Traditional training methods, involving standalone classroom training, are no longer effective in delivering the desired results. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 is changing the way in which people function & learn. With decreasing attention spans and growing impatience, sales representatives often target accomplishing more in limited time.
The need of the hour for sales reps today is to access bite-sized and engaging sales training content that keeps them engaged & builds a habit for sales enablement. Understanding the nuances of how & when front line sales representatives learn personalizes the learning experience, improves selling skills and enables sales reps to become more confident to apply their knowledge on the job. A data-driven approach to microlearning can further bridge the gap between a sales manager’s intuition and actual results about his sales team.
Master-O enables personalized microlearning that develops a learning habit among sales representatives to improve sales competencies, enhance product knowledge & provide a better customer experience.
Master-O captures data on the retention of sales representative, their understanding of nuanced & minute skill sets & how likely are they to apply it on the job. This data can be used by the sales training team to understand the skill gap of each sales representatives and thereby design a more targeted sales training program.
Here are our two client success stories where they used Master-O, a sales enablement platform, to upskill their frontline sales workforce using a data driven approach.
Improving Salesforce Performance and Restructuring
One of our clients, in the Financial Services industry wanted to improve the performance of their salesforce and restructure the entire sales organization to further increase the volume & value of loans underwritten. To do this, it was important to first identify the underlying skill gaps of their front-line salesforce on selling skills & product knowledge. Our client created Microskills® on Master-O that leverage microlearning guidelines coupled with disciplines like behavioural psychology & game-based learning. Here is a snapshot of the work done and the results that they achieved.
Skill Gap Analysis
Based on the identified skill gaps, a total of 1000 learners went through the Microskill Collection Knowledge Test on Master-O to understand the basics of collection process followed in the company. These learners were further assessed based on their responses to 31 questions created on the learnt topics in a gamified manner. The learners took a total of 6867 attempts to complete the assessment.
Individual Level Analysis
Here is an individual-level analysis for two learners who had gone through this Microskill to fill in the identified skill gap.
Skill Gap for Individuals
The sales representative 1 and 2 had passed the assessment in their 6thand 17th attempt respectively. However, owing to the gamified experience that made learning fun & engaging, both the learners re-attempted the assessment post completion to achieve higher scores.
Assessment Analysis
The analysis of the assessment also revealed that the question ‘What is an unadjusted amount in a SOA?’ was incorrectly answered by 70% learners. This is critical information and if the sales representatives do not know this, they might not be able to convey the different modes of paying their EMI further causing the customer to pay a short amount as a part of their EMI.
After looking at the results of the assessment, our client is planning to launch a series of assessments to evaluate the sales representatives further on other concepts related to collection process and use it to decide the plan of action. This would ensure precise enablement on areas where the sales representatives still struggle and better enable the organization to correlate sales performance with learning effectiveness.
Client wanted to upskill and update their workforce
Another client from the Life Insurance Industry wanted to upskill & update their workforce on the latest industry regulations and ensure organization wide compliance in limited time. It was a challenge to create a learning experience that was both engaging and effective. Here is how the training results panned out using Master-O.
Based on the identified skill gaps, a total of 2800 learners went through a Microskill on Compliance awareness quiz 2020. Through this, the salesforce learnt about compliance guidelines and the implications of non-compliance and good compliance practices. In the end, the understanding of the salesforce was tested through a series of 20 questions delivered through gamification. The participants took a total of 7937 attempts to complete the Microskill.
Individual Level Analysis
Here is the topic-wise skill gap analysis for two sales representatives.
Similarly, here too the sales representative 1 and 2 had passed the assessment in their 3rdand 9th attempt respectively but re-attempted the assessment to increase their score & be on top of the leader board.
Post completion of the Microskill, the participants took the game-based assessment to test their learning. Here is a snapshot of their success rate increasing with each attempt.
Another interesting insight about the learner’s behaviour is that the sales representatives who did not get the full score – just took one more attempt to get higher score (after successfully completing the module). This could mean that they were more ‘active/reactive’ rather than proactive as compared to the learners who completed in lesser attempts & took further attempts to achieve full score.
Detailed analysis of assessment further revealed that the most difficult question was ‘Financial gain is incurred in recovery data, valuation of intellectual property & gain of image?’. If the sales representative lack in knowledge of this area, they would not be able to manage when there is a conflict of interest between two parties. Hence, the learning data can help us to avoid such instances and apprises us to prepare the sales representatives better for their work.
On average, the learners rated these Microskills® 4.8 out of 5.0 in terms of the learning experience, content relevance & immediate impact on their performance.
As organizations look to increasingly blend microlearning within their existing sales enablement curriculum, it’s imperative to ensure both technology & capability of the team driving the adoption of the technology are addressed. Using a data driven & multi-disciplinary approach to sales enablement can not only reduce the time to learn, but better provide your sales training team with the tools & techniques to correlate sales training, learning effectiveness & sales productivity.