What 3-D Avatars Know About Sales Training

By Margery Weinstein

At W/, a vendor of custom e-learning solutions, sales simulations are key to success, says Jack Pierce, a partner with the company who oversees development. "We spend a lot of time doing sales simulations," he says. "In these simulations, salespeople soak up information and then get to practice using it, interactively, in a simulated sales situation with one or more 3-D avatars. All of the major steps in the sales process can be presented in this way, and learners get a safe place to practice and make mistakes, before going onto the sales floor."

Simulations are known as one of the more "fun" ways to train employees, but Pierce says at his company the focus also is on challenging participants. "Make no mistake, we want the simulations to be difficult enough for learners to fail. Most of the time, they learn more by making mistakes and getting expert feedback. We've used avatars to represent the learner, facilitators, customers, and coaches. It really makes learning engaging, more real...and fun."

Pierce shares the simulation dos and don'ts W/ has learned over the years:

• This is sales training, not just product training, so practicing selling is the highest priority.
• Most of the time, our subject matter experts are marketing people or engineers. They see training from their own point of view. We see training as a responsibility to decipher their materials and produce tools and content that speak directly to how we can make a salesperson more successful.
• Our instruction development process starts with the business case, so training is strategic, and moves the needle on sales.
• With simulations, it's not important to practice the easy stuff, so we look specifically for the gray areas where learners might naturally get confused. We call those gray areas "the highest value learning targets."
• Adult learners feel bored and constrained with "click-next" learning. So we use random access modules to put the user in control of the experience. Following an introductory section, where basic concepts are pulled into focus, we provide interactive exploration.
• The simulated sales are the most sophisticated part of a course, because this is where most of the practice occurs.  

HAVE OTHER INPUT OR TIPS on this topic? If so, send them our way in an e-mail to lorri@trainingmag.com with the subject line "Sales Simulation," and we'll try to include your advice in an upcoming edition of our Training Tech Talk e-newsletter.