Gamification has outstanding potential when it comes to sales training. The sales force is an essential component of any organization, whether a product, company, or service business. When its sales team brings in new leads and closes the deals, the organization thrives. Hence, sales representatives should be well motivated and trained for their tasks and activities.

As Millennials and Gen Z take over in today’s workplace, it’s imperative sales teams are engaged in the learning process. Gamification plays a vital role in this. It uses game mechanics to generate engagement, motivate learning, and encourage performance.

But how do you leverage gamification in your sales training effectively?

Understand what motivates them

Having an understanding of what matters and motivates them is essential. Assign badges, points, or power-ups when demonstrating competence in a skill area. Incorporate rewards into the learning experience based on specific actions. 

Gamification rewards keep your employees encouraged and provide recognition for their time, effort, and skills. They instill a sense of accomplishment.

Make them feel important

Setting clear goals and objectives, defining them systematically into weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. This makes potentially more ambitious initiatives feel doable and allows them to see how their success fits the more significant business vision.

When they are involved, productivity rises since they understand expectations and set the bar for success. 

Also Read: Which type of gamification is best for your business?

Make Learning Fun and Engaging

Players often find themselves immersed in an adventure, a competitive situation during gameplay. These situations also work well in sales training environments. Put them in cases where they must demonstrate their ability to apply skills. Create customer profiles conflict scenarios, or drop them into a storyline. This will create a strong sense of engagement and make learning more fun, helping drive new behavior.

Create a healthy sense of competition

Leaderboards are one of the most effective tools for motivating sales teams with gamification. They allow individuals to keep track of their achievements and show their peers exactly how they are doing.

Regular team meetings where members share their progress, plan to accomplish next, and share challenges are equally important as they will prevent unhealthy competition.

Cisco

As part of their sales associate training program, learners at Cisco completed synchronous eLearning modules that taught them foundational knowledge and technical skills when handling customers. 

This eLearning program incorporated gamification into employees’ learning journeys by sending them on a quest through Cisco’s Knowledge Guru game. Throughout their program completion, learners could repeat activities, learn from mistakes, and gain the technical knowledge needed to pass their certification exam. 

As a result, learners rated the games’ effectiveness a 4.93/5 and successfully met learning objectives at an average rate of 87% per objective across users. 

AstraZeneca 

In 2015, AstraZeneca implemented a new training program called “Go To Jupiter” to train recently hired sales employees on new medical products. This training used multiple gamified elements to motivate learners, including:

• Mini-games
• Rewards for key achievements
• Leaderboards
• Team competitions

As a result, the learner completion rate increased to 95%, and learner engagement rates were at 97%. In addition, most learners completed the program outside of working hours, proving the program to be an effective tool that encouraged and motivated employees. 

Deloitte 

Deloitte employed gamification elements in its senior leader training with its leadership academy to help learners develop soft skills. Throughout the training, learners establish their individual learning goals and explore various training topics. After each mission, learners receive badges to mark their achievements and check leaderboards that display a list of the top 10 users for different activities.

Since gamifying its leadership academy, Deloitte has seen a 47% increase in the number of users returning each week and increased engagement levels as learners are excited to compete with their peers. 

Wrapping up

Receiving rewards is one way to incorporate gamification into your process, but interactive interfaces can further help people experience success through visualization and feel like they’re playing a game. Gamification can be an effective tool for improving your sales training when you apply it in the right way. 

The Upshot.ai Advantage 

Upshot.ai is an omnichannel, user engagement, and gamification platform that helps digital product owners and marketers improve product adoption and conversions. Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, UHG, Puma, Sony, ITC, and Tenet Healthcare are using Upshot.ai and observed a massive increase in product adoption and YoY increment in revenues.

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