All sales workshops are set up to train sales and marketing teams how to best use certain methods, techniques and skills to foster sales and customer loyalty. Workshops no doubt require a solid practical base, in which regard role dynamics and similar methods are commonly used to gain practical experience in sales processes.
In this regard, the actual presence of attendees during training is useful and can also help develop certain skills. A funny yet pertinent example of this is a scene from the series The Office, where two employees are asked to role play as salesman and client in a mock sales call while their boss looks on.
However, “learning by doing” is possible without having to bring the entire sales team into the same room. This is the aim of online simulators, ultimately: to harness the available technology to save costs on training personnel and roll out an authentic sales workshop without having to have actual meetings with the entire team in the same location.
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There are numerous advantageous combinations for achieving success with marketing training simulators with gamification techniques, namely:
- Customizing the simulator to company needs, e.g., with the brand image, preferred sales models and product offer. Training participants can also be put into different groups of varying sizes depending on their level of knowledge or experience.
- Creation of different types of scenarios mirroring real-life company situations. The challenges that salespeople face at their jobs are reflected here with a touch of realism so that they can polish up their errors simply.
- Healthy competition among sales workshops, with the scores of coworkers out in the open for everyone to see, becomes another springboard for striving to improve. Ultimately, participants enjoy themselves and engage even more, since all of them have gone through the same training process and the same experience.
- Instant feedback from the platform, which corrects and scores user actions upon conclusion of the intervention. It’s also much easier to assess each salesperson individually, since the online platform reflects each one’s particular activity.
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Regardless of the chosen marketing technique, virtual sales workshops with remotely connected and geographically dispersed participants should overcome this physical limitation when working on relations with hypothetical clientele.
For example, when working with the classic AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action), the simulator’s approach should address the different stages that a client goes through. This should also be the same when selecting other common methods such as SPIN. This model consists of questions regarding the client’s Situation, the Problems they are facing, the consequences with which they are Implicated and the corresponding Need-Payoff.
In other words, one goal of a good online simulator is to render the logic of the chosen sales model believable in a virtual environment. From experience, workshop participants will also have a more satisfactory response to a simulator that is also visually attractive.
Playing a simulation of different situations converts online training into experience and helps players retain what they’ve learned much better, regardless of whether the objective is to train teams in sales or another goal. By being online, the simulator can reach more people in less time and for less money. In the world of sales, we know that our sales pitch is bulletproof in this regard.
What other advantages of online sales simulators would you highlight?
