7 Gamification Best Practices for Online Sales Training

In this post, we’ll show you 7 Gamification Best Practices for Online Sales Training.

The future of work is remote. 66% of companies already allow their employees to work remotely, and 16% of companies have gone fully remote. It’s no surprise.

Modern employees need flexibility. Plus, remote work is an incredible way to reduce overhead costs and maximize profits.

However, going remote isn’t easy if you have to manage a sales team.

Let’s take a look!

1. Form Teams and Competitions

While sales can seem like a field where it’s every man for himself, trainees can benefit from teamwork.

The first benefit is the delegation of responsibility.

When trainees feel as though they can rely on their teammates to help them learn, they will retain knowledge with more ease. For virtual teams, you can help them by setting up a Slack channel (or a channel in your in-house tool) where they’ll communicate.

Additionally, creating an atmosphere of friendly competition will help those trainees turn into highly productive sales reps.

Then, turn your training into a game by forming teams and having them compete against one another. Track their behavior and activities, and reward them with points.

You can even help them visualize their progress with a Spinify leaderboard.

2. Problem-Solving Scenarios

There’s nothing like a little practical work to train your staff and set standards of excellence.

Serious games can be immensely helpful:

• They increase engagement
• They encourage critical thinking and theoretical knowledge application
• They improve knowledge retention

You can modify them to fit the modules and lessons you want your sales trainees to complete.

Games such as these help your trainees retain knowledge by not only framing potential problems and situations that may occur in their daily work lives as games but by rewarding them accordingly and ensuring that they stay motivated.

However, points and levels are a must.

Help your trainees visualize their progress, and you’ll see their completion levels rise.

3. Establish the Right Metrics

One of the main obstacles remote teams face are communication problems.

When your sales reps can’t chat by the water cooler and get to know each other as people (as they usually would in an office), they may not trust each other. The chances of conflict suddenly skyrocket; the atmosphere may just become cutthroat.

Fortunately, even communication can be gamified. And the sooner you start, the better results will you get.

The best time to start gamifying communication is in sales training.

Establish the ground rules

Decide which behaviors and actions you’ll reward and encourage with your gamified training.

For example, you could reward teamwork and knowledge sharing by adding points to the scores of trainees who asked for help in the right channels, and team members who provided them with answers.

Track progress

You can easily track communication progress of your trainees with Spinify.

Simply set up the metrics you want to track, integrate it with your training (and sales) software, and you’ll be good to go!

Monitor and reward

Finally, you can set targets and notify your trainees of their completion goals. This goes for regular coursework, as well, not just communication.

Display notifications similar to remind them that they’re at “60% of their monthly communication goal.”

4. Reward Product and Culture Knowledge

Another important part of sales training is product and culture knowledge. Even if you’re working with virtual teams, you still have to make sure they’re adhering to the standards of your company culture.

Additionally, sales reps have to possess a deep knowledge of the product (or services) they are selling.

However, absorbing all that knowledge can take a while. When gamification is added into the equation, things flow smoother.

How to Impart Product Knowledge in Online Sales Trainings

It’s all about how you frame it.

If you frame absorbing product or culture knowledge as a game, your trainees will have a much easier time learning it.

For example, you can create a map-like game, in which trainees complete quests as they complete modules.

Or you can simply set up tiers and give trainees badges for successfully finishing lessons or completing culture-driven actions.

5. Creating Virtual Identities and Completing Missions

Everyone loves games not just because they’re fun, but because they can be in someone else’s shoes for a while. It’s fascinating how easily people adapt to new situations and challenges when they’re given a new avatar.

In many ways, gaming is just like getting used to a new job: you have to assume a new identity, enriched by new knowledge and new duties.

Mission: Accomplished

With Spinify, you’ll be able to track all the important metrics for your online sales training.

However, your trainees will also be able to:

• Choose their avatars
• Have individual targets
• Earn badges
• Visualize their progress
• Even play special celebratory songs

All the makings of a fun day at work!

6. Roleplaying Customer Personas

Another fun way of training your sales staff on different customer personas they’ll be speaking to is through roleplaying.

You can divide your trainees into teams, and have every member represent a different customer persona. The other team members have to guess who they are through Skype, and successfully sell to them.

The main benefit of this approach is that your new staff will be able to empathize with your customers. They’ll also significantly improve their improvisation skills.

While the exercise itself is like a game, you can also add points and track scores to encourage some friendly competition.

7. Tangible Rewards

Your teams may be virtual, but your rewards have to be tangible.

The best way to motivate and retain the sales staff you are currently training is to use Spinify’s gamified system of tracking and rewarding behavior. 

And when your trainees (and consequently, sales reps) start getting points, make sure you give them rewards they care about.

Sometimes, this is as simple as using Spinify to show them how far they’ve come.

Or you can always try chocolate!

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