Learning Disrupted Part 2 Best Practices to Train your Sales Team in this Post-pandemic Virtual World

5 minutes read

Welcome to the second part of the “Learning Disrupted” blog series where we discuss How corporate learning has been disrupted after the onset of COVID And, what measures can we take now to efficiently upskill our salesforce to sell in this new normal

The first blog in the series talks about various crucial aspects that you need to adopt to make your virtual training strategy a success. If you haven’t checked that out yet, here is the link.

In this blog, we are going to discuss the best practices that will help you to drive your virtual training successfully with a great impact.

Best Practices to drive virtual training successfully

1. Limit the class time

Long and continuous training sessions end up making the trainees tired, disinterested, and disengaged. So, limit the length of your training sessions to not more than one and a half or two hours.

Pro-tip: The best way to decide the optimal class time is by taking a look at your training content. You need to see how much of your training content is worth paying attention to. If you have good quality content that would last for only 20 mins then your class should be 20 minutes long.

2. Content is the King

Be it face-to-face or virtual training, the training content is always the king. It is the content that helps in effectively engaging your audience. If your content is not good enough then your audience would lose interest, get disengaged, and view the training as a waste of their time.

So, design your training content in such a way that it is interesting, gripping, and worth paying attention to. Make sure that:

The content flows seamlessly from one topic to another
It is crisp and to the point
Doesn’t have too many repetitions
Has less theory and more real-life examples

3. Mandate Cameras on

If you’re training a small group of trainees (about 10-15 people), make it mandatory for everyone to turn on their cameras in the live training sessions. This way when they get to see each other, it establishes a human connection virtually and effectively engages everyone.

If you have a much larger group of trainees, make sure that the trainer has her camera on. And ask the trainees to turn on their audio and video when they have to talk.

4. Audience participation is key

In a virtual training environment, you need to think of your audience as monitors (not literally). What I am trying to say metaphorically is that they are going to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity.

It’s a natural phenomenon that a human’s brain automatically goes into passive mode if there is no participation. This results in the audience getting disengaged from the training.

So, keep them active by

Making them take a poll or a survey in between
Call out people and ask questions
Ask them to share a story or their experience related to a particular subject
Or take questions from them

A golden rule would be: Do not talk continuously for more than 5 minutes without interaction.

5. Train on Technologies

This is absolutely necessary because everyone might not be tech-savvy.

Diving directly into the training by assuming that everyone would know how to use a platform is not ideal. It would only result in creating chaos in the training environment. So, take some time before the training to really prep your trainers and trainees with the knowledge of using all the tech platforms that they would need

6. Make learning flexible

During this crisis, when people are working from home, the line between their personal and professional lives is almost blurred. While they are juggling personal and professional tasks, it might be difficult sometimes for some people to attend the live training sessions at a particular time.

Provide them the flexibility of learning at any time. Record the training sessions and upload them in the training content repository. This enables the learners to access and watch the recorded sessions whenever they have time. This way the trainees do not have to miss any session and get the training whenever they want.

7. Virtual facilitators’ style

The audience expects the live training sessions/ webinars to be entertaining and engaging. So, you need to prepare your trainers accordingly.

Don’t worry! you don’t have to make them as good as Elen Degeneres. But make sure that they can hold the attention of people for as long as the training session is in progress.

Train them on:

How to open the session interestingly
How to engage people from time to time
How to facilitate fun conversations between people
How to bring a lot of energy and passion to the subjects that are being discussed

8. Keep it fun and light

Add a lot of fun to the whole training program. You can:

Organize some creative games that can be played virtually
Conduct team-building activities
Organize virtual lunch or coffee sessions to facilitate collaboration amongst trainers and trainees in an informal setting

This way when people have fun and enjoy the training, they look forward to attending your training sessions.

Published on Mon Dec 7 2020