No doubt about it: we’re living in a mobile-first society. The first thing many people do when they wake up is pick up their phone and check their texts, social media and news. What about working from our devices? Not just checking and sending emails, but learning and training on them, too?
Mobile video technology is revolutionizing the way people consume content at work. However, you still have to consider your audience and modern learning technology doesn’t boost engagement and learning by itself. In today’s rapid-paced business environment, training programs need modern learning practices now more than ever.
Keep it Bite-Sized
No matter how it’s presented — keep it short. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mobile video, an in-person lecture or a PowerPoint, reps will be bored to death by hour-long training sessions.
That’s where modern learning comes in. Breaking down content into bite-sized pieces will keep reps engaged and reinforce learning when they’re viewing content on their phones, and will encourage them to view it multiple times rather than attend one (painfully long) session. As long as the content provided is relevant and grabs their attention, you’re good to go. No need for a whole video-production extravaganza; content just needs to be timely and relevant to a particular skill, product or real-world event.
Contextual Clues
When information is delivered in small, digestible bites, every piece of it is critical. That being said, putting the information in context is key. Ensuring your reps that they know why they’re watching a specific video is crucial for your training to make an impact.
Simply showing a video and not explaining the context of it or how it’s supposed to help probably won’t be effective. In fact, it may be seen as an isolated training session rather than part of a longer journey. It’s crucial to keep the end-goal in mind through the process.
Think about it: if you teach someone how to swing a golf club, you’re going to explain the ultimate goal is to hit the golf ball in a straight line. If you just show them how to square their shoulders or follow through on their swing a dozen times without explaining the end-goal, they may not understand why it’s important.
Testing… Testing…
While presenting new knowledge and keeping reps engaged is a huge piece of the puzzle, giving them assignments is another portion that can’t be ignored. Doing so will allow them to practice applying everything they just learned.
It doesn’t matter what they’re doing: researching an account, handling an objection or practicing a pitch, reps need to correctly apply what they’ve learned to a real world task to make their training stick. Practicing allows them to make mistakes and learn in front of their coaches instead of in front of customers, where there could lose the deal. After all, practice makes perfect and will only help them become better performers when it’s showtime.
Put Yourself in Reps’ Shoes
Classroom training isn’t realistic for organizations with a global sales force. Between the logistics and expenses, in-person training just isn’t practical. For example, when Finastra, the third largest fintech provider in the world, grew tremendously after a merger, the number of learners doubled and the status quo was no longer sustainable. That’s when Sriveena Rao, Global Sales Training Analyst at Finastra, looked for ways to convert existing content into tiny, bite-sized modules and develop engaging sales content they can deliver remotely.
“One of the biggest challenges for every sales trainer is to appeal to the different learning styles whether it is analytical learning, visual learning, or kinesthetic learning,” said Rao. From traditional role-playing to adaptive reinforcement exercises, modern learning technology simulates the classroom experience and allows trainers and sales enablement professionals to tap into a vast array of tools to engage learners. Ultimately, the use of modern learning techniques helped engage reps and make content accessible across the globe.
A version of this post was originally published on the Allego Blog. You can read the original post here.
