Did you know that roughly $15.9 billion dollars are invested in sales training each year?
And, did you also know that by most accounts that investment is pretty much gone in the first 30-days following any specific sales training event? Ouch.
Let me say it again…ouch. Double and triple ouch. Am I the only one bothered that so much money is wasted needlessly? Don’t get me wrong, an investment in sales development is critically important but the statistics would certainly suggest that there is a bigger problem. Wishful and short-sighted thinking and very little thought put into the strategy needed to affect mass change for the better.
Any client that has worked with me or anyone who has ever talked to me about my passion for people development knows that I believe that learning, which leads to any type of sustainable change in an organization, is a journey and NOT an event. Through experience I know that learning initiatives only succeed when they are tied to a strategy that considers the end goal; the actual outcome you want to achieve.
As I’ve been writing and speaking for the last 7 years about how sales needs to evolve to adapt to changed buyer behavior, it still comes back to one key point. If you keep trying to sell the way that you’ve always sold, you lose most of the time.
In keeping with my belief that salespeople and their leaders need to shift how they think about selling in today’s business environment, it is not unusual for companies to approach me asking to deliver a “social selling” training that puts their salespeople back on track.
The problem though is that the training – regardless how good that training might be - in and of itself, will likely go nowhere. If you have no accountability, either in the process or the tools, how can you possibly expect to affect any type of serious sales change?
To that end, in this special edition of my Sales Mastery Interview Series, I sat down with Rini Das, CEO of PAKRA to have a conversation about the world of gamification and how it applies to that crucial factor in learning and development – the accountability that leads to demonstrable results.
Maybe you’ve heard the term gamification and think you - soft of - know what it means. Or, perhaps you have no clue as to the power of this particular strategy as it relates to learning, change and the accountability needed to get there. As you listen to my conversation with Rini, you are sure to benefit from insights that you’ve not previously considered.
I’m biased to be sure, but I have to say that it is another great interview with a thought leader who has amassed years of experience helping organizations affect real change. Oh, and she has the hard core data to back it up!
A serial entrepreneur, Rini has led PAKRA since its inception in 2008. She brings more than 20 years of experience and passion as a consultant in enhancing customer experience, generating customer value, implementing Lean and Six Sigma and large-scale organizational change, and integrating core and support functions after an M&A event. She specializes in sales, customer service and upselling processes; KPI and analytics; change management; business-process management; and operational-maturity assessment.
A thought-leader in change management, disruptive innovation and Lean and Six Sigma, Rini has authored numerous articles and has served on the adjunct faculty for the business schools of University of Notre Dame and the Ohio State University. She holds an MA in economics and game theory from the State University of New York, an MS in applied mathematics and decision sciences from the University of Iowa, and a BS in mathematics from St. Xavier’s College.
When you listen to the interview, you’ll learn:
- Where the gap is in sales training, onboarding, management, CRM, tools purchase versus the return?
- Why there should be accountability and why it is important for you to focus on accountability to the process in the beginning.
- How what you do with technology as the enabler is most important than the tool itself.
- New skills needed for salespeople among them critical thinking.
- The definition of the term “gamification” – what it is and what it is NOT!
- How integrating a gamification strategy into a sales learning strategy actually delivers sales results.
- What management can expect to see – and benefit from – when they make the financial investment in a strategic approach to changing sales behavior.
And more…
Enjoy the interview!