember the information for longer period.

·       Saves time: Conventional training modules can eat into the employee’s schedule and hamper their productivity. Microlearning allows employees to access their training at their own discretion. In the middle of a pandemic induced slowdown this becomes more important

·       Saves Costs: As it often does not require a physical space and is less time- and resource- intensive it really reduces the investment which is otherwise required for conventional training programs.

Hence, we can safely conclude why more and more companies are now moving away from traditional learning and development activities and are investing and demanding for more convenient and effective alternatives. The selling environment may look different now, but an organization can always ride this wave by understanding its employee’s needs and investing in the right and innovative learning strategy.