Deliverable: Elearning
Life for a modern outside sales rep is busy. She plans which accounts to focus on, jumps between meetings, preparing for each one, pitching, debriefing and documenting – and so on and so forth. For her, any task that doesn’t directly advance a deal is seen as a barrier.
This presented a major challenge for the business intelligence (BI) group at a large science-based company. It was their responsibility to deliver key data to senior leadership to help them make important business decisions. In order to do that, they needed the sales team to enter information on each of their calls into their BI system. Most of the sales reps were not doing it. Those that were doing it often did it improperly.
The BI team was searching for a way to get sales reps to use their data system and use it properly. BI did not have the authority to mandate its use nor require anyone to attend training. When BI tried to get on the agenda at regularly scheduled sales meetings, they were usually just given the platform for 15 minutes or so – not nearly enough to make an impact.
Shortly after beginning our partnership with the BI team, we realized that this was less of a learning problem and more of a motivational one. Yes, many sales reps lacked the skill to use the BI tool properly. But if you have no leverage to get them to attend training, then an amazing learning experience was not likely to have any impact. Our task as we saw it was to find a way to motivate this audience.
A motivation problem, not a learning problem
From our knowledge of learning psychology and our own practical experience, we know that using external motivators, like rewards, can work, but not as well or sustainably as internal motivators. Because BI’s tool provided no real benefit to sales reps, we knew it would be difficult to provide a persuasive argument that would hold sway. We also knew that sales reps are a competitive bunch. If we could appeal to their natural sense of competition, we might be able to make some inroads.
An arcade-themed competition
Working together, we came up with a campaign designed specifically to foster their sense of competition. Over a three-month period, the entire sales team competed in an arcade-themed contest during which they would all be challenged to earn the highest cumulative score. Each month, a new online arcade game was introduced. Each game required reps to earn points by demonstrating their ability to use the BI tool in the right way at the right moments. Each time they finished a game, their point total was added to a leader board, which was publicly displayed and updated in real time. Sales reps were allowed to play each game as many times as they wanted until they received a score they were satisfied with. At the end, an award was given to the top three performers (a print of an illustration of the sales rep in the costume of one of the game characters) and they were recognized at the next sales meeting.
It went viral
By all measures, the program was a big success. Virtually all sales reps completed all of the online games at least once. Data showed, however, that most completed each game multiple times even after they had received passing scores. In fact, the games were so popular, word got around the organization and BI had people who don’t even use their tool ask if they could take the training. Most importantly, correct use of the BI tool increase and the number of support calls made to BI decreased. A positive result all around.
