703-927-4443
by Steve Gielda, Ignite Selling CEO
If you plan to deliver sales training at your national sales meeting, it’s important to maximize peer-to-peer learning.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve participated in hundreds of our clients’ national sales meetings as trainers, coaches and observers. When it comes to training at such events, we’ve seen firsthand what works and what doesn’t. We recently pulled our collective learnings into the following “7 Unbreakable Rules for Delivering Effective Training at Your National Sales Meeting”.
This guide drills into these rules a bit deeper to give you some practical guidance to get the most impact from your efforts.
Rule 4. Maximize peer-to-peer learning
When we work with clients to provide training at their national sales meetings, we always try to review participant evaluations from the previous year’s event to learn what worked and what didn’t. Across many years and many clients, participants say they want more time to learn from each other.
Creating an engaging learning experience means letting peers learn from each other. That’s why they’re there, and that’s the real joy of a national sales meeting. You have a hall full of people who share similar roles and face similar challenges, but who don’t typically have a chance to troubleshoot together.
To maximize peer-to-peer learning, allocate enough time and create the right conditions. There isn’t much peer-to-peer learning when a subject matter expert is on stage lecturing their way through a slide deck. Instead, maximize the opportunity by getting peers actively problem solving and working together toward a common goal. This is a fundamental principle behind the design of our sales simulations.
People will naturally cluster with colleagues they already know. However, you can overcome this by structuring table groups with intent. You want to avoid all the senior reps sitting at the same table, so design table groups so that junior reps and senior reps are blended. The same goes for different regions. Whenever possible, blend people from different offices and regions.
We want participants to have an opportunity to learn more from their peers and think a little bit differently. The idea is not just to share best practices, but to share best practices outside of your region. As a bonus, new friendships form, networks build and morale and corporate culture flourish.
Using Sales Simulations to Deliver High-impact Training at Your National Sales Meeting
We believe that sales simulations are the most effective approach for delivering high-impact training at national sales meetings. Sales simulations create a high-energy, competitive, active learning experience that helps salespeople and managers overcome the common obstacles they encounter in the market every day.
For more information on how we can help you, please call us at (703) 234-5275 or email [email protected].