Category Archives: Employee-Training

Employee-Training, Game-based learning, Game-based Learning Infographics, Gamification, Press, QuoDeck, Remote Working

People More Motivated By Entertainment Than Traditional Learning Constructs: Kamalika Bhattacharya, CEO and Co-founder, Quodeck

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Anyone who runs a digital business recognizes the need for interesting and interactive content to attract and retain customers, train employees, and gig workers, and engage value chain stakeholders. This is precisely where QuoDeck comes in. A B2B SaaS Digital Learning and Engagement Platform, QuoDeck enables organizations to use interactivity and games to engage audiences. Founders Kamalika Bhattacharya and Arijit Lahiri experienced a moment of insight on a routine visit to a mall. “We found that in between scanning visitors, the security guard was playing candy crush,” exclaims Bhattacharya. “That’s when we realized that people are more motivated by entertainment than traditional learning constructs,”

QuoDeck began as a game-based learning system but now offers a complete digital engagement suite, called the QuoDeck Interactive Cloud that promises engagement, speed, mobility, regionalization, data, and security. QuoDeck has been awarded a fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering, London and Newton Fund and selected as a winner at ET Power of Ideas.

Today, QuoDeck caters to over 5 million users across an enterprise client list that includes Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, Dabur, etc.

Role of gamification in the workplace

Gaming is all about stimulating people, driving a healthy sense of competition among them, and ultimately rewarding them. Rooted in psychology, it can be used to drive any kind of activity or function in the workplace. It works particularly well in the field of learning and enablement by adding an element of fun to propel interest and engagement. This is often achieved by using points, badges, rewards, and contests to create a sense of competition and winning around learning and knowledge consumption.

Studies have shown that through gamified learning and training, retention of information is longer and has high recall value due to the fact it is generally imparted through an audio-video medium. Gamification is also an excellent tool to test participants. It can be used to assess how the participants manage time, prioritize and respond to social cues, among other key skills.

Nowadays, many organisations are shifting towards gamification, making the corporate process smooth and easy going for both HRs and employees.

Gamification is used at workplaces to add a fun element and to increase the level of interest of employees in their day-to-day tasks. It is used in many corporate practices such as onboarding new employees, training, employee engagement & motivation.

What is the scope for job creation through Gamification?

Educational, training, and recruitment platforms are increasingly leveraging the fun elements of gaming to help engage people in jobs. It follows then, that the reverse can also be true – gamification can be used to impart basic skills to people before they are hired and also upskilling them after they are hired. This should impel better outcomes for people looking for work opportunities, effectively making them more job-ready.

Also, an increasing proportion of the workforce that companies are going to hire in the near future will be gig workers. According to a 2021 report by Boston Consulting Group, gig workers have the potential to service up to 90 million jobs in India, or 10 percent of India’s roughly 900 million-strong workforce in the near future. Companies across sectors are banking on the rise of the gig economy to scale fast but quickly hiring gig workers and training them is a huge challenge for enterprises. Gamification can solve for this challenge and maximise job creation. Entertainment and gaming platforms are hugely popular among gig workers to alleviate boredom. A platform that leverages this entertainment factor with high-quality UI can help companies hire and train staff in a highly scalable manner.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

QuoDeck tracks event stream data continuously and uses Machine Learning methods to figure out trends that prove effective for people. The data is aggregated, co-related, and filtered in real time to help create personalized recommendation algorithms that evolve based on what users prefer to consume. As for Artificial Intelligence, that finds applications in learning content creation such as question generators and chat bots that are used to mimic real-life situations as closely as possible.

Where does India stand versus global trends in the adoption of Gamification?

If you look at the numbers, the global gamification market is expected to grow exponentially to USD 38.3 billion by 2027, from a mere USD 9.1 billion in 2020. Things are a little slower in India. While the adoption of gaming is widespread, the use of gamification mechanics in businesses is still at a nascent stage. Moreover, gamification seems to be geared more towards the internal customer than the external. Most Indian apps have yet to gamify their customer, partner or vendor onboarding process as well as their loyalty programs even though these are known to have a tremendous impact.

Working with fortune 500 companies

As India’s largest digital learning and engagement platform, QuoDeck works with several Fortune 500 companies such as Unilever, Vodafone, Flipkart, Tata Consumer, Dabur, and Britannia. These companies have been quick off the mark in recognising the potential and benefits of gamification for their external and internal audiences. Gamification is particularly effective for training and upskilling full-time employees as well as gig workers. Moreover, given the large audiences these companies need to address, digital platforms are the only scalable option for them as they allow standardization and big data collection.

What would it take for smaller companies to adopt Gamification?

Smaller companies need bite-sized platforms and a content-ready approach to spur them to adopt gamification in their businesses. Reducing the cost outlay and providing customized platforms that can go live in a matter of days will certainly make gamification more widely acceptable.

How far away are we from a future where every company prioritises this?

Most companies already realize the need for scalable platforms to train their workers. A field-based workforce requires an approach to training that is different from the traditional classroom, workshop, or on-the-job model. Gamification makes the process of learning entertaining, pull-based and relatable, thereby allowing for maximum adretention. Businesses can no longer afford to ignore the importance of gaming and gamification as effective tools for audience engagement and training; embracing them fully is not too far away in the future.

What are QuoDeck’s plans and goals?

Modern-day businesses across the world are dealing with the challenge of reaching their geographically widespread workforce. This challenge is a huge opportunity for us. We plan to go global with our entire suite of services and work with companies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. While we pursue this goal, we need to ensure that QuoDeck remains the market leader in its category as it is today. We hope to keep it so with constant cutting-edge innovation.

This was first published on BW Gaming World

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Corporate Learning and Development, Employee-Training, Game-based learning, Gamification, QuoDeck

How hyper-casual gaming can be used to transform enterprise outcomes 

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It’s undeniable that gaming is no longer a niche, but has become mainstream. In the past, gaming as an activity or culture was identified with console gaming through PlayStations and Xbox, which were far too unattainable to gain mainstream acceptance. But mobile gaming has taken the world by storm and has gained broad-based appeal and adoption. Gen-Z and Millennial audiences, especially, spend more time gaming than on any other form of entertainment. 

Even within gaming,  the hyper-casual game genre has become increasingly popular. As a game genre, it accounted for almost 60% of mobile game downloads out of the top 20 billion downloads in 2021. With simple user interfaces, compact sizes, and highly visual designs, hyper-casual games have a broad appeal among digital audiences, and not just among Gen-Z and Millennial players. So, given the popularity of this genre, how can this be leveraged to drive enterprise outcomes. 

Today, let’s take a tour of hyper-casual games, their characteristics, and their incorporation into the enterprise to drive the best business outcomes. 

What are Hyper-Casual Games?

Let’s start with what hyper-casual games are. They are games that incorporate simple mechanics such as clicking on something repeatedly, or swiping and selecting, or just clicking to avoid obstacles. They don’t require high levels of hand-eye coordination and incorporate bright visuals to make them eye-catching. Therefore, the level of skill asked of the player of a hyper-casual game is very low, making these games playable across all age groups. 

Hyper casual games will also have mechanisms such as simple level-ups, bonus gatherings, and repeat visit rewards, all to make the player feel good about playing the game with easier ‘wins’. 

Although they tend to concentrate on a single basic mechanic, such as endless running or finding hidden objects, hyper-casual games are nonetheless tricky enough to keep players engaged. In short, hyper-casual games are simple to learn but challenging to master, which draws players in repeatedly. The genre is famous for being played in small or snackable bursts, that gamers can enjoy while waiting in line or commuting to work.

How can games be used to drive enterprise outcomes?

Considering its minimal game mechanics and addictive game play it is easy to incorporate learning into hyper-casual games to increase knowledge retention and engagement, leading to higher productivity. 

Question-based, hyper-casual gaming is a mechanic where questions can be answered to gain more time or lives or rewards in a game. As players play the game longer and longer to achieve high scores, they encounter these questions again and again as they seek to gain more time/lives to reach a higher score than before. Such a mechanic is known to drive higher recall of these facts or concepts, simply because they are seen again and again. This is a scientific technique called ‘Spaced Repetition’, where the repetition of these questions places difficult-to-recall facts and information in front of a learner multiple times until it excites not just rote memory, but visual memory as well. Multi-sensory memory ensures that these facts stick in the mind of the learner for a long time. 

Based on the ‘high scores’, players then get to see a leaderboard, where they can compete with others on knowledge. This leaderboard spurs players to try to keep knocking others off the top perch and creates a ‘Pull’ mechanism for the content. Therefore, the need to beg and cajole learners to consume the content is very low. Additionally, social media mechanics can be added to create buzz such as sharing their wins on internal company pages or running these as contests, which reward those at the top of the leaderboard. 

To sum up, it is undeniable that the popularity of the hyper-casual gaming genre combined with incorporating learning approaches makes it a potent tool in the hands of smart, new-age enterprise learning and capability development professionals. As the proportions of enterprise audiences start to lean more heavily in favor of millennials and Gen-Z, enterprises must make the leap to these approaches in order to remain relevant in these young minds.

Employee-Training, HR Tech, On-boarding/ Induction, Press

Why Startups Need To Redefine How They Hire & Retain Talent

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The global economy is at a critical juncture, with many countries now facing a very real risk of recession. With economies plagued by inflation, supply chain shocks, and slow growth, the risk of stagflation is becoming stronger by the day. In this uncertain climate, many companies, including blue-chip firms, have announced a hiring freeze. Yet others are laying off workers. But are pink slips inevitable during times of economic uncertainty? Or can they be avoided?

To answer that, we need to understand why companies fire employees during tough times. 

Many companies hire indiscriminately when the going is good. The hope is to scale up quickly and grow quickly. This isn’t sustainable. 

During the 2008 global financial crisis, Citigroup got a $20.5 Bn bailout from the government. That wasn’t enough for its financial health. The company also cut more than 50,000 jobs, making it one of the biggest layoffs in history. This means that the taxpayer and the laid-off worker bear the majority of the downside risk, while the company reaps the benefits when the economy is doing well. 

The Quagmire Of Hire And Fire

When companies let go of skilled employees, there is a massive loss of product and process knowledge that leaves with them.

In India in particular, it is common knowledge that the education system is not the best at equipping students with the skills that the modern workplace needs. Every year, companies spend crores of rupees and countless man-hours training and enabling new joiners before they start working. 

Granted, technology has eased the way by making organisational knowledge more digitised and centralised, but that assumes a level of discipline on the part of an organisation that rarely exists in real life. As organisational knowledge broadens, the ability to sift through it, make sense of it, catalogue and index it, and understand its applications becomes an overwhelming task. 

A recent report by management consultancy firm, Korn Ferry, talks about how the global economy could face a shortage of 85 Mn jobs by 2030. This is mainly because an entire generation of experienced workers would have exited the industry by then, but younger employees would not have had the time or experience to catch up to the skill levels required for the high-skill jobs they leave behind.

This highlights the risk that companies face when they let go of large swathes of people during downturns. When things return to normal, companies end up having to spend that money all over again to bring back this lost knowledge, resulting in little to no economic benefit from these strategies.

Then there are the intangible costs to consider. When employees spend 2-3 years or more at a company, they build a rapport with multiple stakeholders and functions. They have a better understanding of the company’s expectations. They build networks within the company that can lead to greater collaboration and higher productivity. 

These can be thought of as ‘Intangible Efficiencies” All of this is lost when they’re laid off and the process of building these intangible efficiencies starts again. It’s like the phrase “One step forward, and two steps back.” 

This has an impact on the morale of existing employees who have ‘survived’ the round of layoffs. As a very human response to such a situation, the remaining employees either start to look for another job, fearing further job cuts, or lose focus in a fearful, depressed environment at work. Consequently, there is a sharp drop in productivity among the remaining employees.

Of course, there’s a subset of employees who stick in their jobs for several years. These are hard workers who value stability and predictability. Often, they are in crucial middle management roles. These workers add enormous value to a company in the long run, but companies can scare them away when they develop a reputation as a ‘hire and fire’ workplace. 

So, while laying off workers may secure a company’s financial future in the short term, it may jeopardise its long-term prospects by scaring away qualified candidates. 

These hidden costs of lost organisational knowledge, lost intangible efficiencies, and declining employee morale are never quantified and factored into the savings from a “hire and fire” strategy. 

A Long-Term View Of Hiring

It’s high time companies emphasised the human in ‘human resources. For starters, hire wisely when times are right. Not skewing pay scales in an industry when times are good, to ‘acquire’ people is important for long-term survival. Usually, these highly-paid but insufficiently skilled people are the first ones to get the axe. 

After hiring, train, train, train. 

70 employees who are trained well might be more productive than 100 employees who have been hired in a hurry and put straight to work.

Consider hiring gig workers. Relying on freelancers, part-timers, and gig workers gives companies better control when they’re uncertain about long-term demand. Gig workers are the future of the workforce. Hiring gig workers can lead to greater productivity and lower fixed costs for employers. For employees, options increase, and earning potential also goes up.

Companies also need to build a culture of security, transparency, and honesty. If an unexpected financial situation has hit, leadership should do all they can to protect jobs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, leaders in several companies chose to take pay cuts to retain their employees. When that’s not enough, have an honest conversation with your employees. 

A recent study of white-collar employees in the US by Insight Global found that 78% of respondents were worried about losing their job in the next recession. More than half were willing to take a pay cut rather than get laid off. Pay cuts for workers at middle and entry levels aren’t ideal, but sometimes they’re necessary to keep the business afloat.

This was first published on Inc42

Corporate Learning and Development, e-Learning, Employee-Training, Mobile Learning, Online Learning, sales enablement

Here are the best methods for Employee Performance Evaluation

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Looking for the best evaluation methods to rate and scale your employees? Well, here are a few best methods for employee performance evaluation.

Do your employees give their best performance? Do they meet the deadlines and excel in everything assigned to them? But with all this, are they really climbing up the success ladder?

To find your answers to the above questions, you need data analysis to evaluate their performance. You need a clear framework to collect, select, and interpret data on your employees. Performance evaluation methods can differ based on companies and their needs. You may even need a mix of two or three methods to have a better understanding of the employee. Dive right in and find out the best techniques to review employee performance. 

Methods of Employee Performance Evaluation

There are three critical elements for evaluation:

  • The work one does: both qualitative and quantitative
  • The time taken
  • The actual contribution of the employee

Evaluation includes strengths, weaknesses, talents, skills, qualitative and quantitative data. 

The company can come up with the best training methods based on the results. Quodeck is your destination for evaluation aid. Here are some methods you can implement:

Management by objective (MBO)

The company sets particular objectives for all the employees. At the end of the deadline, the outcomes can assess the employee’s performance. The management tracks every employee’s progress and corrects it at any point.

MBO cannot be very precise as external factors are not considered. This can backfire on the employees’ outcomes and eventually get a low grade on the scorecard. A sales quota is the best example of MBO.

Critical incident method

The critical incident method is quite famous in customer-service-oriented jobs. This method allows managers to get overall feedback on an employee from other employees, customers, and higher management. The feedback gives a clear picture of how the employee handled a crisis and issue during their service.

This method encourages managers to observe certain events to judge the employee’s reaction. It can be positive or negative and also give clear input on their situational skills. The feedback also aids the company in coming up with better methods of training for the employees.

Rating scale

Many organizations use this method. The list or the questionnaire contains specific questions based on behaviors, traits, skills, or others. The employees are made to rate on a scale of 5 or 10. This method can be biased as employees favor each other most of the time.

Either way, the rating scale helps to monitor all the employees on the same categories and elements. This method is also efficient when employees have to rate new implementations or employer’s practices. The rating can also be Likert scales.

Continuous feedback

Feedback is an ongoing process of growing. A company needs to take continuous feedback to establish new methods, rules, and better targets. It is designed to take place at regular intervals where employees get to write and give feedback on their team members and managers on their teams. It is a two-way process that helps everyone to grow together.

Continuous feedback helps allow managers or team members to take charge whenever one needs help or is underperforming. This intervention will help prevent the situation from going out of hand. This method assists the company in grooming its employees according to their needs.

360-degree feedback

360-degree feedback appraisal method provides a chance for all the employees to give their opinions and feedback. Here,  every employee gets a rating from their colleagues, superiors, peers, customers, and management. The employee is evaluated from all sides: 360-degree feedback.

Under this system, a questionnaire is created by the HR department. It contains questions on all aspects. It can be teamwork, adaptability, leadership qualities, goal orientation, motivation levels, and strengths. Relevant people are made to fill the questionnaire anonymously. The feedback helps the employee to grow. It gives a clear insight into how others perceive them and their work.

Self-evaluation

Self-evaluation is a vital process for both employee and company growth. This method offers an opportunity for employees to play an active role in their evaluation process. It helps establish better communication between the staff and management. The employees can test their strengths, weaknesses and abilities, and skills and work on them.

Conclusion

Employee performance evaluation is vital. It helps both the company and employees to grow together. They give a clear insight on how well the staff is working and where they are lacking. Performance evaluation also helps to recognize talents and provide appraisals.

Corporate Learning and Development, Corporate Learning Best Practices, e-Learning, eLearning Develpment Best Practices, Employee-Training, Learning Management System, Online Learning

The Best Ways to Improve Employee Learning and Employee Training

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Looking to establish suitable training methods? Trying to teach new skills? Well, here are the best ways to improve employee learning and training in a company.

Every company has its own set of requirements and rules that help it climb up the success ladder. And the best way to go up is with proper foundation and establishment among the employees. This is only possible with a precise regimen of employee learning and training.

Training programs help them improve their skills and stay ahead in the corporate world. With this attitude, you would be able to take your company to the next level. It is the best place to invest. Dive right in and find out the best ways to boost employee learning through training. 

Best ways to improve employee learning and training

Training and learning programs play an essential role in shaping an employee according to the company’s needs. The programs give a clear picture of what the team expects from them and how they can reach the goals without any errors. Quodeck can aid you in finding the best training and development methods. But here are a few ways to improve your employee learning and training programs:

Offer professional training

Every organization runs on different priorities. What better way than to learn from older colleagues? Professional training is the best way to teach employees new ideas, the company’s methods, and objectives. It can also imbibe all the procedures and projects the company works on.

With professional help, the employees can clear their doubts, learn critical information, and even grow as a team. Professional training will guide you about the precise way to grow a company. Besides that, it helps to find your employees’ true potential and recognize the crowd’s best talent.

Emphasize soft skills

What’s the point of having excellent knowledge when you cannot share or help others? What’s the point of thinking of a great idea if you cannot voice it out? Soft skills are often neglected in many companies, but they help build strong bonds and help people and the company grow together.

Soft skills include having healthy communications, table etiquette, ability to collaborate, and work in harmony with other employees. It helps them to create a unique personality and contribute better to the company.

Occasional training programs

Every employee needs to learn to grow. The company can hold occasional training programs for all the employees. They can get on good terms, break some ice, and learn new things from each other. 

With evolving technology and competition, there is always something new to work on. So regular training programs will keep the employees up to date and equipped with new knowledge. 

These training programs can also help older employees come to good terms with younger employees. The programs also involve games and tasks to build strong bonds.

Cross department collaboration

Employee learning can also happen when an employee works in all departments. Moving across the departments will train the employee according to the company’s methods. The diversification will increase the exchange of knowledge and help employees find their passion.

At the same time, it can increase good bonding between the departments, leading to better productivity. For example, marketing teams can consult and have healthy discussions with the sales team before making a market campaign and work in one direction.

Develop managers into personal coaches

Managers play an important role in the employees’ life in the company. They guide, help, control, and assign tasks to all their employees. That way, managers have a clear picture of employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and what motivates them.

Making managers a personal coach will help them groom the employees and hone their skills in the right direction. They can even assign tasks according to their potential. They can test their employees with quick questions or assignments to prepare them better. Having regular conversations with employees will also help establish strong bonds.

Employee development is same as personal development

Personal health and development play an essential role in their growth as an employee. Positive minds and healthy bodies can contribute better to the company. They can become eager to learn new things and stay active in the workplace. You can have an in-house therapist or an approachable HR. They can help employees talk about everything that’s troubling them.

Conclusion

Employees are the foundation of any company. Thus making their well-being an essential thing. Employee training is an ongoing process as the industry is evolving and growing. It helps them set their career on the right path and helps the company climb up the success ladder.  

Corporate Learning and Development, e-Learning, Employee-Training, Learning Management System, Micro-learning, Mobile Learning, Online Learning, QuoDeck

7 Tips for Employee Learning and Development: Expert Tips on How to Train Your Employees

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What do you need to run a successful business? You can be anyone, from an entrepreneur to an influencer. But whenever you are online, you need something to grab attention. Of course, your content does that for you. But is that all? Can’t you just do better than now? Yes, we all can. 

The main goal of any online business is to keep your audience active. It ensures their coming back to your platform and making some purchase. But, it is a job better said than done. So, are you looking for a tool that allows you to stay active with your audience? Look no more. Here is the list of must-have tools for any online business. 

Tools To Help You Better Your Online Presence

  1. Social Media Tools

Social media presence is now the most important thing for any individual or brand. To make it clear, here is a statistic that highlights the importance of social media presence for brands. 71% of people who have had a good experience with a brand on social media are more likely to recommend that brand to their friends and families. 

And how do you improve this social media presence? Well, being active on your accounts does not always help. Of course, you can go from one platform to another and check each engagement differently. 

Or, you can simply use social media tools for better engagement. Tools like Hootsuite, Talkwalker, and Google Alerts are some social media analytics and monitoring platforms to name. 

These platforms get to observe everything happening on social media related to your brand. For example, you will get to see all the comments on your different platforms in one place. It helps in replying and connecting with your audience easily. 

And faster connection means a better experience. Using social media tools is way more effective and allows you to stay engaged with your audience. 

  1. Content Discovery Tools

You have to keep up with your competitors as well. Otherwise, you will see your audience going away to them. So, good competitor research is always important. But is it always possible to keep track of all your competitors manually? Most of the time, no. 

So, the easiest way is to run a competitor research tool. These tools run a quick research on the given keywords and find you all related content on the web. You can use Buzzsumo for that purpose. This tool is a must-have for anyone running online content for their business. 

  1. Marketing Automation Tool

Marketing is a crucial thing to engage with your audience. However, digital marketing is more than that. You need to take care of a lot of things- from your customer’s journey to their reactions. So, a content marketing tool can be the most helpful in this case. 

As a content marketing automation tool, you can consider using Hubspot. Hubspot lets you keep track of your marketing journey and helps you target your audience. Targeting is crucial and when you pass the stage, engaging with your audience becomes easier!

  1. Live Chat Software

Have you noticed those pop-up messages you get when you visit certain websites? These are live chat support or chatbots. These chatbots are very much helpful in increasing your audience engagement. So, how do these work? 

For live chat software, you can use ProProfs Chat. When someone has visited your blog or website, this chatbot keeps track of that. Now, after a certain time, if the person does not take any action on your site, a voice or chat pops up to grab their attention. By doing that, your audience feels like there is someone to help.

  1. Interactive Content Tool

Interactive content is the future of content marketing. While an average blog post takes around 3.5 hours to complete, interactive content is easy to design and more engaging. In addition, people here get to interact, which increases the ROI. So, modern marketers focus more on interactive content.

Amplayfy is an interactive content creator tool. Here you can create a variety of content, from quizzes to polls and surveys within minutes. These help you keep your audience engaged and increase the conversion rate. Interactive content is also helpful for influencer marketing. So make sure you try it out as soon as possible. 

Conclusion

Engaging your audience with your content is a very crucial thing to boost your online growth. And if you are serious about your online presence, you get to know every possible way to crack that. These are the best tools that you can use to stay active with your audience. We hope this discussion was helpful. We will see you with the next topic right here!

Corporate Learning Best Practices, Employee-Training, Mobile Learning, Online Learning, QuoDeck, Sales, sales enablement

What you need to know about sales enablement: 3 crucial steps for success

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 Sales Enablement can change the growth story of your company boosting revenue by at least 20%. Here’s what you need to know. 

Sales enablement has been an integral part of growing companies, especially in the latter half of the decade. Organisations have been subscribing heavily to the concept of an enablement team purely because of its conversion potential.  

Even though the idea is almost a buzzword nowadays, it’s still widely misunderstood. There’s a lack of clarity on what sales enablement actually is and how it impacts the overall KPIs. And believe it or not, this murky distinction hurts the potential that sales enablement could have. 

We’ll be clearing the fog and shedding some light on what sales enablement in reality is & why it is an absolute necessity in today’s conversion-focused business environment. 

How to define sales enablement? 

Sales Enablement is a term loosely used in the context of an overlap between VP of sales & sales manager, which is somewhat true but not entirely. 

By definition, it is a strategic placement that focuses on increasing the numbers and productivity of sales teams by providing tools, content, and resources across the buyer’s journey. 

Of course, this is an immensely broad definition of sales enablement, presented just to give you an outline. It’s way more nuanced than this. Here’s what sales enablement teams do on an average day: 

A day in the life of a sales enablement team

The role of Sales Enablement would be different for every organization. But the purpose is more or less identical. In most organizations, Sales Enablement bridges the gap between Marketing & Sales by: 

  1. Crafting sales assets & trainings
  2. Leading new hire onboarding and continuous learning of the sales reps
  3. Heading the evaluation of the reps’ product & user knowledge 
  4. Paving the way for cross-functional communication
  5. Managing all the sales tools & resources
  6. Creating reports measuring sales enablement impact

Who heads the sales enablement team? 

Now that’s a bit tricky because this is not a traditional function. So it can be very contextual. The head of sales runs almost 40-50% of the functions, the rest being accountable to any of the executives from the management or marketing depending upon the organization’s needs. 

You must have a fair idea by now of what to expect while building a sales enablement team. So let’s move on to the meat of the matter – does sales enablement actually impact the bottom line, or is it just another frivolous corporate jargon? 

What makes sales enablement so crucial (and an absolute must-have in 2021)

In plain numbers, organizations have witnessed up to 15% more success in closing deals. 

Companies like Ringcentral, a business communications SaaS, saw a massive revenue run rate of $775M. The stock shot up to $126 from $22 in about two years of the sales enablement settling in. 

Other than that, some companies have also experienced stronger customer relationships & higher quota attainment. 

Here are three direct practical benefits of sales enablement

Maximum Sales Potential at each touchpoint 

An essential part of sales enablement is sales readiness. It’s the strategic orientation preparing reps with all the armor they require before going ahead and making a sale. The resources can be anything, from the intricate details of the product to the competitive positioning.

Usually, if done right, clients end up having memorable experiences even if the sale doesn’t go through. It’s potentially a candidate for word-of-mouth. 

The process includes some strategic activities like: 

  • Onboarding
  • Sales coaching
  • Materials for consistent & updated knowledge 
  • Reinforcement 

Engaged Salesmen are Productive Salesmen

The main goal of any Sales Enablement team is to aid sales reps in closing better. Subsequently, it also plays a crucial role in keeping them better engaged & equipped. 

There was a report by SiriusDecisions that mentioned high-performing organizations having high rates of early enablement adoption, as compared to the low-performing ones. 

Better pre-qualified leads, Increased conversions

Sales teams always complain about the quality of marketing qualified leads. According to Market Sherpa, most sales teams report that only 27% of b2b leads passed from marketing to sales are actually really qualified. 

With transparent & consumer-centric resources answering all the generic questions ideal buyers have – the tedious part is cut in half. Now, salespeople have to cater to prospects that are pre-educated. This saves a lot of time & effort, leading to better conversion rates.

Best practices include: 

  • Working in sync with the sales team to prepare the resources 
  • Focusing more on the present-day immediate buyers’ needs than long-term traditional pieces

Moreover, your salespeople are allowed to focus on the meat of their job, i.e., selling, and the tedious parts of their job is taken away. This has a minimal but effective impact on the conversion rates. 

These were the top three benefits that having a sales enablement team can incur. Here we conclude this edition on sales enablement. 

Final Words

Conclusively, Sales Enablement is an efficient sync between the marketing and sales departments. It’s an absolute must-have in today’s tech-oriented times where the scope of marketing & sales has changed. They are codependent more than ever but still can’t function appropriately in sync with each other. That’s why you can’t miss out on sales enablement. 

Corporate Learning and Development, Corporate Learning Best Practices, Employee-Training, Gamification, L&D professionals, Sales, sales enablement

The Top 5 Ways to Transform Your Sales Team into a Sales-Enabled Organization

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Wondering why your team is lagging behind in sales? Here are some tips to transform yours into a sales-enabled company!

The sales team of any organization is a crucial driving force for good business. While standard sales strategies are used by a majority of organizations, the sales aspects are often undermined with more focus on enhancing your brand identity and other peripheral aspects.

For a business, at the end of the day, sales stand to be the most important. Even if you’re a brand that believes in making an impact or looking at the larger picture, you really can’t keep your vision going without having the basic funds for it. Many businesses fall to their ends due to the lack of a prompt sales team.

But the question is – how to make your company a sales-enabled one at large? Here are the top 5 ways with which you can transform yours into a sales-enabled organization:

  1. Modernize with CRM and collaboration tools

As much as you’d think your sales reps can handle it all, making their lives easier with some modern sales elements is always a good idea. Sales-friendly CRM systems can help to manage quality leads and target relevant consumers. Interactive and collaboration tools for your sales team can also do wonders for an effectively managed sales funnel. 

  1. Automate administrative and mundane tasks

Do everything you can to ensure your reps are focusing on sales and not mundane paperwork or other administrative tasks that could be managed digitally. If you’re still doing things the old-fashioned pen-to-paper way, it’s time to upgrade. Incorporate apps and devices into your workspace for digital signatures, cross-platform networking, and centrally updated data. In fact, handling mundane things electronically ensures not only saved time but improved security, privacy, and authenticity of data! 

  1. Use gamification strategies to encourage competition amongst reps

The sales playing field has traditionally been a competitive one. Who can finish their targets first? Who can get that promotion? How about easing the pressure-based competition and gamifying the competition between reps. Quodeck is a one-of-a-kind SaaS tool that allows you to create a gamified interactive interface that can be the next big thing to keep your sales reps engaged and on their toes. 

  1. Invest more in sales training and enablement

The businesses that experience a dip at the earliest are those that don’t train their reps well. You can’t expect your employees to deliver if you don’t provide them with the best training and set of resources to close the most number of deals! It is high time to invest in more effective sales training strategies, new technologies, and sales-enablement platforms for your business. 

  1. Analyze data to optimize strategy

Last but not least, fine-tuning your strategy as per your prior performances will truly make an impact. Insights from performance data can greatly transform your sales team and fine-tune their responses for client conversions. Classify and recognize aspects that are working and figure out strategies that are not working. You’d be blown away by how much data can reveal about your organization’s performance! Employ effective data analytics tools to reap the benefits of this. 

Conclusion

A few steps in the right direction can change your existing team into one with a little more perspective on sales. Assess your organization and shortlist what would work for you to boost up the potential of your sales department. Jump into these top options and find out what works for your business!

Analytics, Authoring tool, Employee-Training, QuoDeck, Sales, sales enablement

The 5 Best Training Tools For Sales Teams: How to Train Your People for Success

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Sales training is extremely significant for pumping up your team. Check out how you can go about it to train your team for success! 

Sales training and strategies do go a long way in converting leads into sales. However, after a point, there’s only so much your team can do. With bulk orders to keep track of, an abundance of customers to manage, and hundreds of leads to convert, the logistics of sales can be quite cumbersome. 

The path to success lies in prompt training and building a team that is prepared for any kind of situation that is thrown at them. Different companies like to do it differently. There’s no set formula to train your people for success. There are some great training tools and software, though, that you can use to make sure you prepare your team for what’s in store with hardcore sales. 

Here are 5 of the best training tools that leading companies employ with their sales training programs. The best sales training tools include a combination of CRM-based software and other platforms to consistently help reps get comprehensive training. Browse through these to boost your training strategy to make all the difference: 

  1. Pipedrive – Advanced CRM for sales training 

An advanced CRM tool like Pipedrive can be great for training reps about the desired workflow. Especially if your organization is sales-enabled and employs workflow automation, this is a great tool that can help reduce administrative overhead. A great training tool like this one teaches how to deal with leads, conversions, and different aspects of multi-tasking. 

  1. 6Sense – For intelligent sales training 

In the era of AI, what better than a prediction-based tool for an intelligent form of sales training. 6Sense helps leverage AI predictions and sales insights to foresee hot leads and segregate premium leads. It is also a great engagement platform where reps can get the hang of what kind of leads and opportunities would be more viable in a given situation. An intelligent sales tactic definitely helps close deals faster! 

  1. Quodeck – Sales training with gamification  

One of the best ways for sales training is through a healthy, gamified, and competitive platform. Quodeck can be a great sales training tool with custom interactive experiences especially catering to your reps team. Especially for target training, micro-learning with a gamified interface can promote active training with two-way engagement. What’s more, is that it is readily integrable with your existing learning management systems! 

  1. Salesloft – Training for lead and prospect management  

Next up is a focus on training for lead and prospect management with tools like Salesloft. One of the most significant aspects of sales training involves dealing with leads promptly. A hot lead takes very little time to become a dead one if your rep cannot follow up proactively. Salesloft is a great sales tool and training avenue for streamlined automation of leads. With personalized interface and follow-up interactions, reps can learn about dealing with different case scenarios. 

  1. Chili Piper – Train to manage time and optimize conversions  

Time management is a key aspect of sales training. Advanced scheduling software like Chili Piper can help automate the scheduling aspects of sales in tandem and integration with your CRM. With active communication and distribution of roles across the team, a readily integrated sales schedule tool can impact more than you’d think! Finally, even great conversions would stand to be useless if they took too long or lack prompt follow-ups. 

Conclusion 

Pave the path for your team to perform better with effective sales training. After all, your team is only going to be as good as you train them to be with practical skills. Try implementing some of these training tools, and enhance your sales team with a default protocol for every situation they encounter. Eventually, an adept sales team is one that is trained for the unexpected! 

e-Learning, Employee-Training, Remote Working

5 new trends in driving engagement for remote employees

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The world of business has inevitably changed since 2020. Today, besides having vision and innovation, you have to make investments and adopt a new approach. This approach must stress on gratifying an employee so that they are happy and satisfied. Whether they are a leader or a manager, employees must feel connected to their purpose.  

The future engagement of employees depends on the five new trends that embrace flexibility and technology. Many recent trends have appeared, with some working and some not. But here’s what we have for you: the five engagement trends for remote employees. These will help you make informed decisions and battle the current crisis like a boss. 

  1. Focus on the channels of communication 

Suppose you have workers working on-site. You must brief them well on their roles.  And inform them about the colleagues that will work with them. Install rapid communication channels so that they stay in touch with each other, regardless of where they are. We must admit that meet-ups have worked wonders, especially for discussions relating to project issues and progress.

  1. Measuring engagement alone wouldn’t do – go the extra mile! 

As per the latest data, organizations spend 720 dollars million to gauge engagement.  But according to an American analytical company, only 36 per cent of the workforce is occupied. The rest 64 per cent is going through a gamut of emotions or feeling plain miserable.  

Your company is a breathing and living entity. Thus, you cannot manage performance directly. Hence, you must understand the areas that drive employees’ behaviours and directly impact their performance. Measure the conditions that matter. These conditions include alignment of personal strengths, psychological safety, and intrinsic motivation.  

When quantifying an employee’s prosperity levels, you should find out whether your organization is excelling with its people. 

  1. Improve the workstation of your employee, be proactive 

On identifying the positions that fit remote working best, you must give your employees an alternative. Not every person whose job may call for remote working, can do tasks remotely. Thus, do not expect the employees to brush their problems under the carpet. We suggest rethinking the entire journey of an employee and supporting everyone through this challenging time. Approximately 50 million jobs can be done from the comfort of a home, however, some cannot. Thus, we suggest that you furnish remote workers with all the software and hardware needed to work remotely. These small steps will help create a flexible environment amidst the pandemic.  

Adapt to the scenario of digital work but do not expect this new work wave to speed up as it advances.  

  1. Focus on talent development  

Before the coronavirus smothered us, the threat of talent shortage already rocked the business world. According to a US survey, employers confessed that they struggled to discover the talent they needed.  

With slashing of budgets and layoffs, re-skilling employees has become the need of the hour.  

One way to counter this problem is by developing your company as a marketplace for talent. This marketplace will have employees as the network’s segment. And once they are a part of the network, you can allocate them to new teams whenever you require their skills.  

  1. Get employees on the board with big, all-embracing goals 

When employees have understood their roles, are comfortable in their set up, and know what to do, get them on the board. Discuss the overarching goals of your company so that you can trade again.  

When the trade picks up and profits start pouring in, job insecurities and other fears will be eliminated. People will roll their sleeves up and do their bit to boost the success of the business. Encountering a shared tragedy or trauma has a fantastic way of dragging employees together towards success and survival. 

Conclusion  

A business may break, but it can heal as well. Each of these trends that drive remote employee engagement will be crucial in your company’s recovery. We hope these trends ensure that people under you remain engaged, productive, and cared for during and beyond a crisis.